Dayton Diary: People to lean on

For three years, I lived in a small village. I taught English, played with kids and walked along dusty roads, occasionally accompanied by a goat, chicken or stray dog.

Although in another country, I had an army of people to lean on. My colleague, Larisa, gave me a place at her table. My students shouted “hello!” every time I walked by, beaming and dropping loose pieces of chocolate in my hands. My kindly elderly neighbor rushed out to greet me as I walked by his house — just to ask how my day was. A neighbor led me to her garden and plucked bunches of spinach free of charge. A first grader on an 11th grader’s shoulders rang the first bell to begin the school year. I remember flower crowns floating down the river and full of bowls of borscht.

And I came home.

Safe in the United States, I heard that on Feb. 24, 2022, a few miles from my faraway village, a cyclist was killed, the first civilian death of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.