“Mom, close the curtain!”
“It doesn’t matter anyway, you can’t see anything.”
“Close it, I’ll figure something out with the light.”
I’m taking a cold shower because there is no electricity after the shelling. But it is still almost summer and cold water is not a problem yet. My son brings a homemade device, and the lamp lights up the room very brightly. I wash myself, while he sits on the wooden threshold of the bathroom and chats with me through the door. We discuss how washing your feet with cold water is fine, but pouring water over yourself entirely is very unpleasant. Then I wait for him on the wooden threshold, and he gathers his courage: “Now I’ll pour water over myself three times and I won’t make a sound”. For some reason, these are the moments you remember most. It is as if summer is behind you with a whole pile of different events, yet you remember precisely these episodes.
My son seems old enough to admit his fears, and at the same time he hides under the table during the nighttime shelling, which is becoming more frequent. He says he is afraid of shrapnel hitting his face. And he often cannot hear the sounds outside because he is wearing headphones. And in the silence of the night, the sound of shelling is especially frightening. It seems that the night and the silence amplify every sound. And when you wake up to those sounds — it is scary. Sometimes I hear my son running barefoot through the house at night to the room without windows so he can wait it out there. Then we discuss it in the morning and laugh at ourselves. Somehow, that makes it easier. We laugh at our fears and nighttime stories. My friend tells me that shelling sometimes gets woven into her dreams. She understands that it is shelling, but she cannot wake up.
We saw a truck that was hit by a drone. We saw a fire after the shelling at Hostra Mohyla. It is frightening. You understand that it is a lottery in which you happened to be lucky this time. And next time it could be different. And we race past that truck, beside which armed men are standing, past the fire, and remain silent.
They have started turning off the electricity. That is always stressful. Once again, the one who has a generator is rich. And those roaring generator sounds are irritating. The neighbors do not turn theirs off for days, and they have electricity. We joke that we will manage without it, but the electricity and water are being shut off more and more often. And this is such a difference between the stories in the news and reality. In the news, we are one step away from victory, while in reality there are dishes in the sink that we could not wash after lunch.
Yes, the shelling has become more frequent. There is more and more news about people being killed.
It’s a new reality. Another friend of mine says that he will not drain the pool until the first frosts, so there will be a supply of water at home. If there is electricity, there is no water, but more often there is neither one nor the other. Risks have become commonplace. Shelling on the roads. People being killed. Uncertainty.
It seems that we have already been through so much, yet, in fact, we are completely unprepared for the new realities. We should go buy vegetable oil, replenish our supply of flour, and finally buy a generator. And take out the candles that have been pushed into the farthest corner of the cupboard because they were no longer needed. And we start doing laundry in advance and charging our phones in advance — things we had already gotten out of the habit of doing.
I wonder what will happen next and what this year will be like. Summer was long and wonderful simply because it was summer. With the heat, sleeping outside, friends’ stories about traveling to the seaside and anticipation of meetings. My friends traveled to Europe, drove around russia, and laughed at train delays, the long journey, and the risk of shelling. We have learned to laugh at ourselves, ignoring fear. When telling a story, we are not afraid of seeming funny or ridiculous. We crossed that line a long time ago.
The pension is not enough.
I’m not sure how to live in this country on 16,000 rubles and believe in a better tomorrow. How can you pay utilities, eat, get medical treatment, and save anything from that amount? It is such a dissonance. To fit into this 16,000-ruble pension and believe in the russian authorities, believe in promises. Believe in something.
I have 10% of battery charge left on my phone.
I hear the sound of generators from all sides. But it is still sunny, still midday heat. Because of that, everything seems not so frightening. It is like an adventure, like that story when we washed ourselves with cold water and waited for each other so we would not be afraid…
By Olha Kucher, Luhansk, for OstroV