#45daysofblogging 07: Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!

Day 7 - August 24

I cannot imagine the better way to celebrate my first full week of blogging than with the post about my country, as we celebrate the 25th year of independence.

For most of the world this day doesn't hold this much meaning, but for us, Ukrainians, it means a lot. 25 years ago out country became independent for basically first time in about 600 years. For the first time Ukrainian language, that was banned 134 times in the period of 400 years, became a national language. 

I actually aspired to write a really deep meaningful post today. About my memories of Soviet Union, about the story of my family, that was always very patriotic despite all odds (one of my uncles actually went to prison twice for remembering that he is Ukrainian). About the day of the referendum, when I was asking everyone who was coming to our house: "What did you vote for?!" (if they were responding: "For Ukraine", they were allowed to come in). I don't think I fully realized what was going on (after all, I was only 6 years old), but I knew that it was important. And also I knew that it was about being who we are, and being free. 

I was growing up bilingual, among people that believed in our history and our future. I was spending long hours in lines outside of grocery stores to buy necessary things - bread, milk, matches. I had no idea what Christmas was and the first time I heard about Easter I was around 5-6 years old. We had two tastes of ice-cream available (which was okay) and no toilet paper (which was not, but thanks to this situation every child in my kindergarten knew the word "deficit" by the time we turned 4).

When me and my parents we were leaving Czechoslovakia to go back to Ukraine (which at that time was still a part of the USSSR), one of my teachers gave us all the new school books. One of them had the anthem of USSR on the first page. I stared at it for a bit and said to the teacher: "I will not need this book, I'm going to be back in Ukraine in a few weeks". She shushed at me and told me that the schools are the same everywhere. For some reason I remember this moment very clearly, even though I had no idea about what was going to happen in a few month. I just remember being very sure - this school book is not for me, I will never need it. And I never did.  

So I really wanted t write a long serious post about this. But after a few hours gave up - I was just blankly staring at my laptop and making endless cups of tea. Sometimes your memories, ideas and motivations become too overwhelming to write anything descent, and sometimes it's really good to let them take the lead. 

So I just want to say thank you. Thank you to everyone, who made all of this possible 25 years ago, I knew, how scary and unsure it was - my generation had and still has a very different battles to fight, but that first one was the inspiration behind it all. 

I want to thank everyone who's fighting for Ukraine today. To everyone in the war zone (because yes, there's still the war in the East of Ukraine, and it's been going non-stop for 2,5 years now - I know, you don't hear about it from your news, and I'm really sorry about it, the world becomes more and more blind with every second). To everyone who's working in the area close to the war zone.To every Ukrainian hero that was at the parade today. 

I want to thank all the higher powers for this 25 years - difficult, different and still full of hope,even during the darkest hours. 

And I want to wish us all a peaceful sky and a great bright future. The future, in which little girls are not spending 2 hour in queue to buy milk. And little boys don't write later to their fathers, who went to war.