You may know Amelia Merhar as the Yukon-based “Big Mama Lele,” the wryly funny musician with a heart of gold. Or perhaps you know her as an avid adventurer who once bicycled across Canada and has hopped a train or two. You may know Merhar from her former work as a health promotion worker with Blood Ties Four Direction Centre.
Ukrainian Easter eggs and the power of life
Or! Perhaps you know Merhar as a fourth-year PhD candidate in Human Geography, specializing in Economic and Health Geography at the University of Waterloo. She studies, in her words, “the embodiment of transience—essentially, how frequent travel, moves and displacement affect us long-term.” Merhar’s current research uses “feminist economic geography, and mobilities and health geography, to look at the intersections of touring, income, embodiment and well-being for touring musicians in Canada.” Merhar has adapted her work for musicians in a global pandemic context, and she herself became a “digital nomad” during pandemic times.
I happen to know Merhar as someone who observes holidays, and with care and joy, be it Ukrainian Christmas or quarantine solo dance parties. She has a flair for observation and celebration.
“The Slavic creation story is that Rod emerged when the world was pure consciousness, from a golden egg.”
So, I asked Merhar about what “pysanky,” the Ukrainian Easter egg, means to her. I found Merhar’s response beautiful and, thus, hand it to you whole …
“To me, pysanky brings me back to messy memories of being a child, making eggs with wax and dye, with my Baba or at Ukrainian Easter events. It was fun to transform such an everyday food and make it special with so much effort—wax patterns, with a special pen, and colourful dye bath after dye bath.
“As an adult, though, I understand the deeper meaning behind the pysanky symbols, better, and how the little patterns can welcome health, bountiful harvest, protection, and life itself. The meaning and stories of what pysanky represents have changed through Christianization.
“The Slavic creation story is that Rod emerged when the world was pure consciousness, from a golden egg. He emerged and gave form to this world through a system of duality, light and dark, life and death, and there is a balance we must maintain. He then disappeared, leaving the other gods and goddesses to guide this new physical world.
“Pysanky now reminds me of the power of life, as a force, and the sublime that can exist in everyday objects, like an egg, if we give ourselves time to embrace that perspective.”
