Tonight as I slowly walked up the escalator at Arsenalna metro at 20:30, returning home from tutoring and working, I realized that I wasn’t exhausted as I so often am by this time of night. I tried to remember the last time I thought to myself, I’m sooo tired, and felt it deep in my body and spirit and couldn’t remember!

I thought back through the winter, back to the previous spring when we’d just arrived and how tired I was during training, then a slight reprieve during the summer. I feel as if a fog has lifted. The weather has been warmer and the sun shines longer each day. I think maybe that in addition to having reached another level of acceptance and acculturation, just having the winter waning helps me. I have exercised through out the winter and tried to get the prescribed hour of natural light each day, but I think I may have been affected nonetheless by the season. And everyone says this was a mild winter!

Today as I walked outside in the 50F air, in the sunlight at 18:00, I remembered back to training in Brovary and how it seemed that every day I looked up another foot, literally looking up from watching the ground for the ubiquitous holes and mud puddles. How each time I looked up more, I saw something new, something I could read and understand, or a smiling child or even just a patch of blue sky. I remembered how much hope and comfort those small sights gave me. I thought of this because today in the light and warmth I felt myself looking up again.

I thought about how I’ve been wearing a brimmed hat all winter, a wonderful black velvet hat that Christopher’s Mom, Donna, sent me. It is a stylish and warm hat and keeps snow off my face. Now that the weather has freed me from that hat, and I’m no longer concentrating on the ice, I begin to see new things again. Today I noticed for the first time that the building where I meet my Russian tutor has a wonderful Soviet mural depicting people dancing, doing “labor” and sports. I saw new flowers in the underground passages where people set up tables selling goods. The babushkas have new produce. Even though the growing season hasn’t really started yet, there’s a hint of verdant things to come. It’s joyous, it’s the beginning of spring.

Sure, we may not yet be done with winter, but spring has shown itself and the end is in sight. We have made it! My first Ukrainian winter is writing its finale. Oh, thoughts of the market to come – berry season, the smell of strawberries hitting my nose as soon as I near the bazaar, then later watermelon. But I get ahead of myself. Today is just right. It’s this blessing I receive and I’m grateful.

love,
wendylu