Many people at church are related but even after several years of attending I’m still discovering people’s family relationships. It’s impossible to guess, for example, that two parishioners are mother and daughter or father and son if I never see them talking to each other. They never sit at the same table or acknowledge each other in any way.

There is an older couple who loves me and Klara. We’ve even vacationed together. They always smother Klara with hugs whenever they see her. I thought they were lonely but then I discovered that their two grandchildren attend church every Sunday. One is Klara’s age. But I never see them anywhere around each other. It’s very mystifying. These are not cold people if you judge by how they relate to us. But in their own families, it’s all kind of unusual. One woman went on and on about how a parishioner who was diagnosed with cervical cancer is stupid and deserves the diagnosis. I was shocked but then I discovered the cancer patient is her daughter. My own mother is very capable of such thoughts but she wouldn’t make them public. And she’d be plastered to my side the entire time we are church.

Here’s the article at the fancy Ukrainian portal. It can be Google Translated but then the extent of my suffering over the insufficiency of my language skills will not be understood.

I think the article is the first time that the expression “the bottom quintile” was ever used in Ukrainian.