babusia

A Polish grandmother.

Hanna sent food over when my babusia was sick.

Now you can buy Polish sausage all ready for the pan any time you have a hankering for it. Good, some of it is, too. But when it is Christmas and your roots are in Poland, there is a chance the commercial product simply will not do. It’s got to be kitchen-made by you, as it was made by mama and babusia before you.

Alternative spelling of babusya (“Ukrainian grandmother”).

Ukrainian became the language of the poor, the ignorant, and the backward. In the meantime, Soviet Ukrainian leaders, mimicking [Mikhail] Gorbachev, were saying that their babusias (the diminutive form of babushkas, or grandmothers) spoke a quaint tongue, but that Homo sovieticus was a man above quaintness and folklore.

I took photographs from afar, unbeknownst to them, that I would later use for my painting. There was one exception—the subject of my first babusia painting “Quietude,” a woman I had met in my mother’s house in Ukraine, a friend of the family. […] The rest of my babusias were strangers whom I never met until I began painting them several years later.