War calendar

There is no strength and words cannot be found to describe what is happening around.  A situation when circumstances are stronger than you.

On the wall of my kitchen hangs the "Travels in Ukraine" calendar.  I remember how before the New Year I was thinking what to choose: cats or Ukraine.  Now I understand that I did the right thing.  Each landscape, cultural landscape on the calendar gives me a completely different feeling than before the war: it could or even can disappear.  In order not to look at the indifferent black and red numbers, I began to cross out every day that I lived with a cross, like embroidering.  Maybe I won't have to make these crosses until the end of summer or fall, I thought.  On October 10, I circled the cross - that was the day when Lviv was hit, communication, water, and electricity disappeared.  Now I mark every massive missile attack on Ukraine.  And that's all.

No, I don't want to become a war chronicler.  Let the professionals do it.  Everyone has their special days.  When I went to Warsaw in May, so that my heart would thaw a little.  When I spent Independence Day in the Romanian city of Constanta and looked endlessly on the Internet, regretting that I was not in Lviv.  When I came to the exhibition of Maria Priymachenko.  When I went to Ostropil and on the way I saw the names of villages covered with black plastic at bus stops and was afraid to miss my destination.  My birthday, when I almost lost consciousness in the minibus, the blood pressure dropped so much after the painkillers.  The day when we congratulated each other on the liberation of Kherson.

There are not only days, but hours of light and hours of darkness, which can be entered into another calendar, which break plans and make you make up for lost time.  There are minutes between one explosion and another.  "Pass the bad and pass the good", as Ivan Velichkovsky wrote in the 18th century.

We read a lot about previous wars, and were probably surprised when the eyewitnesses "forgot" them and lived as if there was no war.  Now we also have such bright days that restore lost strength: go to the forest for mushrooms, attend a concert that will not be interrupted by sirens, and family holidays.

And those who lost their homes and went to a safer world, sometimes naked and barefoot - for them, the countdown began from the day they fled and will continue until the day they return home. They have pocket calendars that you can carry with you and cross out every day of your absence from your hometown or village.  Calendars are also witnesses of the war, although they were printed without reference to the war, and they marked the birthdays of friends and relatives with circles, as a reminder to congratulate them.  But now we call those who are in a dangerous place and ask: "How are you?".

Perhaps the worst will happen and you will no longer be able to cross out every day you live.  And whoever finds a surviving calendar with landscapes of Ukraine will be surprised what those crosses mean. He will turn the pages back and see the first cross - February 24, 2022, and everything will be understood.  But no one in the world knows when the end of the war will be, how many more days and months will be necessary to embroider the calendar.  And later transfer those crosses to a shirt to wear and never forget that this is war.  Only Ukrainians who can sing are capable of this.  To joke and create in the most tragic moments of their history.

Specially for Espreso.

About the author: Halyna Pahutyak, writer, laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Award.

The editors do not always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.