Letters from Ukraine, 2022
Outside my window: A time-lapse of light and life in wartime Ukraine
Light is a complicated thing
As the sun slowly melts away from the sky, I sing to my baby boy, ironically, about sunshine. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. I feel a slow stream of drool land on my shirt. It’s dusk, which means that he’s finally getting sleepy. It also means that I’m watching the hill on the other side of town to see if people are turning on their lights.
But even in peacetime, people probably wouldn’t be switching on their lights yet. I’ve found that in Ukraine, people don’t light up their houses like Christmas trees to make them feel cozier, like we do in the US.
I first came to understand this when my husband and I lived in Lviv. In the early evening, I would often find myself staring out the window at the opposite block of apartments.
“Wow, it’s six o’clock and there’s, like, barely anybody home,” I would observe, pig-nosing the window, taking note of the multitude of dark windows and balconies.
“They’re probably home. They just don’t have their lights on, since it’s not so dark yet,” my husband kindly explained.
I’ve found that Ukrainians turn their lights on only when they actually can’t see anymore. The Ukrainian culture is very practical and frugal, and this extends to everyday things like electricity. I see that people here prefer to save money on small things that aren’t so important — like having every room bright at dusk, when you can still see what’s in front of you — so they can spend money where it matters.
Back at my in-laws’ in Kyiv oblast (the state that surrounds the capital), I carry my son around our room, gently swaying. His fuzzy little head is slowly descending onto my shoulder. I switch to singing the song in Ukrainian. My translation is a little rough, but I think he understands — he is my sonechko, my only sonechko.
Now, the sky is finally getting dark to the point where if we weren’t at war, even the most frugal and practical of Ukrainians would probably be turning their lights on at this point.
However, back in February and most of March, they weren’t. None of us were. This is because the martial law that we’ve been under includes a mandatory blackout at night.
This means that curtains and blinds need to be closed. Since these can only block out so much light, interior lights often need to stay off, too. Or, you get creative. We hung a tapestry over the thin curtains of our dining room window so that we could eat normally. Other than that, we’ve been moving around the house mostly by using our phones (you learn early on to not let it get low on battery).
At least in our city, everyone was taking these measures seriously at first. The hill across town was totally dark at night for a couple weeks.
Now, in mid-April, things look a little different.
A dozen or so lights are scattered along the hill tonight. There wasn’t so much risk of an air raid out here in the countryside to begin with, and the Russians aren’t trying to capture Kyiv region anymore. We’ve been hearing the air raid siren go off less often in the past week. As a result, more and more lights have dared to appear on the hill each evening for a few hours.
I think another reason that we’ve all gotten a little less careful is that it’s downright tedious to go about your evening in dim light. I’ve scorched my hand with a sloshing mug of hot tea because I couldn’t see that I had overfilled it, and I’m not sure when showering by the light of a smartphone flashlight will stop feeling like something out of a horror movie.
I digress. I try not to dwell on the “inconveniences” of the blackout too much, given that we’re healthy and (relatively) safe. And alive.
My son has fallen asleep for the night. Downstairs, we eat a late dinner together. I imagine that a lot of the lights on the hill are coming from other dining rooms. Generally, Ukrainians are a very family-oriented people. They’re adamant about spending time around the table with their loved ones.
It was only yesterday that I went out into town for the first time since the war began (my husband and in-laws have kindly been getting the groceries so that I could stay safe here with the baby). People were moving about, running errands, walking with friends. Honestly, there were very few indications that a war is still going on. The government is urging businesses to open again where safe, and people mostly ignore the air raid siren. Everyone seems to be trying to get back to some sort of (modified) normalcy.
And part of “normalcy” for Ukrainians is allowing light and laughter to leak around the curtains or blinds of their dining rooms — just a little.
I come back upstairs to peer into the crib and check on my son. He lets out a content sigh. I tip-toe over to the window, a floorboard or two creaking in the process, and lean on the windowsill. The sky is now completely dark — and glittering with stars.
We’ve always been able to see the stars pretty well out here. Since the blackout began and there’s even less light pollution than normal, the sky has been even more sparkly. It’s hard to tell where the earth ends and the sky begins; the lights on the hill and the stars almost blend together. It’s a bittersweet sight — beautiful, but for the gloomiest of reasons.
For much of the time that my now-husband and I were dating, I was teaching English in Hungary. He drove over there to see me multiple times; on two occasions, he picked me up for a visit to Ukraine. As soon as we would cross the border into his homeland (usually at night), he would express his appreciation for the fact that we could see lights on in the windows (in Hungary, it seemed that by nightfall nearly everyone had shuttered their windows).
“It makes me feel like I’m not so alone,” he would explain.
When I see the illuminated homes across towns, I think of his words. Light is coziness; light is humanity.
I’m grateful that we can turn our lights on again and not feel so alone in the dark moments of war. In much of Ukraine — especially in the East, the South, and in the nation’s largest cities — this privilege is still nonexistent. I mentioned before that we were returning to some sense of normalcy, but this is not the case in many places in Ukraine. Many people still have to strictly follow blackout procedures because their lives and the lives of their neighbors might actually depend on it.
More than anything, I want the people in dangerous areas to be safe again, but I also just want them to be able to illuminate their homes so that they don’t feel so alone.
Just as quickly as those beacons of light came on, they start to turn off; by the time I get in bed around 10 or 11 o’clock, they are slowly disappearing. I’m not sure whether people are suddenly trying to respect the blackout or they are just going to bed for the night. Probably both, but mostly the latter — Ukrainians seem to work hard and rest hard.
A week or so ago at this hour, the sky began to silently and intermittently flash — just as I saw it do once in the early morning of Day 1 of the invasion due to a nearby explosion. For a good thirty minutes, I was convinced something was happening again in Kyiv oblast.
That was until, of course, the storm got closer and the thunder caught up with the lightning.
It’s amazing how something like flashing lights can go from petrifying to ordinary in just a few minutes.
A few months before the war, we re-did our bedroom, but we didn’t get a chance to pick out new blinds. There’s no issue with privacy on this side of the house, but you guessed it — light is the problem. When I wake up at night to feed my son, it’s still not 100% safe to turn a lamp on. It’s quite a challenge to latch a baby onto my breast using just my phone. More than once, he’s turned into a little moth, suddenly fascinated by the screen. Genius.
Once my son goes back in his crib, I lie back down and gaze out through the window.
Most of the stars that were sprinkled across the sky have dimmed. One or two remain, and they seem to be…shimmering. Not quite flickering, but not as…static as I think stars should be. It’s four o’clock, and I’m in that paranoid time of night where the world is so quiet that you can hear nothing but your own thoughts.
Do stars actually twinkle? Or have the songs just gotten to my head?
I try to use the window frame as a reference point to figure out how much this imposter of a star is moving.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
How I wonder what you are….
…are you a plane?
If so, are you Russian or Ukrainian?
The sky begins to lighten around 6 o’clock, bringing a much-welcomed reprieve from these anxious questions. The rooster in the yard next door is already beginning to get chatty. We’ll probably hear him again later because he likes to talk all day about how early he gets up.
Our window faces the East. On clear days, I often get to see a beautiful sunrise, one of those streaky, neon pink ones. But I’m very aware of what the sun has just crossed over — an evil empire, then immense suffering and destruction caused by said empire. All this makes the sunlight feel…tainted.
Light is a delicate thing. It can be both beautiful and petrifying, useful and dangerous. Nevertheless, I try to focus on the fact that in the form of daybreak, light is an overwhelmingly positive thing.
It brings warmth, which my son likes to bask in on his play mat.
It makes it easier to move around our home.
It brings Vitamin D and happiness, which go a long way in lifting our spirits.
It is the beginning of a new day. With a new day, there is renewed hope for peace in this country.
Light has arrived in our sliver of the world for the next twelve hours or so, and until it becomes tricky again this evening, I am deeply grateful for it.
