Chernobyl

This year on April 26th it was a 25th Anniversary of the tragedy that occurred in Pripyat, Ukraine on the nuclear plant called Chernobyl...

Today I want to tell you a short story from my own experience from that time, in order to my respect to the victims of the explosion.

I was seven years old.  It was end of May.

I walk up, got myself dressed, had some milk and run downstairs to play with my friends.

My parents were busy discussing something I couldn't understand or could care less about in the kitchen and did not seem slip away from our tiny one bedroom apartment in Kiev, Ukraine.

I ran down the stairs and outside.

However there was not one kid on the street.

It's May 25th and there was not one kid on the street.  No adults either.  Just a beautiful sunny day… with no people.

Although it seemed strange at that time I was excited to have a sandbox all to myself.

I began building a castle.

It was coming along beautifully.

Within only a few minutes both of my parents ran out to the street where I was playing and dragged me by my arms out of the sandbox.

I began crying and weeping, "What's wrong?"

My parents were silent.

They placed all of my clothing on the bed and quickly began packing them away into my dad's old military backpack.

Something was very wrong.

I could feel.  I was only seven, but I could sense their worry.

The backpack ended up being bigger than me.

But my parents didn't seem to notice that I could barely move it.

We walked downstairs.

A cab pulled up.

We drove to the airport.

Before we even got to the entrance, we were turned down and told to turn around.

A young policewoman leaned over to my mom’s side of the car window, and whispered, “Try the train stations, I am sure they will find space for your little one…”

They exchanged a almost a sisterly look, and my mom ordered the cab to go to the train station.

First train station was in chaos and the cab wasn’t able to get through.

“Let’s try the other one!” my dad yelled.

We drove again for about an hour across the city to reach the last hope my parents had for evacuating me from the city that was slowly filling up with deadly radiation.

A young woman took my hand and walked me through the train full of children to my bed.

I ran to the window to find my parents in the crowd.

“There they are!”

They didn’t seem happier or relieved…