Walking back today from the morning walk with Sydney, I looked over and saw something brightly colored in a small lot that is in front of a neighboring building. Formerly, the lot was full of rusting playground equipment and surprisingly minimal trash, some junkie graffiti. Today, there is a beautiful, brightly colored, brand spanking new children’s playground set up. A lemon yellow daisy towers over a sand box, there are swings, slides, those climby things kids love. The sunny beauty of it, juxtaposed with the gray day and all the depressing sights in this post-Soviet landscape just broke my heart with its implied hope for the future.

Living here, sometimes only when I leave do I realize how thick the mood is, how little hope people have sometimes, how much their spirits have been crushed, generation after generation.

That said, of course there are hopeful people and events here, but this overall spirit is part of what made last year’s Orange Revolution so special and dear in our hearts – what is more hopeful and forward thinking than revolution?

I stood and gazed in wonder at the playground, tears rolling down my cheeks, each one carrying the weight of what I see each day, what I hear. Thursday night’s taxi driver, a former sports champion during Soviet times, telling me, “There is no future for my children. We have no hope.” And me pressing a paltry extra 5 hryvna in his hand and saying, “I believe there is a future in Ukraine for your children. Goodbye, good luck.”

The last time we left the country, in September to go to Ireland, I walked through the Amsterdam airport, on the verge of tears (ok, anyone who knows me knows I’m rather easy to tear up, so please take these tales of woe with that caveat) just for being in a place where it feels like everything is ok.

Of course, everything is not ok in any one country, but the outward trappings of an airport where nice things are for sale and services run pretty smoothly is a start, a balm for the soul. Sometimes I feel like a wimp for feeling thus, but whatever, I’ve put in nearly three years working and living here so I must not be too wimpy.

There’s also something intrinsically different about the way people are here. It’s not just the famous Slavic not smiling, many European cultures aren’t smilers the way Americans are. There’s something I don’t pretend is quantifiable or in any way perhaps not in my head, about the spirit of Ukrainians.

I feel a weight, an old wound, a darkness that shrouds this place, at the same time as there is great beauty and ancient, ancient history. Perhaps the antiquity of this civilization is part of the darkness. Few old things stick around without hurts and aches and deep secrets. Maybe it’s hard on someone from a young and comparatively naïve culture to live in an old one that’s been beat around for a few centuries.

I do believe there is some truth to the idea that the history of oppression, misery and just plain geographical bad luck affects today’s Ukrainian. If every generation has had some major loss, back to time immemorial, certainly this must affect how people view the world, how and what they teach their children, how their governments are run, what food they eat.

I’m babbling. It’s time for a proper coffee and to begin this Saturday.

Walking through the metro, Friday afternoon in November. First I go down the stairs, dodging people, passing a small, non-descript puppy drugged and sleeping on the stairs, small hair clips in his fur, a sign in front of it asking for money to be put in a hat. Then past the pretty girls, slender, teetering on heeled boots with zippers, dangling bits of fur and heels thin and pointy enough to be weapons.

The underpass is crowded with people smoking, selling flowers, tables full of random electronics. I pass the long line of maybe 15 flower sellers, a woman seated on a low stool wrapping a new bouquet. In front of the line of flowers are women beckoning to passersby, “Come see our roses. Please look at this bouquet.”

The underground is a warren of tunnels, rows of shops set into the walls, small fast food restaurants selling baked potatoes, pizza and Ukrainian food. After the flower sellers, I pass by the entrance to the metro station, Maidan Nezhalesnosti. People stream in and out of the entrance and exit doors, the heavy glass doors that are nicknamed the “widow-makers.”

Along the glass wall that separates the entrance and exit to the metro is empty but for a line of people lounging against it, looking rather worse for the wear, smoking, drinking, some visibly drunk. Today there’s a young woman holding an older woman who is crying and repeating a phrase I can’t catch amid the low hum of thousands of conversations around me.

Past the metro doors, the portrait artists have their easels and portfolios set up. Amidst the photorealist portraits of attractive women and adorable children is the occasional model. I’ve never seen anyone sit for a drawing but someone must sometime.

After the artists is a table full of partially cured sheepskins, white and black, one cream color.

Soon I’m already at the stairs leading back up the street, having crossed a major intersection diagonally via the underground passage. The night is cold and slightly foggy.

It is just after work so many people are walking along Kyiv’s main street, Khreshiatik, talking, sitting at small outdoor cafes, smoking and drinking beer or coffee. The kiosks are on the right hand side, while shops line the left side. Khreshiatik is famous for the chestnut trees that line the pedestrian part.

Across from Tsum (the former Soviet department store, Central Universal Store), Christopher is waiting for me. We walk to a local restaurant for dinner. OK, I’m feeling homesick, so we sup at TGIF on substandard American fare in a kitschy decorated restaurant with the standard techno music washing over us all.