Small Kindnesses

Isak Dinesen advised to write a little every day, “without hope and without despair.” Tonight, I write with both.

 In a Lviv courtyard, someone has placed 135 strollers- one for every child killed sionce the invasion began a month ago. On the curb of a street strewn with rubble, an adult son mourns his mother, whose body is covered by a blood-soaked sheet.  The city of Mariupol has been reduced to ashes, assaulted by long distance missiles targeting civilian sites, including a theater and school where hundreds of women and children had taken shelter. In the face of this devastation I feel powerless. My pandemic nightmares have shifted: I am now being stalked by bombs instead of a virus, switching off lamps and pulling down window shades before the explosives drop on my kids. A friend confides she has nightmares, too. But what are these compared to the nightmares of those who are living them?

 My life goes on. I have deadlines to meet and meals to cook and a car to repair. When I work at my dining room table, I hear the excited squeals of kids chasing classmates in the school playground across the street. I think of kids clutching toy cars in the basements and subways of Kyiv. When I head down my stairway, I glimpse my favorite pair of black shoes with straps, waiting to be taken for a walk.  I think of a woman in Mariupol being lowered into a trench, the rough blanket which cradles her body like a sling exposing a pair of shoes exactly like mine.

                                  ***

I donated blood last week. Although my O positive donation is going to a hospital in Illinois and not one in Kyiv, I’d like to think the intention means something. I made contributions to Mercy Corps, a humanitarian aid group that is new to me, and to Doctors Without Borders, an organization I have contributed to for years.

I light a candle and pray for those who have died, and for others suffering unimaginable atrocities. My landlord has wound blue and yellow tape around a gingko tree. My church choir hums the Ukrainian national anthem at the end of our service.  Perhaps these tiny gestures of kindness will somehow be released into the cosmos, gaining in momentum until goodness overcomes cruelty. For now, they are small solace.