YOU ARE IN OUR HEARTS

At 4 AM on February 24, Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal assault on Ukraine, the largest country in Europe. Its capital city Kyiv  (which dropped the Russian-derived name “Kiev” in favor of the true Ukrainian name “Kyiv”) is the seventh most populous city in Europe. Though nearly 4700 miles from our east coast, their plight feels next door.

In the past seven weeks, we’ve become too familiar with city names unpronounceable before the invasion, including Bucha, Lutsk, Mariupol and Kharkiv. We sip our nightly cocktails watching Lester Holt or Brett Baier, witnessing the devastation of these bombed cities, and wonder: can we do anything to help?

Yes. We can pray. We can donate to relief organizations. And we can continue to show our support for the brave young president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his 44 million equally-brave citizens. None of that may thwart the invasion or stop the bombing. But the compassion I’ve seen in our little corner of the world along the south coast of Maine is a daily reminder that Ukraine is high in our hearts. 

The Ukrainian flag adorns a house along Route 35, the main road connecting  Kennebunkport to Kennebunk:

Here at the entrance to Antiques on Nine, a popular gift and decorating emporium for locals and tourists, an iron rooster sports a scarf of Ukrainian colors.

Yesterday, I stopped at Associated Eye Care to have my sunglasses adjusted and was greeted with a blue vase filled with sunflowers.

Last week when I walked into Hannaford’s to pick up pimento cheese spread (a Masters-watching staple in our house), blue and yellow arrangements dominated the large flower stand.

Kingsley Gallup, editor/publisher of TOURIST & TOWN, our prize-winning biweekly newspaper here in York County, admitted she wanted —and planned — this issue’s blue and yellow cover to salute Ukraine. “We must remember them,” she said.

Mary-Lou Boucouvalas, director of Kennebunkport’s Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library, said her staff featured Ukrainian folk stories in the children’s room “and that was really popular.” She also noted, with a smile, that the new Kennebunkport town flag features Ukrainian colors.

Even our fire hydrants are painted yellow and blue. (Didn’t they used to be red?) (And don’t you think Zelensky would give them a thumbs-up!)

In this month’s THE ATLANTIC, George Packer writes, “Ukraine has done what nothing else — no elections or insurrection, no pandemic, no environmental catastrophe — could do: show the difference between right and wrong, heroism and barbarism, truth and lies, with such clarity that most Americans are in agreement.” The title of his article is: “I Worry We’ll Soon Forget About Ukraine.” 

“Don’t forget about Ukraine,” President Zelensky said last weekend in an interview with CBS. “We have the same values, we have the same color of blood, and we are fighting for freedom, and we will win.”

Keep flying the flags. Keep buying sunflowers and displaying them in blue vases. Keep Ukraine and its people in your hearts. It may seem like a small gesture, futile, perhaps even silly, but it’s the least we can do.