Before Lavra was ever born, I knew my daughter would grow up knowing her Ukrainian heritage, which is why I gave her a Ukrainian name.  My dad made me proud of our background, and his parents came from Ukraine before they moved to Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, where they joined in with the Ukrainian community there.  I grew up in the Orthodox Church with candles and chants, and as soon as I could read any Ukrainian at all, my dad started getting me to read a few words out of the Bible.  Lavra doesn’t read Ukrainian, although she can make out the alphabet.  My dad is pretty intent that she should learn the language, even offered to drive down here to Center City once a week to give her lessons, but right now I’m concerned that Lavra would do more with reading in English, take an interest in her classes.  One thing I’ve taught Lavra that she really took to is making pysanky, the decorated eggs for Easter.  My mom taught me how to do them, which is a little odd, maybe, since it’s not something she grew up with.  But I have great memories from when I was a kid myself, drawing the patterns on the eggs with the wax stylus, then lowering them down into the jars of dyes, first the light colors, then gradually getting darker.  And the best thing was, when you were all done with the dying, to hold the egg near a candle melting the wax, then wipe the wax off with a paper towel.  Gradually you could see your pattern of different colors come out from under the blackened wax, until you held that magical colored object that had started out as just an egg shell.  My dad helped with this too, by poking the holes in each end and blowing the eggs out in the sink before we started.  He’d blow until his face turned red and he looked like his eyes were going to bug out.

Now I blow the eggs out and Lavra decorates them, and she loves it.  She loves art in general, almost any kind of art, any kind of making things, working with her hands.  What she doesn’t love, though, is everything else in school, and she’s in her first year of high school.  That’s what I worry about.  She’s bored with science, bored with history, bored with English.  And when she’s bored with something, it just doesn’t exist for her, that’s all, it’s just not there, nothing to think about.  A person can’t go through life like that, and I’m really concerned that my daughter isn’t getting an education.

I talk to Lavra’s father about it, and it concerns him too, but he thinks it’s like a phase, something kids pass through, but it seems more serious to me.  I was married to Norris, Lavra’s father, for two years.  It didn’t work.  He’s a decent guy, I’m sure he loved me and I know he loves Lavra.  He even learned some Ukrainian for me.  Stil..table. Donka...daughter. Tkach...weaver.  I should have been more honest with myself and not married him, not put myself in a position to hurt him.  But it’s hard, and you don’t always know, and when I was younger I hadn’t sorted out who I was enough or how I felt enough to realize that I was gay.  When I began to realize it, to realize that eventually I was going to have to tell Logan that I was leaving, and tell him why, I felt sick to my stomach every day for three months.

But I did it.  I finally told him, I left and moved down into the city.  Mama was upset about the whole situation, but dad supported me the whole time.  I can’t even put into words how much I love dad for how he’s always stood by me.  And dad still sees Norris sometimes, they go out for a beer, since they both live in the same town, but dad helped me move to Philly.  I came here ten years ago, when Lavra was four, and she was such a cheerful energetic child, you should have seen her, she would dance and sing and I couldn’t believe how much she was moving all the time.  I got her into a daycare and went to work, at first as a receptionist at a career counseling agency.  In the evenings after Lavra went to bed, I sat at my loom, either putting the warp threads through the headle, or else throwing the shuttle back and forth, back and forth, always such a calm and peaceful thing for me.  Throw the shuttle, pull the beater, another thread in the cloth.  I learned to weave from our next door neighbor in Jenkintown, a German woman.  She had a huge loom that fascinated me as a child.  From as young as I can remember, I would just sit and watch her for an hour at it, I would watch that architecture of threads, moving up and down, in ways that seemed mysterious to me, and then there was a piece of cloth slowly winding onto the roller where my neighbor sat, with a pattern on the cloth that kept changing.  I was enthralled, and eventually she taught me how to do it.  By the time I moved to Philadelphia, I had two looms of my own, a large floor loom and a smaller table loom, and I began spending a lot of time creating my own cloth.  My daughter helps me sometimes, winding the yarn or we talk about what colors to use on a piece of cloth.

Maybe it was from the weaving that I was so attracted to the work of other artists.  I’d go to art shows sometimes, taking Lavra along when I could.  I loved handmade things, I loved seeing how they made those things.  The second year I was in Philly I met Amy and fell in love with her, while she was still in college, and within six months we were living together.  It was because of Amy’s suggestion and constant support that I opened my own store to sell arts and crafts.  I can’t exactly remember how we came up with the name Even the Iguana, but I’ve joked that Amy was the iguana’s mother.  I think it’s odd that she doesn’t really like that joke.

I’d say I’ve been very happy with Amy.  We’ve had our ups and down, and what relationship doesn’t, you know?  We’ve been together now nine years, and except for one year when I really though we might split up–Amy even lived with a friend for a month–it’s really been a pretty good relationship.  Not that we’re two peas in a pod.  We’re different alright.  I’m more relaxed than she is, she’s more intense than I am.  I like more home things, she likes engaging the world more than I do.  I’m purely a Democrat, and she wants to be a Republican, except that she’s gay and just can’t make herself vote for them because of that.  But we’re good together, and I think we’re as strong as any two people are.

Amy has also been a wonderful second mother to Lavra, and she takes motherhood very seriously.  Maybe she takes it too seriously sometimes, maybe she could relax a little.  But who am I to talk, I could probably relax a little about it too.  Amy tends to agree with Lavra’s father Norris that Lavra is just going through a kind of phase of not being interested in school.  Amy says she was that way at one time herself, and that Lavra will get interested in her schoolwork before too long.  I don’t know.  I think I pay more attention to Lavra than anybody else, watch her more closely, talk to her more.  It doesn’t seem to me like she just doesn’t do her homework all the time, or fell asleep in class one day.  She honestly and truly doesn’t care about anything but art, and no explanation so far seems to make her understand that you can’t just live on art.  I’m worried about my little girl.  We’ve got her in a good school, a Catholic girls’ school called Hallahan, a place that Amy suggested, and I think the teachers are good.  Even so, Lavra only talks about her art teacher.    The child is daft right now, thinking art is all you need to live.

I

remember

the

days

of

old;

I

meditate

on

all

thy

works;

I

muse

on

the

work

of

thy

hands.