By Volodymyr Kish
Тhis
past weekend, my wife and I celebrated an annual tradition that has now been
going on for thirty-three years. It
dates back to the time when my wife was an undergraduate student at the
Even after graduation and subsequent marriages, she maintained
contact, and in 1977 we had the first of what would become what we
affectionately call the annual “Babstvo Picnic” (a term I should note, lest I
be accused of any degree of chauvinism, they themselves came up with!).
Initially, it was just the six of us, three married couples,
having a summer picnic, enjoying the pryroda at some park or
conservation area. Eventually, in the
natural course of events, we all had kids and they became an integral part of and
inevitably the central focus of our picnics. All this of course was well
documented with the appropriate “Kodak Moments”, and we are now blessed with
thirty-three consecutive years of photographs chronicling our passage through
life and the various stages of marriage, parenting, family life and more
recently, the return of being couples again as the our kids have grown and gone
off on their own.
We went through those pictures this past weekend and were moved by
the vivid portrayal of our personal passage through time starting with our more
carefree years when we still had hair and diet was not a four letter word that
we had to worry about. Year by year, we
saw our kids arrive, grow up and become adults in their own right.
The decades passed, and on the male side, our hair became sparser
and more grey. As for the babstvo,
there was much nostalgia for those good old days before pregnancies and the
stresses of life turned their youthful bodies from prime dancing form into
something, let us just say a little more mature.
This has been the longest kept tradition within our personal
lives, at least of the ones that we originated and did our best to maintain
throughout the decades. This proved
particularly hard during the time when we were living in
This is a tradition which all of us who are party to it, treasure
immensely. It is a bond that ties us
through not only the physical dimension of time, but also the spiritual
dimension of human relationships.
Traditions have always played an important role in every society
and social grouping since our caveman days.
They create important bonds that provide a vital sense of belonging and
a structure around which we base our activities as human beings, whether it is
on a daily or longer term basis.
Traditions are an integral part of our culture and form the basis of a
lot our values.
All too often, we tend to think of traditions as being something
we inherit from our parents or our ancestors.
Let us not forget though that all traditions have to start somewhere and
at sometime, so we should not be afraid to start our own traditions, within our
family, our circle of friends or the communities within which we live and spend
a good chunk of our daily lives. Our lives will be the richer for it.