I cannot remember a time before this war.

What I do remember appears as if behind glass--some distorted, naive, alternate reality I once miraculously inhabited.

***

Our calls these days are more about поддержка than they are about English practice. We make each other laugh, we triumph in successes, but I can see it always in their eyes, why is this happening, why has this happened, and there is no escaping this terrible question and this grief. There is no escaping the everyday nightmare of not knowing: who is next, where is next. Today it was a shopping centre in Kremenchuk. Last week it was Mikolayiv--Ilya's "Myko", on his parents' doorstep, where they all were just hours earlier. The week before, a shopping centre in Zaporozhye, where Victoria's family luckily, luckily wasn't..

***

Behind all, the painful awareness that there were millions who came before, who fled by boat, whose children... whose children... I can't even say it.. who spent months, years in detention centres, in the cold, dark forests of Europe... millions who were not welcomed..

Behind all, the knowledge that those involved in refugee work inhabit an unimaginable world--a world I'm navigating blindly but for the support of my loved ones, but for the warmth, the strength of my new friends.. but for whatever modicum of grace I can extract from this universe of ужас..