Only needs a flying saucer
This is a personal entry. I do not write it to convey much information, it’s more of a point of view thing. I was asked for an inside view, but I guess that’s not exactly it.
My mother, my son and I are now in the Czech Republic. This we owe to the goodwill and kindness of very many people, starting with a random guy on the way to the train station in Kyiv. To really describe it, I would need to put “incredible” before every second word, so, like. Let it just be “incredible people”.
And now I am in a position to extend the invitation to another friend or family member. I have to choose between N., a mother with her two children and another N., also a mother with two children. Or between one of the mothers-and-kids sets and O., my pregnant sister. Or between O. and the bedridden son of A., the man to whom I owe not jumping out the window. (Not literally. Maybe even not nearly this. Don’t know for sure. Only know for sure that A. is not going to leave Kyiv if his son is there. And there is this interesting detail that I am not in direct contact with his son’s caretaker. So if anything happens to the man who talked me out of doing stupid things with my life, I will have no way of knowing if anything happens to his son. And I know that, and A. knows that. And A. asks for nothing. Well, he has asked if I have a flying saucer. I don’t.)
And if anyone of them manages to come to Czech—it might take a week or more just to come here to Czech—my debt to the master of the house where we are staying grows, well, incredibly much more… My debt to the master of the house who wants himself a Ukrainian wife who knows how to cook and manage the household...
I will have to somehow find a job to help the household because the subsidy for hosting Ukrainians is capped at three Ukrainians. I don’t know how I will do it. There is enough work about the house that some nights I don’t read any news after dinner; I go to sleep.
My mother is unwell. She doesn’t speak Czech. My ten-year-old son is going to start school here. He doesn’t speak Czech. I don’t speak Czech, and most people I have met here do not speak English, German, Ukrainian or Russian. Frankly, I have my hands full without a job.
And the people back home are hiding in their cellars from bombs falling overhead and hoping, hoping, hoping somebody would tell them they can come and not be alone.
You can only do what you can do; as in the old Phantasm movie, “I can’t use him in pieces”.
You may not be able to take those people on directly—but even incidental help can be critical. Perhaps you can find other places they can go; perhaps you can just provide directions. Don’t underestimate the power of information and networking in cases like this.
And thank you for thinking about it, and making it important :)
I don’t have anything to say just.… Know that the world is with you.
Don’t blame yourself for what you can’t do. Rarely is the question of who to blame so simple.
Thank you. I am not blaming myself, I am looking for ways and means) and sometimes finding them. But yes, I would like to have to make fewer choices.