It was the day before Thanksgiving and the city was wrapped in the drifting ashen cloak of another Eastern Winter. People moved rigidly with deliberate geisha steps over the frozen ground and from the half-melted streets the passing yellow mini-buses hurled cascades of grey-brown slush high up onto the sidewalks where small clusters of humanity huddled just out of reach of the spray from passing traffic. Their clothes were pristine and formal, their faces proud and stoic, and they dared not risk the disgrace a stray drop of soiled snow might cause to their attire. Then the correct bus would appear, with the number five-oh-four or three-fifty-seven or so on printed on a yellowed sheet of A-four paper taped in a page protector to the windshield, and the waiting crowds would move in a rush to board, shoving unemotionally to pack the small interior of the vehicle.
I was hesitant, not used to the apparatus of the moment, and I had to settle for a standing position near the door.
The bus departed, careening among ancient Ladas and sparkling Land Cruisers along the frozen street. Suddenly a indignant hand jabbed my shoulder and, turning, I was handed a wrinkled bank note, a ten-hryvna bill. I took the money and stared questioningly at the small wrinkled woman from whom it had come. Why had she given me money? I shook my head and moved to hand the bills back to her, but she sighed and motioned to the front of the bus, uttering an annoyed phrase in Russian that I could not understand. Still confused I pushed the money back at her and she took it exasperatedly and pushed past me to hand it to another person, standing nearer to the front of the bus than I. Then I watched as the bill was passed, hand to hand, to the driver, and then change was passed back to the waiting traveler. This was, apparently, how the fare was paid and I followed suit.
But now it has been three years six months and five days since that winter bus ride on my first day in Kiev, Ukraine, and such simple social rituals have lost their mystery. What has passed in between has been a rush of scenarios, confounding in their novelty.
There was the time that I spent the New Years holidays in a tiny village in the countryside and it didn't matter that I did not speak more than a few words in Ukrainian and they only spoke a few words of English. There was enough homemade vodka to erase the language barrier, as well as most memories of the long night between 2014 and 2015.
There was my first visit to a Russian banya. I sat in the intense heat with an assortment of sweaty and naked locals. I ate pickled tomatoes and chunks of pork fat and drank copious amounts of room-temperature beer. I was beaten with scorching sprigs of oak leaves to renew my flesh. I became delirious from the heat and babbled in incoherent Russian to the delight of my companions, and then I plunged into the awaiting pool of icy water to complete the ritual. And I arose a new man.
Then there was the night, Saint Patrick's Day to be exact, when I found myself among a haggard band of fellow American expats, all well "socially lubricated", swaying in a dim basement karaoke club singing John Denver's "Country Roads" with feverish passion and damp eyes while the local patrons listened and clapped their hands in unison with our singing.
And there were the thousands of hours of teaching English to eager students, wrangling verb tenses with heavy Slavic accents, at home among dusty Soviet-era chalk boards and creaking, wooden floors.
I learned to abolish my past conceptions of personal space and stand, pressed together in lines and crowds, and never...never, to make eye contact or attempt small talk with strangers. To smile is to be noticed and to be noticed is to expose oneself. So don't do it.
I learned to walk with my gaze straight ahead and my face blank, like the sea off faces around me. This was a culture born in slavery and only recently freed, and it had an instinct to remain inconspicuous and an impulse to simply survive to the end of another day. And then another.
But then I earned that beneath this defensive, prison-yard exterior, the people were warm and loyal friends; helpful and generous. They just didn't give their friendship lightly, or quickly. But likewise, it is not withdrawn or questioned lightly, or quickly once it is won.
And then there were many other moments that now flash through the haze of memory. Some warm with friendship or insight, some perplexing and forever veiled by the barrier of culture, and some downright uncomfortable. But taken all together, now, sitting here at Kiev's Boryspil Airport three years six months and five days since my first arrival in this city, waiting on a flight that will take me away from Ukraine and towards the next chapter in my life... I cannot help but be flooded by a wave of nostalgia for this place, these people, and all the myriad experiences that have passed during the time that I have called Kiev, Ukraine home.
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