This day two years ago

Hi, my dear friends!

Today I go back again to my memories of the early days of the war. Back then, what was happening seemed unreal. It was like a bad dream. There was no fear. There was a great strength of determination not to give up.

So, I wrote:

Third day without electricity, water and communication. It snowed today, spring has given us a surprise. I'm not too sure whether it's good or bad, but I'm leaning towards the former, as snow easily turns into water, which we are so short of at the moment.

But despite the domestic turmoil, it's the lack of communication that has been the hardest. If our generation is still able to adapt quickly enough to this situation, because our youth came at a time when not only no one had heard of the Internet, but also the most common phone was not in every house and was considered a sign of some status, our children, for whom constant free access to information is the norm of life, have a particularly difficult time. Lack of information is demoralising. It is more demoralising than the lack of water and electricity. Every now and then we hear explosions and try to determine where it is happening. But I've noticed an interesting effect. Anxiety and hopelessness are stronger the more time we spend in our homes. As soon as you go outside, or better yet, out of the yard, the situation doesn't seem so desperate. Of course, everything that's going on doesn't make for long walks. But, nevertheless, the sight of other people communicating, doing everyday things, exchanging information, helps to stabilise, to find the ground under your feet.

Now we are mostly busy with everyday things and setting up life with the new conditions. The dogs are visibly nervous. This is understandable. Firstly, their living conditions have changed somewhat. My children and their dog Astro managed to get to us from Kiev. In order to make room for them, I had to move some of the dogs into another room. The order of their lives has been disrupted and it makes them nervous. In addition, there were new people in the house. But it didn't end there either, as I had to restrict their territory in the yard until they understood too well what was going on.

In order to keep up, I've started to clean the house. It's already clear that my renovations are a bust and there's no telling when I'll be able to continue. Or if I'll be able to do it at all. But I try not to think about it, methodically putting things in their places. The clean towels have a slight smell of conditioner. I thought they smelled of peacefulness. That life in which a thousand such little things existed and were now left behind. We never thought about those little things, never noticed, never appreciated. But it would be a critical mistake to let the mess take over my house. So I methodically continue to clean.

By late afternoon, I started to get a little bit of a connection. I managed to get through to a friend in a neighbouring town that has come under heavy shelling by the Russian occupiers. "Hello from Irpin Island," her voice was quite cheerful. "Why from the island?" I didn't realise at once. Just a couple of days of lack of information and I had already lost the thread of our new military humour. "Because all the bridges around us have been blown up," she explained. Nevertheless, the rest of the news was quite positive. Our army was able to destroy Russian enemy military equipment in our neighbourhood. There are still paratroopers left, but the fight against them is quite successful, also thanks to the fact that the civilian population is doing its best to track down the outsiders and inform the army or territorial defence about them.