The Quarantine Blues

I am on quarantine. It’s one of the phrases I thought I would not have the opportunity to utter in my lifetime, but lo and behold, Ukrainian living. I thought I would never eat raw pork back fat. Or pine for a washing machine. Or heck, talk to myself as much as I do.

Wait, don’t panic. It’s not the white-walled, sterile hospital room, solitary confinement due to a highly-infectious and potentially-deadly disease. Rather, it’s like our beloved snow day. I shouldn’t tease you but I envision a mirror image of my facial expression on you the first time a Ukrainian rattled off “quarantine” as post-holiday winter respite.

After an unseasonably temperature December that left us knee-deep in mud, complete with the sucking sound effects, I had my doubts about that biting Ukrainian winter they were all claiming. Well, that’s what I get for being a doubter. Winter is here.

Yesterday, I took on the trudging pose on my on-foot commute to school—head down, body at a 45 degree angle against the northern wind, knees slightly bent to soften the fall on black ice, feet shuffling over shape-shifting snow drifts, eyes crying and eyelashes frozen, all appendages numb. Yet when I burst through the front doors, they banged with a dull echo behind me. It was eerily quiet. No chorus of “hellos”—not even one student rushing to Wednesday homeroom, sure to suffer the wrath of the homeroom teacher’s screaming for tardiness. Just the other day, I had questioned my colleagues about upcoming holidays, so as not to miss the memo, per usual. “Gosh darnit,” I thought. “Ukrained again.”

Not so. Due to the frost and for fear of illness, the Ukrainian mamas had kept their kiddies home. Rightly so. Several hours later, our director convened the teachers and declared “quarantine due to frost” until Tuesday, meaning the teachers and students were sent home.

Winter is a different kind of beast here. There is no hustle from a toasty house, complete with a fireplace and a thermostat you can flick up to tropical to the automatic start, heated seats of a car to a hot-box of a school, workplace, or wherever.

Rather, winter in Ukraine is like…
-central heating radiators that may be hot or cold to the touch
-wooden-framed windows that leak outside drafts
-white frosting snow
-m.i.a. snow removal
-tin can marshrutka buses huffing up hills, pumping out no heat, the driver smoking with his window cracked
-layers of tights, turtlenecks, wool sweaters, knitted socks
-cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions, beets, repeat
-emptying the reserve of conserved goods, one jar at a time
-running errands or picking up your kid with your metal sled in tow
-fur and leather of any shape, size, and style
-knitted wraps for taking off the edge
-hot tea, hot soup, hot water bottles, hot anything
-ice wipe-outs
-stuck cars and smoking tires

Boy, am I ever grateful Mama Mila outfitted me head to toe for winter when I was home for the holidays. Sometimes Mama is right. So, to stave off a bout of cabin fever, I am checking things off of my “to-do” list, which of late, has continued to grow and grow. In-between, I break. I have trimmed my bangs, vacuumed, mopped, dusted, and wiped-down every corner of my apartment, baked chocolate cake and carrot bread, put-away my Christmas decorations, washed, hung, and ironed laundry, cooked a number of soups, read and read some more, wrote, studied Russian, talked to my Americans, rung my Ukrainian friends, watched a film or two, learned how to re-fill my printer ink, danced in my living room, lifted some weights, planned school stuff, and so on.

All this time to myself is a blessing and a curse. Last week, I went from a party for one to a jamboree of 50 plus fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and 20ish Russian Language Teachers at a week-long retreat in Chernigiv, Ukraine. There, we studied Russian, joined in some Ukrainian hobbies. All-in-all, though, among the greatest treat was to just hang out and be a “normal” twenty-something-year-old American girl. Now I’m back on my own, in semi-hibernation mode, but taking to heart my wiser-beyond-years little brother’s advice, “sometimes you just gotta treat yourself a little.” So I am.

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