When I first heard the label bastard child used to describe a child born out of wedlock, I couldn't believe it. That was me — a bastard born of a passionate love affair between a young woman and her artist lover.
I was almost a teenager then, and for a little while, being branded this seemingly punk rock archetype succeeded in making me feel less like an outsider. As odd as it may sound, being a bastard child provided context to my origin story and a sense of belonging. Over time, however, my enthusiasm for the phrase waned. Being an avid reader, I eventually learned that bastard children were generally looked down upon and perceived as having an inferior social status in many cultures. And within this discovery came another: I finally grasped identity's influential role in shaping lives and destinies.
Around this time, my mom and stepfather's marriage grew increasingly precarious. They fought incessantly, and I felt trapped amid fury and chaos. I was sad and lonely and developed severe depression. I knew things were bad at home, but I had no idea just how powerful a toll this period in my childhood would ultimately have on my self-esteem and value as a person. I felt fatherless, motherless, and wholly unloveable.
In addition to confiding to my best friend's mother and my baba (grandmother), I tried talking to God, but my grievances seemed to fall on deaf ears. Saddled with a sense of overwhelming loss and anxiety, I imagined how different things would be if my dad had immigrated to America with us in September 1979. At the very least, maybe he'd still be alive.
I remember my mom creating an altar for my father in our Kew Gardens apartment when I was a little girl. She'd cut my dad out of pictures and paste his likeness onto perforated sheets of cardboard that she tacked onto the wall. She lit candles beneath the altar, so I could pray to my father on Shabbat as if he were a saint, a god.
This was the beginning of my mythologizing my dead father for survival. In the following decades, no matter how bad things got or how great a failure I felt that I was, my dad was the single enduring symbol of hope in my life. The fact that I was my father's daughter gave me strength, brought me peace, and shaped my identity. Knowing that I was the daughter of a beloved Ukrainian artist filled me with pride and offered me a path forward.
With the help of the internet, I've slowly but surely succeeded in piecing together my father's legacy over the years. In addition to my ongoing research online, in 2004, I was fortunate to interview two NYC artists, one contemporary and one student of my father's in Ukraine. I gained valuable insight from our brief conversations and learned that my mother may not be the most reliable narrator for the story I yearned to tell. It dawned on me then that if I wanted to understand my dad's story and discover my own, my journey would need to begin where my dad's left off: Kyiv, Ukraine. Only by knowing who and where I came from, could I learn the truth about who I was and who I could be.