Growing a culture

I proposed in an arboretum, and we got married in a botanical garden. My wife surprised me on our first anniversary with a dinner in one of the greenhouses of Kyiv’s botanical garden. Being February in Ukraine, the ground was covered with a few feet of snow; it was cold and dark. But I’ll never forget how magical that green house looked.

And then inside, we had a Thai dinner surrounded by a tropical jungle.

Since then we’ve kept up the tradition of going to a new botanical garden each anniversary.

The little stories are what make the war feel personal to me. The Guardian reports that heating the greenhouses at Kyiv’s botanical garden is becoming increasing untenable as Russian attacks on heating and electrical infrastructure continue. I suppose a bunch of dead plants don’t really matter in the big scheme of things. Children are still starving around the world; there’s a dozen other wars around the world. But still the plants mean something.

The war has been reel after reel of disaster journalism. Yet the brain doesn’t really process what a leveled city like Mariupol means or even the pictures of the gnarled facades of yet another apartment building after a Russian air strike. It’s just abstract. Tragic, of course, but just one more fact to be filed away.

The reality of the war is a strange mix of that which is too tragic to process, long stretches of life going on somewhat like normal, and then all the tropical plants freezing to death. And things like that keep multiplying, like bombing the artwork of Maria Prymachenko. These deliberate attacks rob us of reliving our memories and steal our culture. We’re more than just biological organisms that survive, and a large part of Russia’s aim in this war is strip Ukrainians of all those little things that add up to a culture.

Normally this is the part where Ukrainians and friends of Ukraine add in a sales pitch about giving to the army and all that. If that’s for you, an internet search will yield plenty of ways to do so. Instead, I’ll simply say that it’s the small things that make up a culture. There is no grand solution to any of this, but that doesn’t mean you should give up.

One of my favorite memories from pre-war Kyiv is in this Facebook post that matter of factly mentions saving a random street kitten from under the hood of a car on Kostiantynivska Street. That little kitten is still making sure I don’t get too much sleep.

The Kyiv Animal Rescue Group is doing truly heoric and selfless things. Others are trying to save an entire botanical garden. There countless other little battles for the cultural heart and sould of the country going on that will mostly be unsung. You never know when the tables will turn, when the good times will end. So if there’s anything I’d ask of you, it’s build your culture now. Do the little things, enjoy them, and cherish the memories.