It’s been a long time since I had the honor of walking down your streets and unpaved roads. It’s been so many years since waiting for the marshrutka to pick me up in front of my house to take me to a different place for a minute.

I think of you so often, especially regarding your feelings about the war in Ukraine. It is so close to you, as you are on the border. I’ve talked to some of your inhabitants. While a portion are frightened and still unable to sleep, another portion sleeps just fine. The one thing they all have in common, however, is their reliance on remaining your inhabitants, no matter the outcome.

Oh, the people who dwell in that village. How much they impacted my life. I think of them every single day, so much that I have to force myself to stop. I look at my four-year-old child, and I think of all those children with disabilities, all those poor children living in cement shacks that the Soviets left unfinished. All those innocent, sweet little children who had and have nothing, some of them not even a single family member. I think of how those packs of young children took me off-guard, for I never understood being able to abandon your child and leave them to fend for themselves. I see every single one of those children in my child somehow, and I do my best to provide all the love and comfort for him that none of you ever had, and likely never will have.

I wish I could return with enormous financial, medical, and social gifts to give to all those children. That I could share with those mothers who are taking care of, so lovingly and tenderly, their disabled children. I wish I would have focused more on that during my time there. There is nothing more important than children, and this you taught me. I could not be the mother I am today without the experiences you gave me.

Does the couple I found wandering down the hillsides of the village still herd their goats around there? Are they still alive? They mentioned all their children went abroad and that they were there alone. Are they capable of taking care of themselves in their old age? Are you still graced by their breath and footsteps?

All the kids I tutored in English have since left you. They went to other places – to big cities, to other countries. But we all remember you. We are always thinking of you. You are our hearts, for you taught us how to love and care for one another. Even though I did not grow up as a child there, it was there I learned to grow up, for I learned what it is to truly love. Before I lived in your premises, I thought true love was a romance between two people. But you showed me that true love is the love we have for our neighbors. True love is the effort we put into caring for and loving our neighbors just as we care for and love ourselves.

There was a beautiful family that was part of a religion that was very unpopular there. Every day, I saw the father of that beautiful family outside the bazaar, holding pamphlets and Bibles, hoping to share his love with even one person. Is he still doing that daily? It showed so much determination and belief in what he was doing. To actually engage in that action so steadfastly, despite the harassment I saw him face, is truly remarkable. I regret my insufficient help to his family.

I think of those Gypsy children hiding in the woods whom I would bring some food and drink occasionally. Are they doing alright? Did they get conscripted? Or did they make it out? I am thankful you provided them a spot to hide. But where did they go in the winter? I wasn’t there long enough to find out.

If I could only go back and re-do it all, I would tackle everything I could with the greatest resource ever given to me, by you: love.

I hope to see you again one day, to see the sun sparkling through the trees by the lake.

To forget you is impossible. Please, forgive me.

All of my love,