Ukraine

This Is The Sunflower Picture I’m Using Everywhere Right Now.

It was just a random picture when I took it. Now, it means so much more.

One day in July 2014, I took this picture as I was riding from my small town to the next small town. Riding my bike out in the country is honestly the only kind of exercise I enjoy, so I do it whenever possible.

On one particular day, I hopped off my bike to snap this picture of a field of sunflowers and then thought nothing more of it. The picture was a bit of a disappointment to me, honestly. I was always trying to get a picture of the goldfinches that would sometimes explode out of the field just as I passed, but I never managed it. By the time I’d stop my bike and aim my phone, they’d be gone. Too bad, because the sight of those little yellow birds flying above the yellow sunflowers was absolutely spectacular.

Ukraine was absolutely not on my mind when I took this picture. I’m not sure I even knew the sunflower’s significance to Ukraine then. My only knowledge of that country came from a Ukrainian woman named Marina, who had come here to marry an American man.

When I left my job at a weekly newspaper to move to a daily, Marina took over my old job. As I trained her, I got to know her slightly. Her mother had traveled from Ukraine to help her with her twin babies, and Marina mentioned that her mother was having trouble getting used to American foods. She didn’t care for corn or soybean oil, but couldn’t find sunflower oil, which, Marina said, was the cooking oil they used in Ukraine.

I popped into a health food store and picked up a bottle of sunflower oil, probably the only place to sell it in my area at that time, and gave it to Marina for her mother, who was happy to have it.

That would have been about August 2001 — just before everything changed for my country. Everything changed for me, too, a few months later. My marriage ended, and I found myself needing to downsize my house. But before I did, I asked Marina if she wanted to move in with me so we could share expenses and childcare. Her mother’s visa had run out and she could no longer stay in the U.S. to help with her grandchildren.

Marina instead decided to send her children to live with their grandparents in Ukraine, and after that Marina and I lost touch. I’ve tried to find her and asked a friend who had worked with her if she knew where she and her family are today. I hope she and her whole family are safe, but chances are she has extended family back at home, and only God knows what they’re facing right now.

I’ve plastered this picture all over my various social media accounts. Each time I see it, I think of Ukraine and how lucky I am that my family is safe — at least for now.