Drawn reports in the form of the portraits - war in Ukraine. October 31-November 5, 2023.

October 31 - November 5, 2023. Days 613 - 618 of war.
This week after we went over status of all the friends and family spread through Ukraine and around the world my parents gave me a round-up of their opinion on some of the grandkids' and great-grandkids' educational progress. And then told me about some new movies that they decided to watch. They made their choices based on where the movie was made as they wanted "something not necessarily with the happy end - more like in real life - so no American movies". I told them that I need some happy end movies these days very much.

Drawn reports in the form of the portraits - war in Ukraine. October 23-30, 2023.

October 23-30, 2023. Days 605 - 612 of war.
This week my parents and I talked about dogs and swimming. That's it for the safe subjects of this week. Wars, informational wars in particular, and who is winning them were not safe subjects. Some old fables, songs, poems and novels were quoted numerous times and then all went back to to the dogs (in the good sense). There is a large golden retriever that is friends with my Dad and comes over to "their bench" for a good scratch. It appears way before the owner. Later the owner makes it to the bench and walks further and soon the dog runs after him. There is no common language between humans so they just smile at each other. But I think Dad and the Dog are talking at length. 

Drawn reports in the form of the portraits - war in Ukraine. October 16-22, 2023.

October 16-22, 2023. Days 598 - 604 of war.
This week we talked quite a bit about the chemical properties of semi-solids - a topic interesting to both of my parents as they are both chemists (Mom is a biochemist and Dad is a physical chemist). It started with me explaining to them that I am experimenting with gel printing in my practice (in fact I used it to make these portraits - these were mostly blindly drawn layers of color which I overlayed with pencil lines). Talking about gels turned us to some cooking subjects and a topic of everyday schedules. We exchanged the news from all our relatives and friends: my aunt's birthday, the first snow in the Carpathian mountains melted, it is getting quite cold at night where my nephew is in the army and they don't have windows, there was a horrible attack on the post office in Kharkiv region. Some interesting books are being published despite the war, though they are about the war (I am looking for the next book to read in Ukrainian). People are preparing for the winter month in different ways - we talked about our plans a lot too.  

Drawn reports in the form of the portraits - war in Ukraine. October 9-15, 2023.

October 9-15, 2023. Days 591 - 597 of war.

Almost 600 days of the war. No matter what we talk about from time to time Mom gives statistics: days of the war, days away from her home of over 80 years in Kharkiv, and days away from Ukraine.

This week we spent quite a bit of time talking about my new Ukrainian words - some from the book that I am reading and some my parents collected for me. Dad was in a singing mood and completed several songs in between Mom's accounts of the plants near their new apartment. There is a large bougainvillea bush that covers the roof of one of the buildings nearby. There is a guy who comes to throw away trash at the empty land plot that they see from the balcony. Mom is looking at him disapprovingly and decided to take pictures in the hope that he would stop. There are no cat friends yet at this location but there are several dogs that my Dad already befriended. The stairs are hard. The sky in beautiful. 

 

Drawn reports in the form of the portraits - war in Ukraine. October 1-8, 2023.

October 1-8, 2023. Days 583 - 590 of war.
This week was one of the hardest in a long while. On a very personal front, my parents moved from one temporary apartment to another and it was extremely stressful despite all the support that they got. It is just really hard for them to move. But all was forgotten after two horrific days for Kharkiv and then unimaginable things happening in Israel. The layer upon layer of phone calls, text messages, worries mixed with relief when you get replies from family and friends, outrage and anger in between numerous attempts to find information, sort through sources, and just try and hug everyone you see. Everyone.