It is a ritual that, at its very mention, makes our mouths water and our hearts skip a beat. My daughter and I only perform it once a year. Any more often than that and it would lose its magic. We keep the ritual sacred because it communicates to us a memory of familial love and warmth that no longer exists.
When I first witnessed pyrohies being made, I barely knew love or warmth, much less family.
It was 1968 when my father, just remarried, piled wife and kids into a new white wood-trimmed station wagon and uprooted us from El Paso, Texas to Canton, Ohio.
Our first stop in Ohio was the home of my new grandparents. To my six-year-old sensibilities, the green grass, moss-covered rocks and towering trees that surrounded a backyard playhouse was right out of a storybook. I half-expected to see fairies swinging on the pinecones. Just as I peeked into the window of that playhouse to spy Barbies galore and every Barbie outfit known, we had to leave.
We were going to see Baba, I was informed - grandpa's mother. On the way, all my stepmother and her father talked about was the ritual: making and eating Baba's pyrohies, little Ukrainian egg noodle dumplings filled with potatoes or sauerkraut. No one could make them like Baba, I was told. She could make hundreds a day, all perfect and without peer. By the time we arrived at the house, I expected to see a cross between Glenda the Good Witch and old John Henry, the rail-laying man.
What I saw instead was a woman only four feet tall, toothless, with deep-set eyes and fine white hair on her chin and upper lip. This was the miracle working wonder-woman? To a six-year old, she was nothing less than creepy. When she gave me a kiss on both cheeks, I hated her furry face touching mine. Her house seemed scary, too. It was closed, dark and it smelled of age and dough.
I squirmed on the doily covered couch. This was no match for the playhouse full of dolls that waited at home. I sat, listening to Baba's raspy babble and unaware of how really happy my stepmother was to be there.
I didn't know then that my stepmother had lived with her grandmother for three years when her parents were having problems. She said that ever since she could remember, Baba would get up at 2:30 every Friday morning and make pyrohies from scratch. By the time she was done, over 250 potato and sauerkraut pyrohies covered every available space in the kitchen, dining room and living room, drying so they could then be boiled, set in ceramic bowels and blanketed with margarine. During the afternoon, green felt chairs that Baba purchased from a funeral parlor were brought up from the basement and placed in the living room and small kitchen. Then, she began to fry the dumplings with fresh chopped onions in big cast-iron skillets, setting them out on huge platters.
In the early evening, families would arrive, with my stepmother's parents followed by a parade of aunts, uncles and cousins. With dozens of people crowded into the house, the eating began. Plates filled with crispy fried pyrohies and topped with a dollop of sour cream were filled and refilled. Everyone stayed past midnight, talking, playing cards and drinking strong chicory coffee.
When it was time to go, Baba gave each family a big bowl of pyrohies to take home. I wondered whether it was common in Ukraine for little old women to cook and feed armies of kin, or whether Baba had made it her life's calling to bring everyone together on Friday nights. Baba kept the ritual for years, guarding her recipe until close to the time of her death.
I last saw Baba in 1978. I was sixteen. She still looked ancient, but little had changed: The house smelled older and looked smaller than it had through a six-year-old's eyes, but the same doilies were on the couch. Though I was ten years older, my attitude hadn't changed: As we ate pyrohies in Baba's kitchen, I hoped we would leave soon.
My stepmother couldn't speak Ukrainian anymore, so she and Baba couldn't talk. I didn't understand that they didn't have to. The musty smells of age and dough; the soft hairy face with deep-set eyes; and the cavernous mouth that had frightened me represented home to my stepmother. No matter how long she stayed away, Baba was always waiting, warm and familiar.
After Baba died, the Friday night assemblies ended, but today my daughter and I observe the ritual once a year. We make about 100 of the crispy fried dumplings, and eat nothing else until they are gone. Though I was given Baba's coveted recipe, I am aware that something is missing. Maybe it is the taste imparted by Canton, Ohio's sulfurous well water. Or maybe it is something more ethereal - the selfless love kneaded into each by a pair of small, gnarled hands.
Christine Bollerud is a freelance writer who lives - and makes pyrohies - in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
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