From Dnipro to Mödling
An unexpected but very much wanted pregnancy, six months without seeing your husband/father, a horrific tragedy in your local neighborhood at home.
When Lilia (name changed per her request) first contacted me last August, I was the only person other than her husband to know she had just found out she was pregnant. She needed help to find an obgyn who could see her. The waiting lists were months long (next available appointment — October), and Lilia was desperate to see a doctor and have the pregnancy confirmed. She was in Austria alone with her three (now four) year-old son, Alexander. Lilia and Alexander came to Mödling alone in late April, after their home city of Dnipro became unbearable. A friend of her husband’s gave her the contact of a private landlord. They funds they receive from the state here in Austria help pay rent and utilities. Back in August, I helped Lilia book an appointment to see a private obgyn later that week, and a very kind reader sent Lilia directly some money to cover the cost of the appointment. Very often I don’t know how to “fix” a problem the official way, so I help to fix it the unofficial way, and usually that requires finding money through the kindness of strangers, and making a few phone calls. Lilia has sent me ultrasound photos and happy pregnancy updates ever since!
Yesterday, I drove through a commuter suburb of Vienna, filled with right and far right election posters (close the borders, foreigners out, Austria for Austria etc) for the upcoming local Lower Austria election. I drive under a huge red brick aqueduct, along winding roads next to woods until I reach a very modest apartment in a very modest building, the kind of apartment I imagine an Austrian landlord would have a hard time renting. I would call it a granny flat. Small but functional. Lilia welcomes me warmly and I step into a home in which a mother has done all she can within her means to make it comfortable and warm for four year-old Alexander. He is home sick from kindergarten. Both of them have been really sick multiple times this winter. They have experienced everything the Austrian medical system has to offer — the good (they got antibiotics when it was determined Lilia had pneumonia), the bad (they once woke up at 5am to take a bus to a train to a hospital where Lilia had to beg to be seen, insisting she knew she needed medication), and the frustrating (getting appointments when doctors working with state insurance often have very long waiting lists, and sick kids are expected to be cared for at home — assume it’s a virus and try at home first before you bother a doctor’s office with your concerns).
Lilia and Alexander are of course some of the lucky ones. Lilia’s husband stayed behind in Ukraine, where he has a job in the economic department of a margarine factory. The production facilities were relocated from occupied territories in Zaporozhye oblast to western Ukraine, but her husband continues his work from the family’s home city of Dnipro. The couple worked for twenty years (Lilia is a school teacher of English) to save up enough money to buy their own apartment. They finally bought an apartment in Dnipro in June 2021. The apartment was nearly empty as they had no money left for furniture. Today, Lilia’s husband lives there alone. Alexander hasn’t seen his dad in six months. The family was reunited this past summer, on the Hungarian-Ukraine border, and when Lilia returned, she discovered she was pregnant. This was a complete surprise, but a most welcome development.
A new baby is a blessing, and a glimmer of hope in an otherwise horrific year. The aging grandparents would be thrilled. They refused to leave. Her husband’s parents have a countryside home in Zaporozhye region. They refuse to leave for long periods at a time, insisting someone must stay there to maintain the heating/gas/water/pipes. When the front line moved very close to them, and it began to “boom boom loudly”, they would leave for Dnipro, but only for a few days. When the front moved to a neighbouring village, they would return. Lilia’s mother is also in this area, and also refuses to go anywhere. She is in poor health, and would not be a “helpful” grandmother in the way that other Ukrainian women have benefitted from the free childcare provided by their own mothers and mothers-in-law who joined them on the journey to Europe.
Lilia’s apartment in Mödling is on the edge of the town. At first, Alexander was given a kindergarten assignment too far away to walk. They would wait for the VOR bus which comes once every half an hour. In October, one female bus driver didn’t want to pick the two of them up, arguing Ukrainians could not travel for free anymore. Although, October was the month when Austria tried to cancel free travel, and then there was a public backlash, and it was extended, but only until November 1. On November 1, all Ukrainians lost their free travel, and nothing has changed since. Another driver took sympathy on Lilia one day in the pouring rain, and drove her for free, but said he cannot do it all the time. So Lilia asked for a new kindergarten and was lucky Alexander received a place in one within walking distance. He is the only Ukrainian kid there. He has already started to say a few words in German. He can stay until 1pm, and she must pay €3.90/day for his lunch. He cannot stay longer as Lilia is not working, and the afternoon would cost money the family budget cannot afford.
Lilia began taking German classes in September. She is eager to learn, and says it is easier for her than for others, given her background as an English teacher. I look around their modest apartment, and see quite a few toys for Alexander. I ask where they came from. A local charity had gifted Alexander a John Deere combine for Christmas. Much of the aid they have received has been from local organizations on the ground in Mödling who got to know the family and their situation. Lilia has been a single mother this year in a new country while pregnant with her second child. Alexander only just turned four, and it is not easy. And as they live alone, they have the benefit of privacy, but they don’t have immediate help on site, unlike women who live in dorms or group homes. Lilia’s Ukrainian friends she met in German class are often here with other family members, and everyone helps each other out. When Alexander is sick, and he has been sick often this year, Lilia’s outside world stops.
Lilia has bought most of Alexander’s toys in Mödling at local Flohmarks (flea markets). She searches for pieces of Duplo blocks, and has lovingly put them all in one big box for him. When travel was free, they could travel far and wide to such markets. That of course stopped in November when travel began to cost real money. Lilia also combs through local flea markets for sheets. Sheets, I ask? She proudly shows me a photo of a large bag of white sheets and bed linens. She bought it that morning for next to nothing at a market. I can’t really understand because I look around the apartment and see sheets on the beds. Lilia explains — the sheets will go to Ukraine, for military hospitals caring for the wounded. Hospitals are in desperate need for linens. A Ukrainian in Vienna will pass over the items to a driver who will deliver all the donations to a military hospital in Kyiv.
I sit there, embarrassed how little I know about the aid refugees in Europe are contributing towards sending back to Ukraine, despite their own challenging circumstances. Lately, I have been thinking so much about now matter how desperate some situations are in Austria, the situation in Ukraine is across the board much, much worse. Lilia explains that ordinary people regularly donate 50, 100 Hrynia (a couple of Euros) to humanitarian and military causes in Ukraine, and this all adds up. Local people who know their neighbourhoods — nurses, coaches, teachers — they gather and distribute aid. So much of how Ukraine is managing to survive this winter is done on a micro, micro level. Lilia tells me of a the son of a former local MP in Dnipro who owned a cafe, and when the war started, he opened up his cafe as an aid-gathering distribution point.
Lilia wants to tell me about Dnipro. It is the primary reason she asked me to come visit. She is extremely upset about the recent tragedy in her neighbourhood. The area of Dnipro is called Pobeda (Victory). She is in a local Pobeda mommy chat group. She knew the building, she used to walk in the courtyard with her son when he was a baby there, she knew many of the residents, the school she taught English at was also in Pobeda. One of her former students was killed in the Russian attack. Maksym was 17 and his parents’ only son. Lilia sends me the Facebook post in which she learned of his death. His mother is a nurse. She went to work, only to come home to find out her only child was killed. Lilia explains everyone in the neighbourhood knew each other, if not by name, then at least by familiar face.
In Dnipro missile strike, nine floors of random death and destruction
Dnipro was a city of 1 million people before the war. Lilia and her husband dreamed of giving their son a happy childhood. They worked hard for years towards their goal. A good life in a good city with extracurricular activities, a good education. Lilia was working as an English teacher and was thinking about getting a second degree in German to add to her skills. But life, she says, had other plans for her. I gently ask if she and Alexander will return to Dnipro once the baby is born. “The war must end. We need a clean sky above our heads. We cannot live with a fear of death.” I nod. It is perhaps far too early to ask that question.
There are many giant apartment blocks in Dnipro like the one in Pobeda hit by the Russian missile. “The Russian missile was designed to take out an aircraft carrier. The building is exactly that size.” Dnipro is filled, like so many cities across the post-Soviet world, with “sleeping regions”, blocks upon blocks of flats. At the time of the bombing, Lilia says the building was home to 200 residents (the official figure, unofficial could likely have been higher) in two entrances. Many others had left Dnipro after the war broke out.
Three year old Lia is now an orphan; her parents had taken her to her grandmother’s place and then returned home to the building the day of the bombing. A young mother, deaf, lost her husband and her child. We talk about the collective pain, the immeasurable number of losses, each tragedy unique in its own circumstances, all caused by Russia, and for what? Lilia talks about conversations she once had with ethnic Chechens and Azeris, who warned her “one day Russia will show its true face”.
She tells me about a couple in their 60s from Mariupol. They used to produce homemade sausages. They came to Austria, and tried to start that up here. They just went back to Ukraine to bury their only son. 24 years old. Signed up for the army. Died a hero. But they will never get their only son back. They keep going for their two grown daughters. Another friend was lucky to leave Mariupol on February 26, by chance running into someone with a car who was leaving at that very moment. The woman, an English teacher, travelled from Poland to the UK. She is now starting over in the UK for her child. Their apartment building in Mariupol was totally flattened after they left. The adults set aside their pain and keep living for the kids, but so many are living knowing they can never return to their prior lives. That chapter is forever closed. There are no homes, and often no loved ones, to go back to, for so many.
I gently ask Lilia who will help her when the baby comes. She has a few months more to make plans. There are some other Ukrainian moms living locally. She will ask them to take Alexander for a few days. He will go with them as he knows them already; they too have children. But a newborn and a toddler and all alone — that is a whole other ballgame. Lilia’s landlord promised to help find a pram. A healthy baby. That is the focus right now. Lilia’s sacrifices this past year have been entirely to keep herself, her son, and her new baby safe. She comes across as strong and level-headed, extremely competent, and tough, but I imagine emotionally it is unbearable at times. I ask myself, what would I have done, and I do not know. I maybe would have stayed in Ukraine, but I don’t know what it is like to live without a constant supply of water, heat or electricity, and with the persistent looming threat of deadly attacks from the air. I have no idea what that feels like. None of us can imagine.
Lilia asked me to share her story not as a cry for help, but because she wanted to talk about her hometown, the pain they are collectively going through in Pobeda, in Dnipro, in Ukraine. I think about the older generation, many of whom are stubbornly refusing to leave. No matter how bad it gets on the ground. I think about the husbands and dads, living alone for the better part of a year, working to feed their families but not being able to see and come home to them. And yet I fully understand Lilia’s story is a happy landing. She is one of the lucky ones. A new baby is new hope.
I get ready to leave and Lilia hands me hand-knit wooly socks in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. A gift from Dnipro knitted by one of her husband’s work colleagues. She wraps a red ribbon around them. A tiny Christmas tree is still standing on the table in the living room. A gift from her landlord. Lilia pulled a warm Stollen out of the oven, and asks me to take it too for my family. She made it herself. I thank her.
As soon as I get home, my 12 year old took the socks and they haven’t left her feet since. She went sledding wearing them this morning. Our second pair of hand-knit wooly socks from Ukraine. I don’t think I ever received so many gifts in my whole life as I have received this year from Ukrainians. Their kindness and openness and warmth is truly something I cannot find the right words for. Despite everything, they keep smiling, and keep making gestures of kindness. It is that spirit that keeps them all going, despite everything that happened this past year.