Hello, friend…
First off, if you have friends and family in Ukraine… I send you my love. I am truly beside myself watching the news, images on Instagram of people there and sharing what is happening in real time. And we ALL have struggles of different shapes and sizes, I don’t diminish what is going on in your world right now at all that has nothing to do with this. But what I see, this awful war on Ukraine by Russia… I am heartbroken.
This decade is proving to be… a bit extra. I mean, maybe, everything truly does repeat itself- not just fashion- maybe it truly does. But this all just seems to be too back to back to back in this freakish Choose Your Own Adventure that is the 2020s. And every adventure just leads to calamity, no matter what road you pick. It’s not an Endemic yet, we are still very much under the Pandemic cloud that blew in in 2020. We have racial issues that must still be addressed and there is SO much reconciliation to do. So. To be looking at these acts of war going on in Ukraine… I saw a woman on TV the other day in a subway station turned bomb shelter. She had a car but didn’t know where to drive to. She had cash for fear her bank cards might not work. And beside her, up popped a little child in glasses, smiling to the camera. And I wanted so badly to stick my head into the tv and reach to pull them into my living room.
I have been slogging away on a bothersome project, cursing how much I have to do still. And today I found myself looking around my apartment, wondering what on earth it might feel like to walk away. Run out of here. And not know if I’d ever come back and see it again. I’ve wondered that a lot today. My parents grew up during WWII, my mom more towards the tail end but still in the thick of it to know as a baby her mom brought her down to a similar makeshift bomb shelter. Her baby carrier pumped with oxygen to get by for the time needed. She knows that when it was announced the Germans would be occupying the Jersey Channel Islands however they could, her parents and sister simply left their home one day and never returned. Much like the families I’ve seen today in Instagram Stories, with suitcases, off to safe zones, separated from their loved ones because they don’t know what the fuck is happening.
My father, a few years older than my mom, has more tangible memories that I’ve barely scratched the surface of and I’m almost 44 years old. But the events of the past few days, has it been two? Three? Time is still such a motherfucking blur. But what’s happening is hurting my father deeply. We are a Latvian-British home. But my parents can relate far too well to what they are seeing happening on CNN. Tonight at dinner, my dad mentioned that when they had to leave their home in Latvia, he wanted to bring his skates, he says they were near the fireplace. But my grandpa, his dad, Karl, wouldn’t let him. There’s something about that- wanting your skates. Maybe Karl was wondering, as I did for a moment, what do you need your skates for? But I don’t think you need a reason when you’re a kid. Heck, do we need a reason when we’re adults? Probably not. No.
A day before this disaster began, a bottle I brought home from Latvia, a bottle of Black Balsam, just fell off the shelf. It didn’t break. But it fell. What an incredibly bizarre thing, it’s a heavish bottle- I wondered if something was afoot. If maybe a relative was popping in to give a warning care was to be taken. It was just ODD.
Anyway, I fear tonight for people I don’t know and a country I’ve not been to. But I know I’m not the only one.
If only we could have left it to scrunchies and 60s fashions coming back. Not this… definitely not this. I hope it is over swiftly and soon. The scrunchies and 60s fashions can stay… they’re not so bad.
xo.
Marriage & the Single Girl 