Stories to Grow On

Abstract

My father’s stories transported me back in time to the old world. He gave me a history that made it possible for me to link the present with the past. Ukraine’s is a landscape of loss, of lost people, lost places, and lost history. Every place we went, there were mass killing sites among the green fields and river valleys if you knew where to look. Back home, the landscape was suddenly jarring. I kept seeing old gravesites and cemeteries in places I’d not seen before. Some I’d often passed but never noticed. Some were hidden away in parking lots in the town where I live. Another was on the grounds of the town high school, another on the old Revolutionary road near our house. Some I only imagined were there.