Preambul:
“I am 45, but I still watch movies covering my eyes when a scary scene comes up, avoiding to watch other people suffer”, Oana Drăgulinescu, Editor
For the Museum of Abandonment interviews, however, I cannot look away, because those sharing their story of throbbing pain with you are always looking for your eyes, as a pivot of support.
During the interview with Vera we talked, our eyes locked, about the seasons of our lives: childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity, wisdom… These seasons, and especially who we are in relation to them, tend to replace one another in 10, 15 or 20-year spans. Between the boundaries of these worlds, we are allowed enough time to grow, to undergo change to accommodate the next stage of our evolution.
But a social cataclysm like war forces us to advance from one season to another, from one stage to the next, in very brief time intervals, sometimes a day, an hour or a second.
When asked who she was today, in the summer of 2023, Vera Pyrozhkova, a 34-year-old Ukrainian refugee in Romania, answered:
“I don’t know, I feel lost. Before the war I knew what my life was supposed to be like, who I was, where I had to go in the morning, what I worked or lived for, what my dreams were. The day the war started was the first day of a new stage in my life, I was given an opportunity to start a new job, for which I had trained and studied. I remember how we were leaving home, how we got there, how I was dreaming on the way of what was to come, while the fighting was already echoing all around us. In less than 24 hours I became someone else, in less than a day everything I knew about myself changed.”
Season 1- Baby Vera
I was a lonely, shy child
I was born in Odesa, by the sea. I think it’s my strongest anchor. The sea is the only reality I am sure of, the only place where I feel at home, where I can recognise the sounds and scents that let me know I am safe. I have a brother who is 11 years older, but we didn’t talk that much as children. When I was 6, he had already left home and got married, so I can safely say I was the only child. But I remember him giving me my favourite toy, a little green dragon, which I think was the most precious toy of my childhood.
Until I was 7, we lived in an apartment with my mom and dad, then we moved in with my maternal grandparents and shortly after my parents separated. My mother was a florist and my grandparents had a big house and a huge garden with lots of flowers and we stayed with them. Flowers were Mom’s profession and our universe for 20 years, until my grandfather got sick and mom quit her job to take care of him.
Season 2 – Teenage Vera.
Among books, fears and dreams
My mother was very strict in my teenage years, and now she is a strict grandmother. Since I was 9, I did all my homework myself, I never needed my mother to supervise me. Other children went to dance or singing classes, various extra-curricular activities, but my mother never took me anywhere or asked me if I would like to do any of those, and I was too shy to ask her for anything. My only exhilaration was school, the place where I felt that I mattered, that I meant something. I decided to apply to a Pharmaceutical College, and for that I studied a lot of chemistry and biology.
Season 3 – Adult Vera
Between love and profession
I graduated and immediately got a job with a pharmaceutical company working as a medical representative and manager. Those were beautiful years, my life was beginning to take shape. Then I met my husband at a school where I was taking classes to get my A category licence, as I am a passionate motorcyclist. The shy Vera had stayed behind in different season of my life. Then our little boy was born – ARTEM, he is named after the Goddess Artemis, the fearless one, because that’s how I want him to grow up. During my maternity leave I considered a career change, my job as a medical representative meant a very busy schedule and I often worked weekends, and, being a mother, I could not keep up that pace any longer. And that’s when I started studying podiatry, a field of foot disorders and posture defects. School was expensive and took a year to complete, and then I had a hard time finding a place to do my internship so that I could then work in a podiatric centre. In the meantime, my husband had found a job abroad, so my life was now built around raising Artem, my new career and long-distance calls with my husband. My new contract was supposed to start on a Thursday – February 24, 2022.
Season 4 – War
On February 24th, we woke up and all the news channels were talking about war
The kindergartens were closed, so Artem stayed at home with his mother. It was my first day working at the podiatry clinic, and the drive that should been 20 minutes took over an hour. By noon no clients had come to the clinic, so they told us to go home, because the medical centre would close indefinitely and our internship was cancelled.
I went back home and got organised with my mother, went shopping for some basic things (rice, sugar, oil), some medicine and candles. My mother and I took turns sleeping, in fact we were mostly on guard while Artem slept, but as I heard the first bombing raids, I decided I would do anything for Artem to survive. I didn’t want to tell him there was war, I made up a lie about some cars having crashed on the street. Suddenly we decided we should flee, I don’t know where I found this strength in me, but we just took a few things with us, packed some clothes and our papers, a few books and Artem’s favourite toy, MUR the cat, and got in the car.
I couldn’t even tell my husband we were fleeing Ukraine because he was in China at the time, and it was near impossible to get a connection. My boy was scared, he saw what was happening on the streets, so I told him a story about good soldiers and bad ones.
I didn’t know where I was going, I just wanted to get as far away from Ukraine and the War as possible. We set off for Romania, because it was the nearest country, the distance from Odesa to the border is about 300 km, a 3-hour trip at most. But there were already endless queues at the border crossing and it took us more than 24 hours to get through. Cars were lined up bumper to bumper and some people would pay to get ahead of someone, to skip a few places in the queue, to be 5 or 10 cars closer to freedom.
We stopped for the night near Isaccea to get some rest AND THEN WE DROVE AND DROVE AND DROVE AND DROVE…. FOR 8 DAYS, UNTIL WE GOT TO PORTUGAL.
We entered the country on 8 March at 9:20 am. I don’t know why we chose Portugal, it was my first time in Europe and I didn’t know anyone there, I just drove with no destination in mind, I only stopped at the ocean and even there I couldn’t escape the sounds of war, I couldn’t calm down or feel safe.
It took me 6 to 7 weeks to start feeling I was out of danger and that war was no longer after me like a predator.
Around Easter we left Portugal and made our way back to Romania. During the summer we lived in Costinești, there was the sea, my Black Sea, where I felt a tiny bit at home. It was only in August that my husband managed to come to Romania to meet us and help us move to Bucharest, it was easier for him to get around as he speaks Romanian. I met some good people with him here, even a Romanian couple who agreed to be our godparents, because we were in a registered marriage, but we hadn’t done the religious part.
During this season it’s hard for me to say who I am. I lost my friends, my home, the career I was trained for, the life I was living. We travel to Odesa now and then to see if our apartment is still there. The city is trying to survive, as are the people, but it is an arduous undertaking.
This season I feel numb, and sometimes it hurts me to see other children in the park refuse to play with my boy, just because he is a refugee child. And this is despite the fact that Artem goes to a Romanian-language kindergarten and already speaks quite well for his age. I wish he didn’t feel so lonely and I know it is painful for him to be away from his friends.
Season 5 – Vera and the Sea
I am searching for the next season of my life, I don’t know what it will be, but it certainly has to be by the sea, which means home to me.
Vera Pyrozhkova
