Nonfiction
Childhood, occupied
I am two. It is about 9 PM. I watch my grandmother close the curtains as I choose between two books for a bedtime story. A collection of Russian folk tales or a book about animals by a Russian author. The first book is smaller with yellowed pages. The corners of some words are smeared with ink and the colors of the images are faded: this book has been loved. My grandma used to read it to her daughters when they were my age.
I choose the folk tales, and my grandmother lies down next to me, adjusting the bedside light to be just bright enough for her to see the words.
She reads me two or three short stories before I stop her.
“Can you sing for me?”
My grandma always joked that her singing was more likely to wake me up, but I always found her voice soothing.
I close my eyes and snuggle up closer to her arm. Quietly, she starts singing “Katuysha”
I choose the folk tales, and my grandmother lies down next to me, adjusting the bedside light to be just bright enough for her to see the words.
She reads me two or three short stories before I stop her.
“Can you sing for me?”
My grandma always joked that her singing was more likely to wake me up, but I always found her voice soothing.
I close my eyes and snuggle up closer to her arm. Quietly, she starts singing “Katuysha”
Apple and pear trees blossomed,
Mists floated over the river.
Katyusha came ashore,
On the high, steep shore.
…
Oh you, song, song of a maiden,
You fly after the bright sun.
And to the soldier on the distant frontier.
Say hello from Katyusha.
Mists floated over the river.
Katyusha came ashore,
On the high, steep shore.
…
Oh you, song, song of a maiden,
You fly after the bright sun.
And to the soldier on the distant frontier.
Say hello from Katyusha.
Расцветали яблони и груши,
Поплыли туманы над рекой.
Выходила на берег Катюша,
На высокий берег на крутой.
…
Ой ты, песня, песенка девичья,
Ты лети за ясным солнцем вслед.
И бойцу на дальнем пограничье
От Катюши передай привет
Поплыли туманы над рекой.
Выходила на берег Катюша,
На высокий берег на крутой.
…
Ой ты, песня, песенка девичья,
Ты лети за ясным солнцем вслед.
И бойцу на дальнем пограничье
От Катюши передай привет
I imagine vast verdant fields, a sweet smell of the apple blossom, and a girl waiting for her lover near a river.
My grandmother finishes the rest of the song and waits another minute to check if I am asleep. Carefully, she tucks me in and turns off the light.
I am three. It is hot and windy in Skadovsk. My family and I are about two weeks into our 21-day-long yearly vacation near the Black Sea. My grandmother and I just came back from picking shells, and my mom finished unwrapping the watermelon she cut at home. Kherson, the region where we were vacationing, is home to the best watermelons in the world.
I rinse my hands, and she offers me a seedless piece. The shiny shells of different colors are neatly lined up on a striped lounge chair, ordered by size. With my hands sticky from the watermelon juice, I take the biggest shell for my mom to pack in her bag.
We finish snacking, and she gets up to put me in arm floaties. One last swim before lunch. A man passes by us with clear cups full of tiny salted prawns. He announces himself with a loudspeaker campaign and the rustling sound of a giant plastic bag containing more prawns for sale.
My mom kindly refuses the man’s offer of prawns and tightens the bandana on my head. We start making our way to a busy shore, me running a few steps ahead of my mom in excitement. My mom picks me up as we step into the sea, carefully avoiding algae and jellyfish. When she finds a spot free of other swimmers, my mom squats in the water so that my legs are fully immersed. We do this a few times before I leave her arms to swim on my own. We splash, laugh, and make up stories about sea creatures. I get on my back in a starfish position, letting the waves gently rock me. My mom is holding my back underwater. The sun is too bright so I close my eyes to listen to the distant beach chatter.
I am five. I just rushed through my lunch to see the new “Masha y Medved” episode. Plopped on the couch next to my napping cat, I grab the remote to press the familiar button combination. I know which channel I am looking for, and I know that now is about the time the cartoon is aired: fast-paced scenes of a little girl and a bear roll over the screen, underscored by the melody of their epic theme. I scooch closer to the screen, which wakes up my cat. Lazily, he jumps off the couch, so I get all of it to myself.
Throughout the next twenty minutes or so, I watch as Masha gets in various kinds of trouble, fights with the bear, the bear solves her problems, and they reconcile in a happy, punishment-free ending.
I like the main character a lot. Masha is a troublemaker, a wide-eyed girl about the same age as me. She speaks the same language as me. My mom would lovingly compare me to her when I misbehaved.
My grandmother calls me over in the kitchen. “One more minute!” I yell back. The episode is not over yet.
I am alone. It is November. I am sitting in a small Italian cafe somewhere in Noe Valley trying to finish a statistics assignment. The waiter squeezes past the other tables to bring me my order in a tiny white mug. He half-jokingly says that it is probably too late to be drinking coffee - “It will keep you awake the whole night. It’s not like the Starbucks caramel crap.” I smile and thank him. The coffee does smell strong, and I probably will need to stay up late to finish writing.
I take the mug and stare at a scarcely filled Google Doc. My attention turns to a blue Telegram icon I promised myself to mute while I am studying. It’s been about an hour since I last checked the news, and it should be morning in Ukraine. I should probably text my mom.
The news headlines fill my entire screen.
My grandmother finishes the rest of the song and waits another minute to check if I am asleep. Carefully, she tucks me in and turns off the light.
I am three. It is hot and windy in Skadovsk. My family and I are about two weeks into our 21-day-long yearly vacation near the Black Sea. My grandmother and I just came back from picking shells, and my mom finished unwrapping the watermelon she cut at home. Kherson, the region where we were vacationing, is home to the best watermelons in the world.
I rinse my hands, and she offers me a seedless piece. The shiny shells of different colors are neatly lined up on a striped lounge chair, ordered by size. With my hands sticky from the watermelon juice, I take the biggest shell for my mom to pack in her bag.
We finish snacking, and she gets up to put me in arm floaties. One last swim before lunch. A man passes by us with clear cups full of tiny salted prawns. He announces himself with a loudspeaker campaign and the rustling sound of a giant plastic bag containing more prawns for sale.
My mom kindly refuses the man’s offer of prawns and tightens the bandana on my head. We start making our way to a busy shore, me running a few steps ahead of my mom in excitement. My mom picks me up as we step into the sea, carefully avoiding algae and jellyfish. When she finds a spot free of other swimmers, my mom squats in the water so that my legs are fully immersed. We do this a few times before I leave her arms to swim on my own. We splash, laugh, and make up stories about sea creatures. I get on my back in a starfish position, letting the waves gently rock me. My mom is holding my back underwater. The sun is too bright so I close my eyes to listen to the distant beach chatter.
I am five. I just rushed through my lunch to see the new “Masha y Medved” episode. Plopped on the couch next to my napping cat, I grab the remote to press the familiar button combination. I know which channel I am looking for, and I know that now is about the time the cartoon is aired: fast-paced scenes of a little girl and a bear roll over the screen, underscored by the melody of their epic theme. I scooch closer to the screen, which wakes up my cat. Lazily, he jumps off the couch, so I get all of it to myself.
Throughout the next twenty minutes or so, I watch as Masha gets in various kinds of trouble, fights with the bear, the bear solves her problems, and they reconcile in a happy, punishment-free ending.
I like the main character a lot. Masha is a troublemaker, a wide-eyed girl about the same age as me. She speaks the same language as me. My mom would lovingly compare me to her when I misbehaved.
My grandmother calls me over in the kitchen. “One more minute!” I yell back. The episode is not over yet.
I am alone. It is November. I am sitting in a small Italian cafe somewhere in Noe Valley trying to finish a statistics assignment. The waiter squeezes past the other tables to bring me my order in a tiny white mug. He half-jokingly says that it is probably too late to be drinking coffee - “It will keep you awake the whole night. It’s not like the Starbucks caramel crap.” I smile and thank him. The coffee does smell strong, and I probably will need to stay up late to finish writing.
I take the mug and stare at a scarcely filled Google Doc. My attention turns to a blue Telegram icon I promised myself to mute while I am studying. It’s been about an hour since I last checked the news, and it should be morning in Ukraine. I should probably text my mom.
The news headlines fill my entire screen.
“Kherson residents greet Ukrainian soldiers. Ukrainian flags are raised high in the city center.”
“Ukrainians in de-occupied Kherson hug Ukrainian soldiers.”
“Kherson is o u r s.”
Silently, I scroll through the photos and videos of interactions between liberated Ukrainians and the Ukrainian army. My vision gets blurred by the tears I am too focused to wipe.
I never cry happy tears, and I never cry in public. But today is a special victory.
Once I have rewatched all the available videos multiple times, I read the captions more closely. “Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated Kherson city and the towns on the right bank of the Dnipro river.”
Part of the region on the left bank remains occupied. That means my Skadovsk, the city where I first saw the beach, first learned to swim, and spent many summers in, does too. A wave of sadness comes over me, clutching at my heart. I wish there was a way for this strange mix of excitement and despair to pour out of me in a meaningful way. I begin crying with a new force.
“This is just the beginning,” I think to myself. “We will get everything back.”
I look around the room, my eyes still glassy. The waiter and I lock eyes. He seems to be looking at me for a bit too long, like he is assessing me. I don’t know what I would tell him if he asked me why I was crying. Luckily, he didn’t and instead turned around to servegive another customer a to-go order.
I look at my laptop and mechanically close the tab with the statistics assignment. I then close Telegram.
The coffee is cold when I take the first sip. I finish the drink with a few gulps and it leaves a distinct bitter aftertaste. The coffee was probably much better when it was hot.
I pack my laptop and sit for a few seconds, gripping firmly onto the straps of my bag for no reason.
My phone buzzes. It’s my friend texting me about the assignment. I should probably get started on it. I should also text my mom.
“It’s kind of funny. Trauma sometimes makes you look at your life from a third-person perspective.”
“What do you mean? Is it kind of like watching a movie?”
“Sort of, but not quite. I feel like my memories aren’t mine. Like, rationally, I know that they are but I don’t feel them, I don’t feel like I’ve ever felt them.”
“Do you think it’s because of the time that has passed between the events that happened and you recalling them?”
“Time is definitely a part of it, but I also think that it’s anger that creates an additional distance. It’s anger about falling prey to the enemy’s tactics, for letting it infiltrate your consciousness, for naively believing that bad things will never happen to you. It’s like that with language, for example. I used to speak Russian before the full-scale war, and now I reread my texts in Russian and feel very detached from them because I am angry at myself.”
“But it was also the language you grew up with, it’s not like it was your active choice to speak it.”
“Yes, and that’s what also makes childhood memories so difficult to grasp: the more I think about them, the more I realize that they were poisoned from the very beginning. The memories once sacred are mudded by the feeling that I was never safe in the borders of my country, in the walls of my home. There was violence all along.”
The girl is watching the older boys. Her face feels hot, whether from the mischievous June sun or the brewing sense of injustice - a word she does not yet know but can feel the sticky, burdensome essence of. The boys are catching jellyfish whose weakened bodies were brought to the shore. They poke them with sticks and pass them around in disgust, letting out squeaky laughs. One of the boys pretends to attack his friend with a wilted tentacle, and the friend jumps up, screaming.
After exhausting the fun, the boys lay the jellyfish to dry on hot concrete slabs and race to get plombir ice cream cones. The girl takes a few steps forward as if ready to call on the boys. She takes a deep, shaky breath but does not say anything. Maybe she feels the boys are too far away or too old to hear her; they are about seven, while she is only three. Instead, she runs back to her mom through the mazes of lounge chairs, flip-flops, and toy buckets. The hot sand tingles her bare feet as she makes a series of clumsy turns, leaving little foot-sized craters on the beach. The girl spots her mom, and only then does she let herself cry. She cries about the jellyfish and how they must have been hurting out in the piercing sun, unable to fight back. She cries about her helplessness, how the words would not come out of her mouth even though the anger was ready to pour out of her tiny body. And she cries about the boys and how the vendor probably sold them the ice cream despite their moral hollowness. The jellyfish did not deserve to die, and the boys did not deserve the ice cream.
The air smells of salt and sweet corn, and a pair of girls splashes in a kiddy pool a few meters away.
The girl’s weeping quietens as she absently stares at the corner of the lounge chair, gripping the fabric of her mom’s shawl.
“The world is violent,” her mom says, lightly moving the curls from the girl’s forehead to apply sunscreen. “People can be very cruel. You must remain kind.”
Silently, I scroll through the photos and videos of interactions between liberated Ukrainians and the Ukrainian army. My vision gets blurred by the tears I am too focused to wipe.
I never cry happy tears, and I never cry in public. But today is a special victory.
Once I have rewatched all the available videos multiple times, I read the captions more closely. “Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated Kherson city and the towns on the right bank of the Dnipro river.”
Part of the region on the left bank remains occupied. That means my Skadovsk, the city where I first saw the beach, first learned to swim, and spent many summers in, does too. A wave of sadness comes over me, clutching at my heart. I wish there was a way for this strange mix of excitement and despair to pour out of me in a meaningful way. I begin crying with a new force.
“This is just the beginning,” I think to myself. “We will get everything back.”
I look around the room, my eyes still glassy. The waiter and I lock eyes. He seems to be looking at me for a bit too long, like he is assessing me. I don’t know what I would tell him if he asked me why I was crying. Luckily, he didn’t and instead turned around to servegive another customer a to-go order.
I look at my laptop and mechanically close the tab with the statistics assignment. I then close Telegram.
The coffee is cold when I take the first sip. I finish the drink with a few gulps and it leaves a distinct bitter aftertaste. The coffee was probably much better when it was hot.
I pack my laptop and sit for a few seconds, gripping firmly onto the straps of my bag for no reason.
My phone buzzes. It’s my friend texting me about the assignment. I should probably get started on it. I should also text my mom.
“It’s kind of funny. Trauma sometimes makes you look at your life from a third-person perspective.”
“What do you mean? Is it kind of like watching a movie?”
“Sort of, but not quite. I feel like my memories aren’t mine. Like, rationally, I know that they are but I don’t feel them, I don’t feel like I’ve ever felt them.”
“Do you think it’s because of the time that has passed between the events that happened and you recalling them?”
“Time is definitely a part of it, but I also think that it’s anger that creates an additional distance. It’s anger about falling prey to the enemy’s tactics, for letting it infiltrate your consciousness, for naively believing that bad things will never happen to you. It’s like that with language, for example. I used to speak Russian before the full-scale war, and now I reread my texts in Russian and feel very detached from them because I am angry at myself.”
“But it was also the language you grew up with, it’s not like it was your active choice to speak it.”
“Yes, and that’s what also makes childhood memories so difficult to grasp: the more I think about them, the more I realize that they were poisoned from the very beginning. The memories once sacred are mudded by the feeling that I was never safe in the borders of my country, in the walls of my home. There was violence all along.”
The girl is watching the older boys. Her face feels hot, whether from the mischievous June sun or the brewing sense of injustice - a word she does not yet know but can feel the sticky, burdensome essence of. The boys are catching jellyfish whose weakened bodies were brought to the shore. They poke them with sticks and pass them around in disgust, letting out squeaky laughs. One of the boys pretends to attack his friend with a wilted tentacle, and the friend jumps up, screaming.
After exhausting the fun, the boys lay the jellyfish to dry on hot concrete slabs and race to get plombir ice cream cones. The girl takes a few steps forward as if ready to call on the boys. She takes a deep, shaky breath but does not say anything. Maybe she feels the boys are too far away or too old to hear her; they are about seven, while she is only three. Instead, she runs back to her mom through the mazes of lounge chairs, flip-flops, and toy buckets. The hot sand tingles her bare feet as she makes a series of clumsy turns, leaving little foot-sized craters on the beach. The girl spots her mom, and only then does she let herself cry. She cries about the jellyfish and how they must have been hurting out in the piercing sun, unable to fight back. She cries about her helplessness, how the words would not come out of her mouth even though the anger was ready to pour out of her tiny body. And she cries about the boys and how the vendor probably sold them the ice cream despite their moral hollowness. The jellyfish did not deserve to die, and the boys did not deserve the ice cream.
The air smells of salt and sweet corn, and a pair of girls splashes in a kiddy pool a few meters away.
The girl’s weeping quietens as she absently stares at the corner of the lounge chair, gripping the fabric of her mom’s shawl.
“The world is violent,” her mom says, lightly moving the curls from the girl’s forehead to apply sunscreen. “People can be very cruel. You must remain kind.”