To Mother – with a song, with a prayer, with love
Because a mother is the world where we always remain children. Even as we grow up, create our own families, and become parents ourselves, we still rush to that heart, those eyes, that voice, those hands, which hold so much warmth. As much as... the sun. Because a mother is the sun. Earthly.
Truly happy is the one who still has her. Here. Either very close, or hundreds, thousands of kilometers away, as fate has scattered people across countries and continents, oh, it has scattered. But she, the mother, is there. And you can go to her or at least call. And you hurry, hurry to do it. Because for some, a mother smiles from a portrait on a grave. Yet even then, she warms. With memory. And comes in dreams to wipe a tear from your face with her invisible angelic wing.
How wonderful it is that despite daily love and care, we also have a calendar holiday – Mother's Day, when we can say special words to our mothers again and again. And we arrange festive meetings, to which we hurry with songs, prayers, flowers, and smiles, with a special – grateful – state of soul.
As it was last Sunday at the parish of St. Joseph the Betrothed, where a concert program "Song for Mother" took place in the church auditorium. Its initiator was the conductor of the brass band, which has recently been working at the parish, Ivan Strogush. His idea was picked up by the creative director of the poetic theater "Istyna," Leonida Mytnychuk, who composed the script in such a way that it was an exquisitely tender, poetically touching, musically and songfully exciting meeting. With greetings for those mothers who sat in the hall, who are somewhere far away for everyone. Or were. But, having departed, they remained...
The special atmosphere of the meeting was created by the brass band itself, in which Ivan Strogush united almost two dozen musicians as devoted and passionate about art as he is. Those who, in everyday life, are engaged in work far from creativity, but find time and strength to gather for rehearsals, because there are people for whom music is truly a diagnosis in the best sense of the word.
Let me remind you that the newly formed orchestra, named "St. Joseph band," had its debut performance during the past Christmas days. Since then, the repertoire of the ensemble has significantly enriched. And at the current spring concert, the audience once again confirmed that a brass band is not retro, it is always modern, real live music that carries spiritual beauty and energy. Such feelings were present during the marches, and when the hearts of those present simply melted in the rhythms of charming waltzes, and when the lively polka sounded.
The ensemble also accompanied soloists who presented wonderful song numbers to the audience. The well-known "Oh on the mountain two oaks" was prepared for the concert by Khrystyna Shcherbin, playfully winking at the conductor of the brass band: "And I'm a mother's daughter, taught to kiss..." To which he replied without hesitation: "And I'm my father's only son, just to have a walk with someone..." However, that was all, because then the opera singer, Honored Artist of Ukraine Tetyana Vakhnovska led everyone with a song to where the cherry blossoms bloom profusely and the viburnum is dressed as if for a wedding – lyrically and lovingly. But then she also couldn't resist a song joke, masterfully assuring with her velvety mezzo-soprano: "if I were lucky to catch Vasyl, I would stop turning guys' heads..."
And the Ukrainian song sounded so beautifully under the accompaniment of the brass band, so sweetly, that the finalist of the TV project "The Voice of the Country" Volodymyr Okilko first invited the audience to the song "Grove, green grove," and then reminded everyone of the parental threshold, of the house dear to the heart, singing about the ashes that remained there behind the village, by the road, and now come into dreams as barefoot childhood...
And those songs turned into a memory of the native land, which for the fifth year has been scorched by the enemy with black misery. And not all mothers there today are in the mood for a holiday. Because some sons and daughters are still at war, and some, having given their lives for the freedom and fate of Ukraine, have flown away as white cranes into the eternal migration...
Leonida Mytnychuk spoke about this with poignant poetic words. The poetry of Lina Kostenko and Bohdan Tomenchuk, woven into the lace of a happy and tragic maternal fate, sounded in the performance of Mrs. Leonida so touchingly that it seemed she spoke them not with her lips, but with her heart. Because she spoke about those graves over the falcon sons, where poppies bloom with snow the color of blood... And about the Madonna, all bloodied, like Victory, walking on holy towels to the temple that looms... And about mother's teaching: no matter how it will be, "don't whine, daughter, that's a great disgrace. Suppressed tears – don't go out in public. If the soul hurts – don't show it..." And about mother's dream: she wanted someone to paint the sky on the ceiling in her house. With stars... But she herself has already become a star...
These poems were echoed with incredible power by the men's choir "Stavros" (conductor Ruslan Rolny), turning song works "By the poplar," "In a foreign land," and "Christ is Risen!" into a prayer. This prayer called us to sacrifice: participants and spectators of the concert program warmly welcomed the Ukrainian soldiers present in the hall, who are in America for treatment, collected funds to support our wounded defenders, and in particular, for the wounded warrior-musician Ivan Meleta.
And they expressed confidence: "All sorrows will be overcome, and all good things will return more than once, because in this world and the next, our mothers pray for us!" And they lay our fate with towels, about which all the participants sang at the end of the concert. Because in those towels – there is childhood, separation, and faithful love. And the unwavering maternal smile that warms our hearts through the years with enduring warmth.
