I don’t know how many people realise how hard it is for your own child to see you looking helpless. Maybe you’ve had to move house at some point. Maybe you’ve been through a divorce. Or relocated for a better job. Your child looks at you and sees you as being responsible for everything.
‘Mum, I don’t want to change schools, I don’t want to live in another house.’ But you know it’s best for them. In the last six months, I moved my children nine times. Never because it was best for them. Just because it kept them safe. But I couldn’t offer them anything better to soothe them at the next destination, then the next.
Their father couldn’t do as they begged and come with us – he had to stay where everyone was fleeing from. We couldn’t take him along. Just like we couldn’t take along our friends, their grandparents, their room. Olena had only gotten a room of her own two months before. Her Christmas gift has been a redecoration. Princess Sophia and a lot of unicorns everywhere. When we packed our bags together, I couldn’t pay attention to her. She asked me to take the unicorns hanging on the walls and, rationally, I knew ther was no way – I had no idea where we might end up. At the main train station in Bucharest, right in the centre, I drew them on the floor, in chalk. I cried thinking a bomb could destroy my children’s favourite place. I know they bombed churches, hospitals, even maternities. But I was thinking of the unicorns on Olena’s wall. Where she used to sleep, her head safe and sound.
Before, they used to be afraid of the monster under their bed. Now, it was where they hid when the first explosion came. This war is stealing their childhood. Even before, when she was a happy child with many friends, I found it absurd to have to teach her not to take the lift with people she didn’t know. She couldn’t understand where my advice was coming for, and I was so serious about it. Don’t cross without making sure no cars are coming – she wasn’t aware of the dangers. Now I was teaching them to run down to the dirty basement of our block of flats when they heard explosions. I wrote my phone number, their name, and their date of birth on their delicate, child’s skin. In ugly black marker pen. When, only two months earlier, what I considered to be a danger to them was eating too much sugar at their grandparents’. Now I don’t know if they’ll ever see their grandparents again.
I don’t know what my children have been eating since the 24th of February. I have a hard time remembering it precisely. Stale bread, down in the basement, some dodgy preserves the neighbours had – I didn’t really keep cans around the house. Too many preservatives. Thinking about it now makes me smile bitterly. Chocolate in every shape and size at the Isaccea customs point. Gluten – that’s junk food. Before, all this was important and I was trying to raise my children the right way. Make sure they don’t miss a day of school. Until a month ago, I didn’t know if they would ever go to school again, if there was any point to it, if it was even possible. Now the kindergarten teacher teaches them, over Zoom calls, to take shelter during class if they hear a siren. Some of them are still there, back in Ukraine, in the safe zones (is there even such a thing?) and when they hear the siren during class they are all frightened. Is it coming from the tablet speaker or the window? Yes, the ones in Romania too.
I used to teach my little girl not to use bad words, not to be mean with her schoolmates, I used to teach her to share. In the basement, as we walked to the border, on the crowded train, at the refugee centre in Romexpo, Bucharest… I swore all the time. I couldn’t not do it. I cursed them, I asked God to forgive me, I wanted harm for those who took lives in Bucha. And she heard me. One time she told me ‘But, Mum, we don’t talk like that’ and I answered: ‘Now we’re in a war.’ I regretted it, I still do. Her brother is too young. He only complains when his feet hurt.
I miss our day-to-day worries. Are there peanuts in that cake? Don’t eat it, your tummy will hurt. Make sure they’re not late for school. Before, we used to oversleep, now it’s like we don’t sleep at all, like we’re constantly awake.
The people around us are kind. But they are tired of our problems. They have their own jobs, their own needs, their own expenses. And we’re not at risk of starving anymore, we’re not a concern. We are starting to be seen as inconvenient. And that’s normal. But we don’t want this either. We want to go back to our lives, the lives that have been stolen from us.
Testimony collected by Ștefania Oprina for the Musem of Abandonment, as a part of the Abandonment Baggage campaign. Illustration by Matei Udriște. This project is financed by CARE through the Sera Foundation, Care France, and FONPC.
