I thought about Avdiivka last night, it’s the suburb of Donetsk, where I went to pre-school between the ages 3 and 6. I looked it up on Google maps and recognized some places in town I used to love as a kid. The reason I wanted to look back is I am afraid nothing will survive due to the war happening now. I found some pictures of the lake with very white sand and the monument of the plane, it was probably the coolest thing back in the day. I have a lot of fond memories of my brother, my parents, my grandma Rosa, her mom and my uncle with his GF. We all lived in a house in the old part of town, it was actually a duplex grandma had bought, it didn’t last very long because three families in that small of a house were not very comfy, so the house got sold, and we moved to a newer part of town to live in the dorm with other families with kids.
It was a lot of fun as I had friends next door, one floor up or down. Every family had young kids so we were never bored. It was quite poky, but who cares if you spend most of the time outside with other kids. My father was a factory worker and my mother was a street sweeper at the time. It was really funny because my mom was a dress maker, she worked for herself and sold things very quickly, we were well off. We also dressed up like no one else we knew and it caused a lot of jealousy. The thing is in Soviet Union everyone had to have official employment no matter what, so my mom had to sweep streets as well.
I remember walking to the lake with my grandma, mom and my brother, the sand was so white, and I nearly drowned at least twice, yet those memories are still with me. The one that stands out to me the most is my grandma’s habit to put my wet swimsuit on her head on the way back home, so that it was dry by the time we reach home. I was embarrassed by her actions, my panties didn’t belong to her head, I thought. I had very strong opinions when I was younger. I never expressed this particular one as far as I remember. The air quality was pretty awful due to the Coke Plant where my dad worked. It was chemicals production and not Coca Cola oriented. We called it Koksohim. You can still see it on the map although I am not sure how much of it survived up to this day. We hated it because of all the pollution it caused. Yet it provided employment for people, so it was a good thing after all. We resided in a dorm until the new apartment buildings were being built. 30 years later we went past the place and the blocks of flats were not finished still.
I went to kindergarten and I enjoyed every single day of it, well almost every day, some days were rough. My favorite teacher would let me come visit her with flowers and cake on the weekends, we had a very strong bond. She taught us how to paint Ukrainian folk art and embroider. It’s too bad I could never get in touch with her after we moved away. And we did it in 1990 when Soviet Union fell apart, and things started to get better and better. For us anyway. From other people I heard very sad stories, those years were the hungriest years they reported sadly. Not in my case, since we actually moved to live at the coast of the Black Sea in Russia. It was a long road trip in the car from one country to another. This is where my stepfather took us. His parents owned a house there, which in my understanding was a mansion really. The climate was much warmer there and the air was fresher due to no Koksohim (coke plant) anywhere near. There are a lot of green mountains, sea and vineyards. I started going to the 1st grade there, it was awesome, I loved it. The closest city was Novorossiisk where we went for major shopping needs.
My brother and I loved country living, we had a lot of friends in the village. They were beautiful people inside and out. We only had one grocery store in there. No school, no hospital. There was a tiny library in a wagon, and a club. Not far from this village, was Abrau Durso champagne factory that my parents frequented a lot. They had a clothes production business at the time, so we were the cool kids, my stepfather had a car and lots of money. We loved him more that our dad, he was really good with children, unlike my dad, he wanted to have kids. He loved teaching us how to swim, play chess, backgammon, cook, drink champagne, smoke and do other stuff. We watched Disney cartoons and American movies which was luxury at the time. We loved living in a big house near the forest, it was all fascinating and unknown. The house was on the hill, if you kept climbing it past the forest you would end up in the vineyards. We all loved to go there for the grapes. It was private property but as true children of communism we felt like it wouldn’t hurt if we had some as well. The owner had lots and lots of land with vineyards, he had a rancho with horses and 11 children. We were neighbors, so we would hang out with them from time to time. Those folks had very different values, the believed that their didn’t have to go to school since they were smart enough as they were. Looking back today I realize that taking kids to school was a problem as it was in a village about 20 minutes away. The bus only ran every hour or so. My brother and I took it there and back. It was a regular bus and not a school one.
One of the brightest moments riding a bus was teeth-related accident. I was in the second grade riding the bus home alone, I exited the front door walking past the back door when a drunk man fell on me, he was heavy as you can imagine, I fell on the concrete thing and broke my front teeth. It was bad with blood everywhere, my teeth lose and useless. They were not my baby teeth unfortunately, I was reminded of the fact 20 years later when the surgery was very much needed. They explained that some sort of injury happened in the past…
Other than that I loved the time and days from first to third grade, I attended the school with a musical bias, it was just what the doctor ordered. We had music or dance class every day. At school we had our academics teacher, a lady, and a music teacher, who was a guy. My teachers were really nice to us, always helpful and friendly, I captured that very well. As far as I remember myself I hardly ever had a teacher who wasn’t just awesome, I maybe had one or two considering the fact that we moved a lot and I changed schools every year or two.
After the third grade we moved back to Ukraine, it was quite a change. My sister was born in Novorossiisk and the whole family dynamics changed. Due to my parents breakup, we moved back to Donetsk leaving my stepdad behind. The whole city of miners literally stank. Everything was covered with grey ash, I kid you not. The air quality was poor due to heavy industry plants here and there. Coal mines were big back then, you didn’t need education to work there and make good dough. So it attracted workers to the area. My mom worked from home round the clock and my brother helped her out. That year he went to the 8th grade, I went to the 5th: we made it to the cold season and then skipped the rest of it. There were a few reasons for us to quit: taking a bus, waiting in the cold and packing take-away lunches. So we both stayed at home instead. The following year I went to the 5th grade again. My brother never made it back to school. He had to take his GED later in life.
That year we lived on the edge of Donetsk in a nine story building, the district was called Hrabary. I remember that the area was grey, industrial and ugly, there was nowhere to go. My mom made some clothes and we would sell it locally. We had one grocery store in the whole area with not much produce in it. It was a suburb with privately owned local gardens. We would go out to pick up apples and nuts from the ground. The gardens were rich in crops that year, so the locals didn’t mind us helping them finish the fallen fruit.
We had really nice neighbors though, it was a family of five in a three bedroom apartment. The father of the family was disabled, he couldn’t leave the house, and the mother had to take care of their three children on her own. She was a very positive woman always smiling and joking around. It was exactly the same as our situation except we had no father in the picture. He re-appeared later. My mom and brother were sewing to make a living, we sold some of the things they made. I loved selling, people would always buy from me, I was about ten or eleven. It was around the time my sister was two, two and a half. I stayed at home to cook, clean and babysit full time. It was fun, I loved it, she was a nice kid and I loved being a mother, so the school had to wait.
Why I quit my job 