Leaving Ukraine, I wonder if I will remember the way the fog falls in the morning, touching the endless fields or if I will remember the way the sun later comes down at twilight, putting halos around the waists of the common man.

And now, I hope, the poetry will rise up again.

He had lived a long time in Ukraine, had grown up a Pioneer, something like a Communist Boy Scout, in the Soviet Union. He had grown from boy to man with Cheburashka and the sweetest butter ice cream imaginable. Among other places, he had spent a brief part of his childhood in Germany as a military man’s son. There he nearly saw the wall fall, but quietly, with a child’s disinterest, from the barracks of an entirely Russian compound. He had always had his space, even abroad, which was always entirely his own.

Now it was nothing that he was stripping down and passing me in his underwear. I stood in the kitchen chopping expensive tomatoes which had been imported from Turkey. Before me he passed and went into the bathroom. Later I found myself cooking for two. The concept of renting in Ukraine does not exist and space is not at all private. He had no need for propriety; these things bothered him little, if at all; and there is always food to go around. From the other side of the house I could hear Enya buzzing through his mobile phone and I could hear the water, too, splashing as he sprayed himself in my tub. I made us crepes from scratch using a cookbook from America.

On the days when he came, we lived like this, together, sharing a bathroom, going about our everyday lives like lost little birds, chirping in fragments, speaking of things beyond the level of our respective understanding, of English and of Russian. But as the winter ice melted and spring buds sprung, we found common ground in the humming of change. And so we fluttered with it, back and forth in what was, really, our living room. When he drifted past me in nothing but his underwear I no longer felt a balloon rising between us or threat of a rupture in our agreement. We were beginning to touch the untouchable. It was only then that told him I was writing a book. Later that night he asked me, in Russian, to get tea ready, as if he was unaware that he could boil water and get teacups himself -- and, really, he was.

Walking down the road, Lenin still stares at me with his statue-like, unmoving intensity – not unlike the locals. And I feel the weight of the regime in the air. I have nowhere to go but further into myself. It is then that I find myself in my grandmother’s kitchen – smelling sweet, too sweet, like sizzling butter in the pan on the stove. My grandma is hunched over the stove in her pink and blue apron in her pastel house. I’m thinking of thanksgivings with everyone around the table breaking their warm bread, and I think, too, of the moments that could have been so together with my family – though they never were. I can remember so clearly what I wanted, but less clearly what actually was. And in a flash I realize that I’m standing up to this not unlike those who must work through the cold winters with their livestock, nails black with dirt – they, too, must remember their own pasts; and they have, too, their own burdens. They carry around their red stars in their pockets with loose change and cigarettes. But I too have a lot of promises that never amounted to much.

I think of you now just as I think of the rain in Eastern Ukraine, which breaks from the clouds without sound. It is always slow at first –perhaps it is hesitant to come down.

“Doozhd,” my host mother says, tapping the window. “Choot-choot doozhd.”

Maybe I’m not supposed to, but I think of you a little bit then with your softer-than-mine skin. And I think of you as ancient, as having come and gone so many times before. And I’m thinking of the way, specifically, that I’ve known you, of the way you’ve come down upon me before, a little bit all over.

It has rained like this every morning since I arrived, so slightly and so cool. Winter is approaching, fogging up the window pane.

“Eat, eat!” my host mom says, smiling, pushing a bowl of potatoes closer. But, as always, I find it hard to eat when I think of you – even halfway across the world. I stare out past the steamed-up window, past the village, past the geese and the chickens and even past the smoke coming up from the chimneys in the far off distance. This is love.

I feel like running back to my room when it rains. I feel like flinging off the slippers my host mother makes me wear. I feel like ripping my blouse from my body and pulling my skirt to my knees. I feel like tearing off these pantyhose and scrubbing the make-up from my face. I even feel like unzipping my skin from my body and running as a skeleton through the rain.

My host mom goes to the kitchen to get me some vareneky, hoping that I'll eat that instead. Of course I cannot.

The psychic meets us at the top of a long staircase with a young child and an orange kitten -- she has her palms out, too, ready to receive -- one future handling another. With the feel of summer turning to fall still lingering on our skin like a dream, we try to predict our own futures and we try with too loud laughs to love one another like family -- unrestricted, so giving. Stuck between worlds, looking overwhelmed, but dripping, too, somehow, with over-enthusiasm, I wonder if those who love Leo really are so depressed. I wonder what we've been through, of the beach in Malibu, and of the sacred heart, and of the blow. I think of the crack in everything and the light shining through. We open our eyes wide to the night, to the beaming, vibrant city lights. In our pajamas and our glasses, we are preparing ourselves to open, to receive our lives like peppered vodka at noon, one shot after another, but so in bursts, the effect then coming at once as we move in a drunken stupor. In love with everything. With periods and commas and semi-colons between steps, we suddenly become the teachers we always were and with our hearts burning with a sing-song of farewells -- consuming us with wants, hopes, aspirations; we look for answers together in this newness, wandering the Philadelphia streets with 5 dollars in our sweatshirt pockets, thinking of Leonard Cohen and of Banana Split lattes, of our hunger, and our desires, and our futures, and how, later, we will express it, or if we can at all. And, too, most clearly, we think of each other.

The psychic grows animated with my palms. Something is happening. It is very strong. And it is near. Very near. I feel my future subside and our presents converge. I know in this instant that I’ll live the rest of my life always remembering this moment with my hands open, smiling at this nameless child, this orange kitten, and the quiet Philadelphia night that opened us up to each other and to the endless version of time. The psychic has fallen to the background, but the woman in her, beautiful with olive skin meeting us at the threshold with her child and the brand new kitten, will live forever as a vibrant part of my future. And I promise myself with a previously unknown intensity that I will be more aware of the light shining through than the crack, more aware of the present than the future.

I'm off tomorrow. Kona to Los Angeles to Philly to Frankfurt to Kyiv.

Here's my address for the first three months of Pre-Service Training (PST):

U.S. Peace Corps/Ukraine

PCV Rachel Grossman

P.O. Box 298

01030

Kyiv, Ukraine

If you've got it in mind to send me a package of some kind, meest.net, I hear, is the most reliable way. And if you've got it in mind, but you're not sure what that it really is, I've got some suggestions -- check my Amazon Wish List... and think... creative non-fiction, funky fiction (Tom Robbins) or think any season after the first of Six Feet Under. Or think... homemade cards and peanut butter.

Also, leave your address here (or in a private message -- just somehow get it to me) and I'll be sure to send you Ukrainian goodies, too. Be in touch, all!

"The might Dnieper roars and bellows,

The wind in anger howls and raves,

Down to the ground it bends the willows,

And mountain-high lifts up the waves.

The pale-faced moon picked out this moment

To peek out from behind a cloud,

Like a canoe upon the ocean

It first tips up, and then dips down.

The cocks don't crow to wake the morning,

There's not as yet a sound of man,

The owls in glades call our their warnings,

And ash trees creak and creak again."

The time has come to start narrowing things down. I've got 100 pounds of stuff to last me 27 months. Beyond the weight limitation, there is a negotiation to be made between business casual dress and rough, underdeveloped living conditions. Packing seems to be absurdly difficult right now. How many tee-shirts versus dress pants? And how many shoes? And what about the miscellaneous? Decoration, pictures of home, music, camera... Lately I've come to think that perhaps I should discard some clothes for comfort.

I recently discovered that Ukraine has a significantly higher early termination rate than a lot of other countries. They say that is because the emotional toll of living in Eastern Europe is exceptionally high. I don't mind greater risk because that usually means greater returns. However, this knowledge is greatly changing what packing looks like. Basically, it means less pants and more DVDs. Yay! Curb Your Enthusiasm!

If you have any other show suggestions, please let me know. I don't watch much TV at all so the shows I'm picking to bring are more or less random.

I look the other way because:

There are some mouths that can’t explain

what it's like to watch beauty self-destruct or how it is

when a lover becomes so thoroughly unsatisfying, or, really --

how a wild loyalty can turn so fast to ash.

There were once many words to be said between us.

But now there are simply dots and dashes --

many hushed memories and a lot of vanishing dreams.

"I thought the parting of his lips was the sing-song of the ocean, but I was wrong, and now I gnash my teeth as I circle around his violent disarray."

(I came up with this while sleeping and somehow remembered it in the morning. Oh, and I dream in technicolor, too).

Time for some facts! Don't worry, I'll keep it short -- partly because it's 75 degrees outside and gorgeous, partly because I've only just finished the 110 page Welcome Book and begun the Culture Smart! fact book.

1) Ukraine means "the Borderland," and such is why it is probably so often miscalled "the Ukraine." It's just Ukraine.

2) Capital: Kyiv

3) Population: 47.5 million

4) Climate: Moderate -- ranging from about 19 - 80 degrees.

5) In the city of Transcarpathia (in the West, near the Slovak border), there is a sign designating it as the geographical center of Europe. (With that said -- I do, of course, plan to picnic there).

I just accepted my Peace Corps invitation! I'll be headed to Ukraine at the end of September. For anyone who has an inkling to write (or send me stuff), feel absolutely free. Your old-fashioned love is more than welcome! This is my address for the first three months. After that, who knows!

U.S. Peace Corps/Ukraine

Rachel Grossman

P.O. Box 298

01030, Kyiv

Ukraine