The writer Mikhail Bulgakov, a fellow native of Kyiv, called the year 1918 “great and terrible.” A little over a century later, 2021 was that kind of year for me — and for many of you too.
From losing a parent to getting assaulted, from a potential large-scale invasion of my native country to things I don’t even wish to talk about, 2021 did its best to try to pummel me into the ground. I know that many of you who are still standing can relate.
Finding yourself nevertheless upright in the midst of a crisis is its own kind of reward. I let it be a gift to myself this Christmas. It’s the gift I wrap myself in; it’s the calm, sure feeling of knowing myself, knowing that I am surrounded by good people, and that I am happy.
Yes, you can be happy even when you are grieving, or angry, or otherwise unmoored. That’s the big secret I discovered recently. Real happiness, as opposed to euphoria. is like an underground current, moving along with its own purpose, even as dramas are played out on the surface of things. I check in with it often; listen for that secret rushing sound somewhere deep inside me. Still there? Still there.
Of course, I envy fellow Americans who are not currently making calculations about a potential push west by Vladimir Putin — who is fast achieving his final form as a gnarled, jealous troll from a fairy tale — and what that might mean for the people and places they love.
Just like in Bulgakov’s days, Kyiv is being set up for a showdown, a tragedy upon a tragedy. It’s a wonderful place that I wish more people from my adopted motherland knew and cared about, but I am also a realist. Should things get really bad, people in the United States might feel outrage, but they won’t necessarily be willing or able to help.
So let me tell you about the city of my birth, just in case. It’s hilly. It’s older than Moscow. It manages to be both cheerfully provincial and terrifyingly profound. Poplar fluff overtakes it in foamy waves in the early summer. The hills by the river are studded with caves — some are holy sites, and some lie dark and abandoned. When you’re young there, you go dancing in abandoned factories, a tradition I kept up with well into my thirties, because Kyiv is a place where you lose all sense of proportion. The winters are sodden and biting, and in May, you can sit under the blooming pear trees and see God in the dappled sunlight.
I understand that fellow Americans who are rightly patting themselves on the back for surviving 2021 don’t want to worry about some strange, faraway place right now. But whatever happens next, please look back on what I’ve told you now.
My late father, another Kyiv native, witnessed a lot of corruption, war, and death, but never quite lost his romantic nature. His favorite word in the English language was “remember.” He liked the way it sounded, like a bell tolling in the mouth.
Remembering is one of the most important things you can do, especially in the face of naked aggression and lies — whether they’re coming from the Kremlin or from within our own country. Remembering is how you can persevere when the lights in the world go out and you are walking through darkness.
My father always wanted to be an American, ever since he was little and his Soviet classmates, who hated him for his tendency to break the rules and charm himself out of any situation, referred to him as “Vovka the American,” meaning it as a great insult (Vovka is one of the diminutive forms of Vladimir, or Volodymyr). He did become one, his heart forever split between two continents and two cultures, but it was in Ukraine where he wanted to be laid to rest.
This may sound strange to some of you, but I think it’s easier to grieve when you loved somebody and knew that they died loving you too. This is how the graves of our loved ones become our bulwarks. This is why, whatever comes next, there is a strength in me, and in people like me, and not even a vampire like Putin, seeking to drain the world, can take it or do much with it.
I can’t make you care about Kyiv, or Ukraine in general, or the people I have lost, or the people others have lost, but I want to make you see.
The world is changing, another year sloughs off, and the new one’s coming in, full of opportunities and dangers. There are enemies on the horizon, but the greatest enemy is always on the inside, cackling. It’s the voice that tells us that nothing we do matters.
But the basic fact that we’re still standing matters.
We’re still standing — and there’s work to be done.
Image credits: Anastasiia Petrenko and Maksym Diachenko