Kruglik was the first youth center I visited, in February 2006, just a couple months after starting with Chornobyl Recovery and Development Programme. Coincidentally, Kruglik was the first youth center established under CRDP, in 2004.
As we toured the small one-floor building, I admired the plants lining the windowsills. I really enjoy houseplants, and in my house in Columbus I had a pretty decent jungle taking over my sunroom. One of the first things I noticed, and really liked a lot, in Moldova, and later in Ukraine as well, is that there are plants in nearly every office and store. They can range from the “fancy” potted plants you usually expect a business to purchase for its reception area, to simpler ones, obviously planted and tended by the staff, in clay or plastic pots (sometimes even in makeshift “pots” made from the bottom half of a one- or two-liter plastic bottle). I’ve seen most of the typical office plants – peace lillies, african violets, ficus trees – as well as ones I never would have imagined indoors – all kinds of vines (some that I would have thought of as weeds, actually), sapling oak trees, and plenty of other “wild” looking plants. I love that plants are so integrated into the indoors here.
In the Kruglik youth center, there was one interesting plant that I’d never seen before, and as I was admiring it, the ladies asked if I’d like a cutting to take back to Kyiv with me. I wasn’t sure it would survive the hour drive in what was one of the coldest winters on record, but I figured why not?
When I got home, I put the small cutting in a jar of water. Something like this:
A little over two years later, I now have two big pots brimming with the beautiful bushy guys.
And another pair of cuttings growing roots in the jar of water.
I’ve been to Kruglik probably three or four times since that first trip two years ago. I always admire the mother plant to my cuttings, and I always give an update on the progress of her offspring. The last time I was in Kruglik, in November 2007, I was startled to see beautiful little flowers all over the mother plant. I had no idea it flowered! I started to worry that mine had never flowered, but the ladies assured me it eventually would. It just takes some time for it to take root and be ready.
I have felt like that plant many times over the last few years – cut off, uprooted, replanted, not quite comfortable, slow to settle in, not ready to commit myself and bloom in this spot.
I know moving to Kyiv caused many of the same feelings in Igor. He had a good job in Korosten, he loved working with the Regional Development Agency, he was a well-known and well-connected man in town. He gave up a lot so that we could live together. He jumped in with both feet at his new job, though, and he was so busy with work that he didn’t have time to go back to Korosten for nearly two months. After his first trip home, I asked him how he felt, if he didn’t regret moving to Kyiv. “No,” he said. “But I don’t feel at home anywhere right now. Korosten is not my home anymore, but Kyiv is not my home either.” I knew exactly how he felt.
A few months later, when he was in Korosten without me for a weekend, I called him in the evening.
“I’m ready to go home,” he said
“What? You want to move back to Korosten,” I wasn’t sure I had understood.
“No, to Kyiv, to you. My home is where you are.”
During Igor’s visa interview at the American Embassy, the foreign service officer asked him why we had not applied for immigrant status for him. “Because we don’t want to live in the US,” he answered. “We want to live in Ukraine.”
As he told me about this exchange, after the interview, a realization came ove me. I am ready to make a home with Igor. I want to settle in and take root.
Believe it or not, the next day I saw the first flower on my plant.
OK, it’s a tiny one, not very strong yet, but it’s there. My plant has taken root, too.
Anka in Kyiv 