My sister and her husband just spent a week with my husband and me at our home. They left yesterday morning.
Due to her “influence,” my closet is fuller with more stuff that I have few occasions to wear.
My checking account balance is lower due to buying more stuff I have few occasions to wear.
And my weight, when I finally work up the nerve to gingerly step on my digital scale, is showing a steady northward trajectory due to her “influence.”
Just like we did at the outset of COVID, we also spent hours sitting on the family room couch, eyes glued to the television screen, anxiously awaiting each bit of breaking news on the Ukrainian situation.
Just like we did at the outset of COVID, we also began realizing that in spite of the crisis, life must go on. I rescheduled my previously cancelled dentist appointment. I took careful inventory of my supply of toilet tissue as news of shortages were beginning to trickle in along with daily updates on the number of new Covid cases state by state. I gradually pulled myself away from watching the 24-hour news cycle and began adjusting to the new reality of mask wearing, curtailed activities and remote living.
It’s kinda the same now. Except I can’t stop watching TV. I can’t face the fact that our reality is being drastically altered.
And every day, my terror meter is vibrating like crazy as I watch the carnage and the indiscriminate bombing. It seems to me that the Russians want to kill as many civilians as possible. It is unrelenting.
It’s March, 2022. Gas prices are climbing precipitously higher daily. Average Ukrainian citizens, who just a few short weeks ago were living normal lives, are now refugees fleeing their bomb wracked neighborhoods – leaving loved ones and belongings behind. Others are choosing to stay and defend their streets, their city, their country, while food shortages prevail and danger lurks around every corner.
I don’t know what the answer is.
It’s all so complicated.
Institute a no-fly zone over Ukraine?
Supply Ukraine with planes?
Continue with harsher economic sanctions against Russia?
Pray Putin will come to his senses and stop the plundering?
I gleaned a new word from one of my sons this week: SANGUINE. It’s an adjective that means remaining optimistic or positive in the midst of an apparently difficult or bad situation. For example: He is sanguine about prospects for global peace.
I like to think I am sanguine, but as the carnage mounts, the number of casualties climb, and more buildings are bombed, my spirits are sagging.
Yes.
I’m writing my Congress people expressing my views.
I’m donating money to carefully selected organizations providing aid and comfort to the citizens of Ukraine.
I’m still incessantly watching the news – switching from one station to another at commercial breaks.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that world leaders can find a way to stop Putin’s madness without igniting the spark that starts a higher and more deadly escalation of hostilities.
I’m keeping a close eye on new and dire developments within the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant the Russians have seized.
I’m praying for a return to normalcy for the Ukrainian leaders and their people and I’m praying for world peace and survival for us all.
I’ve said it before.
I’m saying it again.
Let’s all follow British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill’s advice during the darkest days of the Second World War:
WHEN YOU’RE GOING THROUGH HELL, KEEP GOING.
And Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris Ruth Pastor
