Just pictures tonight in an attempt to keep the memory of this strange day.

The one day of the year I absolutely hate living on the American continent is the Monday after Superbowl. Sunday of the actual event is fine, because of our asynchronous living style, restraint social circle and lack of access to the television. In the worst case scenario, some Superbowl echoes will catch up with me on the social media, but in a distorted way. Whatever happens at Superbowl, all I’m gonna hear about is the racial and gender analysis. Last year it was Rihanna. This year it was the irony of our show must go on during the genocide.

It’s Monday that makes me suffer, because a) everyone but me spent their precious Sunday watching Superbowl, b) everyone seems to really care about which team with an offensive and culturally inapropriate name won in this game that only North Americans seem to understand, c) the Europeans who don’t understand the game and, I know for fact, don’t care about it, pretend to care to blend in, which qualifies them as traitors, d) nobody gives a damn of wants to talk about anything else. Sometimes, the Monday excitement spills over to Tuesday, so I am legitimately worried about surviving for straight seven hours in the office.

I remember reading a story, I don’t know if it was true or fictional, about a small German town adjacent to a nazi concentration camp. At the end of the war, when the camp was liberated, the residents of the town told the journalists, or maybe to the allied soldiers, that they had had no idea of what was happening in the camp. The journalists wondered, how it was possible, hadn’t they seen the thick smoke rising from the crematorium chimneys. To which, the residents replied that when the smoke was blowing their way, they turned their heads and looked the other way.

By some weird association, I am thinking about another story, about a ship named Saint-Louis, filled with the Jewish children and women, that was circling the Atlantic ocean, from one port to another, getting rejection after rejection, because no one wanted these Jewish refugees. In the end, the ship sailed back to Belgium and most of its passengers ended up in the concentration camps.

I am thinking about these phantom chimneys and phantom ships and how diligently we are looking the other way. I am not pointing fingers, as I recognize myself in the crowd. I wonder if we are caught in one of those cautionary tales, where people are condemned to relive some terrifying experience over and over, until they learn a lesson from it. In which case, we have failed again. In which case, I am sorry.

Every week, for the past three weeks, someone in my family has had a medical emergency and I have to admit that it has put me a little over the edge. Today, I was not ok and when I am not ok I easily slip into the old overactive, paranoid, demanding pattern. I need rest, but even more than rest I need to feel seen. I need people, well, not all people, but some to see that I am trying and that it’s hard to do without support network. I need someone ask me how I am doing without expecting a cookie-cutter answer. And oh, I stumbled upon this random meme that said something about reciprocating energy and it resonated – I need my energy to be reciprocated. That’s all.

It was +8 today. As we were driving to emergency clinic, we saw almost no snow on the side of the road, just dirty April-looking grass. And it felt like early April too – humid and windy with not a hint of winter in the air. I decided to walk my daughter home after school – we were walking through the mud and flakes and dirty melting snow so uncharacteristic for February. I am really scared to think about what this early spring signifies for this summer and on a longer scale for our future.

Today I didn’t go to the concert of a very dear friend, although I had tickets. I just couldn’t. Even good emotions can be too much. I know she’ll understand. Maybe, it’s a form of trust: knowing that people will still love you when you don’t show up, that they’ll hold you when you screw up.

Instead, I went for a long walk with my son, who turned five today. He was originally supposed to be born on the second of February. That week between his due date and his actual birth date I walked a lot in the company of my tireless mother in law. I remember that we went to the movies and that on February 5 we were walking along Ontario street in Hochelaga and the day was warm and sunny, but nowhere as warm as today. I remember feeling impatient and stressed, but also eerily happy, in this liminal space between “normal” life and sleepless euphoria of new motherhood. My kids have definitely given me the most profound experiences of time I ever knew.

Also, today we went to listen to the brook singing, twice.

I am utterly exhausted.

Grateful, happy, but for tonight mostly exhausted. For an introvert who loves people this love comes at a price.

Every winter has this one day when you notice the return of light. By notice I mean physically experience and welcome with an inner sigh of relief. February 6, 2024 was such day. We haven’t had fresh snow for weeks. Instead, the January snow froze into a sleek shiny crust and every field looks now like a frozen lake. If you walk on it, it sounds like breaking glass.

I felt a lot of joy today. I hope that it radiated and warmed people around me a little. If you ask me today who I want to be, I’d say, I want you to be that woman whom people choose to stand next to in metro, because she smiles and wears beautiful earrings.

I never watch television

Except for American presidential debates

And local elections, when I get positively giddy

Remembering how I was glued to channel five

To the lips of the journalists on hunger strike

To the images of students throwing themselves under the buses to stop the inevitable

To the numbers coming in from the polling stations

Yuschenko – 54, Yanukovich – 45

Sometimes throwing oneself under the bus is enough to turn the history around

Sometimes it isn’t.

After a month of tireless efforts, Siri finally started sending me nightly reminders to open WordPress. I see it as a personal win. If Siri thinks I’m in a habit of journaling, it must be true.

Today was an annual village fest and truly gorgeous weather, which, if I were alone, I would have rather celebrated by a long walk in the forest and around the lake. Instead, I spent the day walking between food stands, a mini farm and bouncy castles planted right in the middle of a frozen pond. In other words, I spent the day with my family and that’s a blessing to be thankful for. The other blessing was, of course, the weather: sunny, crisp delicious air with no humidity, no wind, gentle cold, just enough to colour the kids’ cheeks, but not to freeze their noses.

The reason I like village holidays is because they give me a reason to remember what the weather was like that particular year, how did it feel like outside of the daily routine. Today was beautiful.

I gave up, well, almost gave up social media because I got tired of finger pointing and constant us vs. them rhethoric. But now is a good time to reflect how this rhethoric has been showing up in my life for years. The war is an obvious example. It is so easy when your hate is legitimate, shared and justified. It is so easy to hate the bad guys, it’s what all Marvel movies are about, but then Marvel movie becomes your life and all of a sudden you’re no longer clapping. It is when the same rhethoric permeates your personal life when it becomes truly really problematic. And, I have to admit that the lines get blurred because have I truly never hurt anyone and am I hurting myself by holding on to this half-truth that it is us on one side and them on the other. So, what I want to do tonight is let them go. Them, whatever side they are on and whatever truth they are holding on to, I will let them go. I wonder how and what kind of ceremony one needs to do that. I remember, vaguely, a year ago Melanie Goodchild was speaking about letting go ceremony. I don’t have anyone who could perform it for me, so I’ll have to figure it out by myself. I have better things now, better company, including my ancestors and friends I have not yet met, I no longer need THEM, the enemy, the other side to exist and advance. I no longer have to hold on to my pain, it’s been over a year now and in kairos time it’s been so much longer. I can be on my own now. I know I can step in these boardrooms and no longer wonder if I’d ever be one of their own. I do not belong in boardrooms. I know I am there by accident and they know it too. I do not belong on the streets either. I know, I have tried. During the months of cold winter, outside, right downtown, part of the chanting crowd. I was so darn sincere, but I was never the one climbing the barricades and facing the guns, I knew I couldn’t. So, who am I? Not a soldier, not a rebel, not a corporate, not a faker. Who am I? I don’t know, but I know that when I go to the forest, it never asks me questions. It never questions my belonging. I am not a hunter, not indigenous, yet it never asks. And by the way, I hate the pronoun it. It doesn’t exist in my language. In my language, everything is he, or she, or it, but not the same it as in English, more like the German das. River is she, Earth is she, Ocean is he, Sea is it and so is the Sun. Star is she and it is also a woman’s name. Moon is, you will never believe, he. Forest is he. Mountain is she. Road is she. I often make mistakes in other languages, because it seems that one can never unlearn the gender of things one learned as a child. These things matter, because by digging deep, deeper to the roots and the mycellial networks around your roots, and to the quality of the black earth, the topsoil that in Ukraine is over one meter deep and rich enough to feed and sustain one even across the ocean, one can define oneself outside of the corporate food-chain. I just need to remember, on Monday and in two weeks that it is not us against them.

Let me just note that this week I

Got a call from the daycare that my son almost broke his nose

Asked my boss for something I really needed and trusted her to understand and respond to my need

Signed up for an amazing community of practice

Kept up with my coursework

Went back and forth with a bank about a mortgage

Went to massage therapy first the first time in years

Had to call 911 for someone close to me

It’s ok to feel tired and overwhelmed. It’s ok to feel like I’m crushing it, but also like things are getting too much. It’s ok to give myself a break.