Dolphins in the Donbas Sunflowers
for Reporters magazine special issue, text by Larysa Denysenko
Recognizing yourself in a new woman. While the doctors at the UNBROKEN Center are doing all they can to remove the traces of the war from Olena’s face, she has found the strength to show other women how beautiful they already are.
When Olena was a girl, she dreamed of having a pet monkey. Her mother laughed and said, “Once you have a family, you can get a monkey.” And once Olena became a teacher of chemistry and biology and gave birth to her first son, her mother asked, “So, my dear, how about that monkey?” Olena laughed and replied, “Thanks, mom, I’ve got one already.” Now Olena wants nothing more than to hug her mother. Ninety-two years old, her mother is sure—despite living under occupation, despite the war that brought her daughter physical pain and took away her home—that she will live to see that day.
The endurance of mothers throughout the ages and across cultures, and particularly the trials faced by Ukrainian mothers have taught them how to wait. To wait for their children, despite everything, for
the chance to hug them and reminisce about the monkey, to break into innocent laughter, to cry from the joy of being together, and to embrace again.
EVERYTHING IS ALIVE
Olena went into teaching because she was home-schooled by her mother, and her friends would come over after preschool and tell her what went on there. It was so fascinating to make comparisons
and imagine how she herself would teach! Plus, chemistry is a very practical science, particularly relevant in the factory-rich cluster of cities in the east around the Siverskyi Donets River. This helped her explain to the children, most of whose parents worked in those factories, why people need chemistry.
“Chemistry is a hard science, no wonder they begin teaching it once children have a grasp of math. It’s very practical, it helps you understand how drugs are made and how to remove a stain. Chemistry is an adventure where kids learn to see how one reagent can affect the whole process. Quality education is a dream of mine, and it’s impossible to teach chemistry if you don’t have enough reagents to run experiments.
I want every teacher in every village to have everything they need to make kids fall in love with their subject,” says Olena. She wanted to grow flowers, to raise and teach children—both her own and schoolchildren, to study the natural world, like these oaks that support the winds when those want to rest or lay low, like the pines planted by the locals with their able hands, like the endless fields, covered with smiling sunflowers and aromatic grasses, full of happiness and a feeling of home, moments of joy without a thought that all this could be destroyed by an enemy who mercilessly aspires to kill every living thing.
Here’s the most horrible thing about the war’s quotidian evil: you can go out to gather linden flowers in your home city on a bright June day in 2022, and spot the giant wings of a butterfly among the leaves,
wreathed in aromatic buds, and imagine your family sipping the tea made from this fragrant harvest, and a moment later the sharp fragment of an enemy missile pierces your forehead.
A stranger finds you, amidst deafening silence, moaning, and the smell of wounded people. You are taken to Dnipro, where—after three weeks of the doctors fighting to save you and you to save yourself—you finally return to life. And then you end up in a city you had always dreamed of visiting—interesting, wonderful Lviv.
Only this is not how you imagined bringing your dreams to life. You ended up here “thanks to” the enemy. But now Olena is here, she is receiving care, her serious facial injury needs lots of attention, multiple operations, rehabilitation. Her soul needs regeneration, and her eyes, which radiate her inner beauty, must begin seeing everything that is happening around her.
HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN LOVE
“When I came to after one of the operations, I was all alone, alone in a city where I didn’t know anybody, alone in the ward. I felt so sad and awful, so I made a rule: to look for the good, no matter how bad or painful things were. To find the light in the darkness. And when I realized that I’m alone in the ward—it was so upsetting, so sad—suddenly I thought, this is good! It’s good that I’m alone; it means that other people are okay, alive, well. Since then this has been my rule for staying grounded,” Olena shares.
Lviv, where Olena now resides in a modular housing village for internally displaced people, has become familiar and homey. Along with some other women, she keeps a garden of her favorite plants
and flowers, just like at home, and sings in the choir Spivanochka [Singing Lady]. She never imagined herself singing in a Roman Catholic church, it’s like somebody else’s life, although it’s really her, her delicate, ringing voice woven into a garland of women’s voices. Her voice soars up to the Mother
of God, to the place where the prayers, entreaties, tears and curses of all mothers waft and resound—it’s never quiet there.
The women often talk about the cities they come from. They lead each other on virtual tours of the cities, villages and towns to which they will most certainly return.
Cities, like people—the ones who’ve left us and the ones that we’ve left—keep living for as long as people remember them. Love does not depend on where you live, whether out of necessity, temporarily or permanently.
Love lives in us. When you close your eyes and keep walking along the streets of the city where you first fell in love, where your husband meets you at the maternity ward, and you hush your newborn with a whisper that you’re going home and, look, here it is, your home. It smells like linden blossoms, like a freshly ironed nice floral dress, like berry juice and herbs. When you first step into the classroom, so full of love for the children that you can’t explain it; you can explain chemistry, biology, math, and lots of other sciences, but how do you explain this love?
RECOGNIZING YOURSELF IN A NEW WOMAN
Now in Lviv, Olena is learning to make pysanky2. “Where I come from, we didn’t have this tradition. We colored Easter eggs with grasses, vegetables, we boiled them in cereal grains. I like drawing these patterns, learning something that’s new for me, but for others is an ancient art.” These group activities—singing, performances, art therapy, making pysanky — help people feel like part of a family, even
if just a little bit.
Feeling a sense of family, connection and humanity is very important to Olena. She considers the people at the UNBROKEN Rehabilitation Center as family because of their warmth, responsibility and support. “People must not lose their humanity. Our capacity to support each other is one of life’s greatest gifts. There is a lot you can learn, even from animals and how they take care of—and rescue—one another.”
Of course there are difficult moments, when your head aches unbearably, when your body tests the limits of your invincibility, when your days are organized by antibiotics and probiotics, when the dark sea of emotions seethes and painful memories wash over you.
When you have experienced this kind of trauma, when you lose a part of you life, when there is so much that you, a grown woman, are beginning to learn only now, you have to hang on and learn to accept help, learn to recognize yourself in this new woman and keep teaching children remotely, and have faith that tomorrow will be a new day when you are stronger. “I’ll think about it tomorrow.” How many Ukrainian women, as they endure difficult, unbearable times, recall these words spoken by Scarlett O’Hara, the heroine of Margaret Mitchell’s novel “Gone with the Wind?” Scarlett spoke these words to herself during the American Civil War. And now Olena does the same.
If you think about it, this expression is not saying that you don’t have to think about the difficult things today; it’s not about immaturity, nor is it about burnout or weakness. It’s saying that tomorrow will
be, that tomorrow exists for this particular woman, and she will exist in this tomorrow;
and she will surely think of something, she’ll pull herself together and find a way out, she’ll be able to solve the problem, no matter how difficult it is. She’ll overcome the pain, and soothe the pain of others, no matter how great it may be. For the future lives in this expression; it is alive, weaving its intricate horizons, much like the lace curtains in the house that the enemies forced her to abandon.
A woman’s power is multiplied by motherhood, along with the responsibility and sense of inner fulfillment it brings. The mystery of feeling more than one life within you, of giving life—this prevents you from giving in to circumstances. No matter how old a child is, a mother thinks about them
and wishes to protect them, teach them and be proud of them. Olena has two sons, who motivate her to keep living, and this is a great force that multiplies her own strength many times over.
Support from other women is another source of strength. Olena remembers the women in the ward after her operation, how they supported her when she could not fathom how to go on living, or what comes next, or what, ultimately would become of her face? This emotional roller coaster and uncertainty, her faith in people and their support, along with her inner strength, led her up to do something she had never done before—a photoshoot, along with sharing the story of what had happened to her. Now she’s become that woman, the kind who supports other women.
It’s not easy to have your picture taken after an operation. Olena saw this as a chance to show other women who have been injured in airstrikes or in accidents that they are very brave, that each one of them has this courage, along with beauty; that each one of them deserves support; that life goes on and they are beautiful and not alone in this world.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STEM
Take your time to delight in the world, live as long as you are alive,” Olena reminds herself periodically. She dreams of visiting the Carpathians; she loves mountains, nature, and the infinite, dizzying vistas. I imagine her there, this woman who loves life, delighting in her natural surroundings. She finds a Ukrainian orchid, Spiranthes spiralis, its white flowers resembling a double helix. You see these delicate flowers on one side, then they move to the other side, exposing the stem, and at that moment it seems
like the splendor has disappeared, it’s gone; but you have to look at the other side, and you’ll find those same white flowers with their light vanilla scent. “Find the light in the darkness.”
Olena dreams of walking into the classroom, looking into the eyes of her students, who are engaged in a rowdy dispute. She smiles and delivers her trademark line calling for reconciliation, “When you’re walking down the street and a dog starts barking at you, do you get on all fours and start barking
in response?” They laugh, and hug each other. She dreams of walking into the classroom and making sure all the reagents are there. Because chemistry brings magic to life—it’s a science for action, not just for the books.
Olena dreams of walking into her classroom in the Lysychansk lyceum. And when the wave of emotion—joyful and nervous—subsides, she’ll begin telling the children about her favorite subject, and for some reason she’ll see sunflowers through the window, waiting to be kissed by the sun, and her beloved dolphins from the liberated Ukrainian seas leaping out from among them. Of course, this can’t really
happen, I mean, what are dolphins doing in Luhansk Oblast? But nobody can take away our capacity for creating our own Ukrainian dream and seeing the light and flowers on the other side of the stem of life.
