Outpouring

I was kinda dressed like my Dad last Friday at work. After he passed, I inherited one of his comfy button-up (button-down? What’s the difference? Direction? Does it matter? To someone, I suppose) cardigans and paired that with a soft black V-neck shirt, brown twill pants and a cool pair of red velvet Van’s that look like slippers. It nudged the line between “business casual” and “way too casual to leave the house”. No one noticed in a way that required remark or dress code reprimand. Welcome to the new workplace tolerance.

Dad’s been on my mind a lot these past two weeks. Mom too. I’m registering a strong need for their comforting presence, like I used to feel as a child when I’d have a bad dream and would wander down the hall in the middle of the night to crawl into bed with them (always on Mom’s side. She’d let me in; Dad was too sound a sleeper). Dad’s been gone ten years now, Mom seven. I’ve had good dreams and bad since then, but nothing like the nightmare we all have access to via scrolling and flat screens since February 24. And there’s no waking up from this one anytime soon.

In the two-plus weeks since then, I’ve felt an uncomfortable detachment from all illusions of safety that had held me prior. Walking the land in the morning, numb not from the cold around me but the chill within me, I blow on a fragile ember of hope that the fighting will just stop, mothers will come and pick up their young soldier-sons to take them home and feed them, wherever home might be. We’ll wake up to headlines of sanity and began planting the tomato and cabbage seeds for this year’s garden. I’m hungry for the comfort of any parent—human or earthly—whose lap is large enough for us all to crawl into and settle for a long, long time. In the meantime, I adjust the sleeves of Dad’s sweater to cover the burn marks on my left arm (a bread-baking incident from last Sunday), pulling the buttoned and buttonhole sides in closer to wrap me tightly, cocooning the ache I can’t shake. Somewhere in my fabric stash are some summer shirts Mom used to wear. I’ll cut them up and make them into a quilt this week and curl up beneath it. Maybe that will help, a little.

It’s taken me two-plus weeks to even find those words. Nothing I think or attempt to write can touch this present horror and so I’m going to stop trying for eloquent or inspiring. Strong talk for an introvert with perfectionist leanings but where else can I go? The war in Ukraine is everywhere I look, even when my phone is dark and we’re temporarily distracted by Corner Gas reruns on Amazon that we watch while we eat dinner. I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to sleep in a subway with sirens going off or carry on my back what I could grab on a last frantic run through the apartment and still hold my squirming toddler child in my arms, walking for miles to cross into a country I’ve never even visited on holiday. Stay or leave? I’ve never faced that decision in moments of relative calm, much less the chaos of relentless violence. At the market yesterday, patrons were subdued and kind. We exchanged pleasantries and currency, and once or twice I’d hold onto someone’s gaze just a few seconds longer, as if to say, “I know…I feel helpless too”. Yellow and blue ceramic hearts dotted our table’s display, with colorful cut-out sunflowers for anyone to take, free of charge. I wanted people to know and remember what was happening over there, just for a pause in their shopping. And it still didn’t feel like anything near enough. We were all safe and warm, had money in our pockets and homes and families more or less intact. Paradise.

Whatever I might have considered an inconvenience, even on the mild end of the scale, has evaporated, transformed into a desperate and piercing gratitude my bones cannot forget. The biting wind cut through our coats as we loaded the car with totes of granola and our two folding tables, our noses running but no spare hand to grab a tissue. This morning, the chicken’s watering pan was frozen, so I carried two gallon jugs of water from the house, one hot, to loosen the ice and one cold to refill. Our living room floor slants in places, bows in others and we know the joists below are not up to the task of supporting the whole structure much longer without some help; repairs will be costly and require some significant heavy lifting—literally. And I recently learned I have a hole in my right eardrum, so surgery is somewhere on the horizon. It all still adds up to nothing in the face of millions whose lives are now unraveled and dangling above the gaping hole of the Unknown, torn and bleeding. Whatever used to matter to me has been reorganized, with no expiration date or a return to before-the-war thinking. Rightly so.

Like so many others, I’m reaching for what I can do that will help, though whatever I imagine feels like tossing bricks into the Grand Canyon. But beneath that is a persistent voice insisting I not talk myself out of the modest and the small. I must believe that all acts of kindness unite to push back against the evil that roams about the earth, seeking the ruin of souls (to paraphrase an old Catholic prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. Mustn’t discard everything from our past…). I must trust in the fact that I’m still repulsed by violence, that this ache I’m carrying, cocooned in my late father’s sweater, means I have a heart anchored in peace. I must do what I can with what I have for whoever is in front of me or all will be lost. Maybe some of that will make its way across the seas, through borders and fences and reach a fellow weary soul who just can’t go another step. I don’t know how such things work exactly but I’m going to send it anyway. Love knows what to do and does it, against all odds and cynical advice.

The Mom and Dad I miss and long for taught me that.

(The painted egg in the photo that accompanies this post was a gift from my late friend and mentor Mary Merrill. Her daughter, Ann, has spent the past seventeen years in Ukraine working with nonprofits and more recently as a self-employed English-Russian translator/editor. She shared this link a few days ago, a list of reliable and trustworthy organizations helping Ukraine and Ukrainians. I encourage you to do what you can with what you have where you are. Your love and support matter. They always will.)

https://ukrainewar.carrd.co/