The four days of the Easter holiday break flew by, more violet crocuses popped from the ground, we had our first picnic in the forest and spent long time watching the busy fish in the lake, we ate our first meal outside on the deck, we listened to birds – we almost recognize chickadees, cardinals and robins by their song now, there seems to be an abundance of sparrows, on Saturday we heard a white-breasted nuthatch (повзик каролінський), today Merlin picked up a song of a dark-eyed junco and introduced us to a harsh cry of the common grackle. I took a bath for the first time in many years. I was thinking a lot and writing a lot and made a feeble attempt at spring cleaning.

We’ve been conditioned to the dichotomy between the ordinary and the extra-ordinary. I am not an expert, but I guess that this dichotomy stems from the same market forces that keep destroying our planet. The experience of happiness, delight, wonder, awe, joy are sold through influencers and travel websites. You need rest? Get away. Want to discover something new? Travel. Wish your life was more fulfilling? Buy this new device or better yet, subscribe to this service. We’ve internalized the idea that a good weekend is the one spent in some extra-ordinary way. I think that if we are serious about de-growth, if we want to at least try to live in a more sustainable way, we need to fall in love with the ordinary. A walk in the park, an afternoon tea on the deck, an evening with a book, listening to the bird chorus in my backyard, some time with kids, some time alone are all I need for a perfect weekend.

Good Friday. violet crocuses started blooming and yellow crocuses and tulips poked from the ground. We found a millipede larvae, three worms and two sleeping woolly bears. And we planted milkweed around the house.

Mama told me this morning that auntie Valya died yesterday. She was my mom’s best friend since forever. She was the bridesmaid at my parents’ wedding. She was my godmother. She was smart and very, very talkative. She could talk for hours. She knew French and was very good at math. She never married and had a son who was, still is, a few years younger than me. When I was a child, she was the only single mother I knew. Rest in peace, tyotya Valechka. I am not certain anymore what is beyond the life we know, but I hope that you are in a good place.

The day when I saw the first flowers. I’d been paying attention to the green poking from the ground for several days now. Not to forget that on Saturday, less than a week ago, the ground was covered with snow. I thought that the crocuses in a beautiful front yard I pass by on the way of picking my kids up from school would be the first flowers I see. Instead, the first flowers caught me off guard when I was walking fast through the Milton-Park neighbourhood. Milton-Park, of all places! It’s like you sang, dear Leonard, “and she teaches you where to look between the garbage and the flowers.”

It was also the day when I went to the Roulant and didn’t get elected to their board, but got to speak to so many wonderful people that I’d do it all over again, even knowing the result.

I left the Roulant and walked along Saint-Denis street, because the metro broke down and made me miss my bus and all of a sudden I had all this time to kill. So I walked down the street and looked at the lights and remember how nice this city can be on the eve of a long weekend and in the very beginning of spring, when everything feels tender and new and possible, although so many things aren’t. I felt tender and new and a little sad, because it still sucks not to win. And yet, I felt good. Good about where I’m at and where I’m heading and thinking, what matters is making this journey with a good heart.

This may very well be my favourite season: the time when living things poke from the ground and swell on branches, the time when days are getting longer, the time when kids arrive home from school and fish outside to play with friends.

This morning, the inevitable happened. The morning itself was wet and mild. I set out for a short walk around the block. Usually, I would do the walk while listening to an audiobook or a podcast, but since I am still reeling from finishing The Comfort of Crows, I decided to listen to what’s going on around. I don’t think that I had ever listened with so much intent, neither have I ever felt so connected to the here and now as during this short walk. I though I had heard about six or seven different bird songs, but was able to see only two plump chikadees and a robin. The rest of the birds remained invisible to me.

When I came back home, I finally downloaded the Merlin app and now I can tell to which bird belongs a song. I feel like I am learning a new language – although I can’t interpret a song without my Merlin app, I am learning to tell them apart and rejoicing in the anticipation of the moment when I will not need to rely on my bird interpreter any more. One day I will walk on my street and say “hello robin” “hello cardinal” “hello goldfinch.” One day I will hear the land I live on and understand its song all by myself. But for now, my greatest pleasure is to stand on a corner of a suburban street, under some big tree and read the names of the birds that appear on my Merlin screen: that was a red-winged blackbird, this is a sparrow, here is a cardinal and a chikadee and here is a bluejay.

These days feel like walking on a thin ice over a reservoir of grief so vast, it will surely swallow me and everyone else whole. When people ask me how I am doing I answer that I am okay, but everything isn’t. I do so partly not to embarrass them, partly because I am really ok. But what good is being ok in the world that is so deeply lost.

Things I am grieving or worrying about: those damn Zirkon missiles, genocide of Palestinians, the upcoming elections in the US, the end of Western civilisation, the fact that I can’t register for the courses of my choice in the university, always too much work and too little time, Anya coming soon and us not being ready, the loss of biodiversity.

Things I am grateful for: children, good books, good grades on my intercultural leadership class, songbirds, dance lessons on Tuesday night, everyone who writes to me.

I have finished The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl. I listened to it all, with acknowledgements and publisher credits – I so didn’t want it to end. The audiobook ended at the beginning of my lunchtime walk. It made me grieve a little and because I needed consolation, I turned to the Emergence magazine podcast where Jenny Odell spoke about rock formations and deep time and seeing places in their own history, rather than as containers for our history. This was fitting, as it was in Jenny Odell’s book that I first saw the reference to Margaret Renkl’s book.

It is full moon tonight. It was long to rise and I’ve come out twice to look for it, before I noticed it, partly covered by the thick branches of the tall fir in the neighbours front yard. It was pale yellow, shiny and beautiful. I’ve been thinking about the moon all day, trying to tune into my mood and emotions. In the end, it’s probably what made all the difference: it was like a day-long breathing excercise. Be kind, take it slow, walk away from the triggers, take a walk. I am listening to Margaret Renks on my walks and this itself is the best anti-anxiety remedy I could find.

I have noticed the first green sprouts of spring garden flowers peeking through the mulch in the front yard that I remember for its annual spring display of flowers. I have noticed the red buds in clusters on the branches of two old trees. I try to remember which trees, so I can identify them once the leaves are out. I am also obsessing over a bird song I hear every morning and evening, when I go to pick up the kids. Thus, five years since I moved to the town, I am learning the land, its habits and its inhabitants.

I think my grandmother would know the names of the birds and the trees. I am thinking about her today, since it’s the full moon and in the Hadenausaunnee traditions, the moon is our Grandmother. I am thinking of everything my grandmother taught me, although I was too young and careless to learn. I am learning it now through my memories. My grandmother taught me singing. Since I am lacking talent to actually sing, she taught me to perform and have confidence. When we went to her dacha (a tiny plot of land on the outskirts of the city with a ramshackle one-room cabin and a toilet outside) she would gather all our neighbours and ask me to perform. I could sing (very out of tune), declare poetry or act – everything went with the appreciative neighbours crowd.

My grandmother taught me to love tulips and peonies and everything that grows in every season. Her garden was full of flowers, despite the shade from the trees. My grandmother was able to grow almost any fruit, vegetable, berry or flower.

My grandmother loved birds and cats, although these two loves seem incompatible. Kyiv has pigeons and stray cats in abundance. Every day, my grandmother would lay out a feast for both species: grain and soaked bread for pigeons on the windowsills, food scraps for cats under the window. She had special containers to keep those food scraps.

My grandmother taught me waiting. I would come to visit her from time to time, mostly out of obligation, because at that age I didn’t appreciate the privilege of being able to speak to my grandmother, who survived a genocide and lived through a world war and still remained simple and kind, never complaining. She always waited for me. When my father had his accident, we didn’t tell his parents. The grandfather was still alive, but he had a weak heart after four infarctus, so we preferred to lie. Now I understand that it caused them pain, not knowing why their youngest son disappeared so suddenly, why he called so rarely (back then my dad didn’t even have enough money for regular calls), why he never came back. My grandmother waited for him until the end. In the end, after grandfather died and my grandmother succumbed to dementia, she started waiting for her husband. She would say: “Misha will come back from the market in a minute.”

And spring, she always waited for spring, always. I don’t know for sure, but I think that spring was her favourite time of year. When she spoke about death, she used to say that she didn’t want to die in winter, she would wait for spring. To my shame, I do not remember the exact date of my grandmother’s death. But I think it was in spring. I remember getting the news from my mom and crying and saying “at least she made it to spring.”

I don’t know if I believe in heaven and hell anymore, but I do believe in joining my ancestors one day and I am looking forward to seeing my grandmother and meeting my other grandmother who died before I was born. I am looking forward to finally knowing and understanding who I am and where I come from.

The surprise Saturday snow has melted faster than we expected, so, by the time we got to the sledding hill near the school it was mostly grass and dirt with some wet sticky snow in shady places. The kids still had fun.

The kids asked for video games and I said yes easily, because I was desperate to get out of the house while it was still sunny outside. The two Sunday traditions I love most are morning crêpes and afternoon walk around the national park. I’ve been in the park hundreds of times and it’s not even this big, but still it manages to surprise me. It’s surprises are come in all shapes and sizes: colourful mushrooms (so far, I have managed to identify about two or three dozen species), garter snakes, a concert of bullfrogs in the early summer, rare flowers in spring, a symphony of colours in the fall. Today, as I was walking downhill towards the exit of the park, I was arrested by the view of a tiny frozen waterfall. It looked like a little sanctuary.

I am thinking a lot now about natural processes and deep time, about the fact that almost all living species are older than us, better adapted and more attuned to their environment. About the fact that nature has it’s own history – it is cyclical, always old, always new. About the fact that at that very time the sun is warming the bark of the trees and the roots start releasing the sap that runs up the trunk of a tree, waking up its cells that will soon produce the wonder of fresh leaves. Although invisible, spring is already happening.

I used to go to church on Sunday. I knew so many churches over the years. Of all of them, my favourite was the Orthodox church, where I could experience the mysteries, things bigger than me without even trying to understand them. Unlike protestant churches of my youth, the Orthodox rite did not require my active participation – just being there was enough. Now I go to the forest on Sunday and it feels similar to what I used experience in church. I go to the forest, because it is bigger than me, because I can tap into an ancient, benevolent power, because I feel accepted, because I don’t feel lonely there, because I can rest. I go to the forest like I used to go to the church, but with more lightness in my step. I go there to worship.

This flag had been flying next to our federal MP’s office since February 2022. I may disagree with him on thousand different things, but I am deeply grateful that he keeps the flag up for over two years now. I am also grateful that he doesn’t change it for a new flag. I hope it stays up until the war is over, until the victory.

I’ve been reading numbers on the news: numbers of drones, numbers of missiles, numbers of destroyed homes, numbers of people killed in a concert hall by, I believe, their own government. I have seen other people writing the same thing. The two number that stuck with me: the number of electoral fraud in this year’s russian election is believed to be between 22 and 40 million votes; there have been over 39 000 air raid alerts in Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. I am trying to understand this number. I am dividing 39 000 by 800 days, the results comes up to almost 50, then I am dividing it by 24 hours and get over two an hour. I know this math does not reflect how things happen in reality, but still – try to imagine that for over two years twice an hour your life, your sleep, your daily activities, your laughter, conversations with friends, reading bed time stories to your kids, making love, walking your dog in the park, is punctuated by wailing, howling siren announcing that someone is trying to kill you. Imagine living in this reality, raising kids, making babies, writing poetry, volunteering, pouring lattes, doing yoga, shopping. Imagine being scared. Imagine not being scared. Imagine getting used to being scared, so that even fear becomes familiar and routine and only hope and rage remain searing. One never get used to hope.

I know that if I wrote this on social media, someone would reply, or think “but what about…” Compassion has become a zero-sum game. So, I no longer say anything on social media. I am scared and I am losing hope.

Tonight, my youngest was too tired to settle down. He refused to go to bed or accept any help. Instead, he sat in his bed and cried with a force of desperation of an overwrought five-year old. I sat in his bed next to him. When he finally finished crying, he settled down on his pillow and I stroke his cheek until he fell asleep. I wish someone was sitting on a bed next to me, because I feel very tired and scared and guilty. I am sorry that I can’t protect you. I am sorry you have to spend the nights, sometimes entire nights in the bathroom or in the corridor, hoping that this time the building will not collapse on you. I am sorry you have to walk your elderly parents down to the bomb shelter, finding way with the flashlight of your phone, because there is no electricity and the elevators don’t work. I am sorry you have to build shelters in the schools. Does my old school have a shelter? I am sorry I don’t know all that. Not in the way you know. I am sorry, so so sorry.

I saw this raven on the parking lot of the secondary school today. It’s big, very black, beautiful and nonchalant. I wish I knew how to approach him.

The news today are overwhelming. Ukraine is under the biggest attack since 2022 for the second day in the row. There’s been a mass shooting in Moscow – I have a hard time sympathising, but neither do I gloat. I’m just wondering if it will spiral into a new level of violence. And those are not even top news. The top news are that Kate, the future queen of England, has cancer. No one’s talking about Ukraine, just one person said something about Moscow, a few mentioned Kate. The story of one sick woman, a mother, seems to be easier to relate to these days. I can understand that. There are too many people dying, too many things falling apart. I don’t believe people are heartless. They are just small, confused and scared that they too will fall apart.

The north wind was blowing all day today – the only kind of weather I truly hate. But it was a good day, the one that felt full and restful at the same time. It was full of small luxuries: good coffee, time to write and reflect, time to talk to friends without hurry, more coffee, more time. In the evening I texted with Vika about the volunteer translation project she got me involved in. She texted back, saying that there is an air raid and they are in the shelter. This is the kind of truth I have to hold at any given time: it was a good day here in Montreal, back home my best school friend was hiding in a shelter during an air raid.