02 Trust The Walls
We arrived to our relatives’ around 6:30 am. Some were worried, others were indifferent, the two kids were just walking around. Masha, the youngest girl was telling everyone that things are gonna be ok, smiling as always, showing me her English and testing my Russian.
We had a room to sleep, but that room had a big window/door facing the backyard, so we knew that was something to address. We taped the windows and placed a mattress, covering about 80% of the frame. We put a desk holding the mattress too. We agreed on shelter spaces in the house in case they were needed; Rita and my spot was our bathroom, with about 1.5m x 1.7m of space on the floor, where we put our pillows and blankets.
Next time I saw my watch it was about 4:00 pm, and I’m not sure where the day went. We saw and heard a few military helicopters going West, towards Hostomel Airport.
News started to flow on Telegram channels. In the morning Russians tried to hit Boryspil Airport, but two missiles were shot down by aerial defense. They did hit Hostomel Airport, about 50km from us; a place where a few days later, it was confirmed that the largest cargo plane in the world, the Antonov Mriya, was destroyed by Russian strikes.
We were in the living room, watching news, searching Telegram channels, texting friends and family, and suddenly it started. Three loud booms in rapid succession. We turned off all the lights and ran to our shelter spaces. Rita and I grabbed the cats, put them in their carriers and got in the bathroom. We sat on the floor, cats next to us, using up all the available space. We were quiet, using a very small night light that Masha gave us. A blue light made of plastic, resembling a small candle, the base was in the shape of a heart. I could hear myself breathing, Rita was completely silent, the cats were meowing and we tried to calm them down.
All the time I was thinking that none of this seemed real, it was hard to believe that we were in real danger, that we will have to trust the walls in that house to withstand an explosion, to be able to sleep, or at least rest.
I’m not sure how much time passed in silence, and eventually we got out of the bathroom, we all met again in the living room and we had soup for dinner.
After dinner we all sat in the living room again, this time, lights were kept dim. We heard more explosions, and we ran to our shelters. Lights off. Cats in carriers. We sat on the floor in silence. Again.
Rita started crying and I hugged her.
“I’m so sorry” she told me.
“Sorry for what?”
“For bringing this into your life. You wouldn’t be in this situation you weren’t married to me.”
Hearing that broke my heart. I felt deeply saddened because she thought that somehow this was her fault. I never for a second thought that I shouldn’t be there. I was in New York in January and I didn’t hesitate to go back to Ukraine, even with the threat of war already well established, because my wife was there. Because how could I be anywhere else? For me, this was never optional. It was part of my life, to go and live with my wife. And never ever regretted that decision. Not then and not now.
I told her that some things are much bigger than ourselves, and that there’s no fault on anyone except on the fucker that decided to start a war. And even in the middle of it, I was glad I was there. I wouldn’t have done anything differently. She cried for a long time, I cried too.
After an hour or two without explosions outside, we decided we should probably try to sleep.