Olga Zaitseva-Herz

Sensory Prompt Challenge Winner

University of Alberta

When I look at the miniature porcelain pepper shaker pig, one of many that were made in the Soviet Union, I am transported back to my grandmother’s kitchen in Zaporizzhia, Ukraine. Since the start of the full-scale invasion on February 24th 2022, Russia has been heavily bombarding this land and claims it as its own.

Since my grandmother died, I went to this place only once, and most of my memories of it bring me back to my childhood.

As I take a look at the porcelain pepper shaker pig that used to sit on the mirrored bottom shelf of my grandma’s kitchen, I can’t help but be reminded of a song “Ukraina” by Taras Petrynenko that constantly played on the radio there. When I close my eyes, a mental image of her kitchen forms. As a kid, I believed that alien spaceships appeared nearly every time I gazed out that window at night. I was confident that no one else in my family could see them, though. Lightning spots on the sky were a reliable indicator of the presence of these alien spaceships. While in motion, their predominantly white color was occasionally interrupted by flashes of red and green. Despite the house’s proximity to the airport, where skeptics could be tempted to assume that only airplanes fly overhead, I was prepared for aliens to try to mislead me by masking their ship as a passenger plane. In those days, I was certain that the aliens noticed me watching them, and as a response, they sent me a signal, which would have traveled all the way to our kitchen from their spaceship and caused the pepper shaker pig’s eyes to light up. By fate, every time the aliens wished to contact me, our neighbors would turn on the light that was reflecting right into our kitchen and disrupted the operation!

Looking at this porcelain pepper shaker pig takes me back to the days when I could watch the world go by from my grandmother’s kitchen window. I recalled seeing what appeared to be an ocean of water—the Kakhovka sea. Occupied by the Russian military, the Kakhovka Dam was blown on June 6, 2023, thereby wiping out the Kakhovka Sea and causing heavy floods in the region. With my eyes closed, I remember this kitchen view and try to replace in my imagination the image of water with the resemblance of cracked earth instead because that is what I would see there now—a desert (which thereafter began to transform into a meadow). I notice how I start blaming myself that I didn’t stay in front of that window longer to watch the Kakhovka waters when I had a chance to.

I continue looking at this porcelain pepper shaker pig and hear the pigeons cooing. I can still picture them perched in the trees outside of that multi-story building where my grandmother lived. Now when my memory replays this sound, I can classify that these were wild pigeons because the city pigeons sound differently… Oh, but how did the one look that my mother once rescued from a plastic bag?! I remember how she, during one of our walks in the neighborhood, suddenly spotted a pigeon with a plastic bag wrapped around one of its wings and ran behind it for several blocks. She would not give up her attempts to grab that bag and release the poor bird. Time after time, it looked like she was just about to catch it, but the bird managed to still rise into the air, although it could fly for several meters at most before falling down again. Finally, she managed to free the bird, which, at that point, flew away joyfully.

As I keep looking at this porcelain pepper shaker pig, a familiar flavor reminds me of my grandmother’s cuisine. Once I’d smelled those amazing flavors, I’d sprint to the kitchen, calling out, “Gramma, what are you cooking??!” My mind flashes back to the many times I heard her saying, “Oh, don’t expect too much; I am not sure the recipe works out this time. A pie.” And no matter how many times I ate it, it always tasted the same: incredible.

I notice how my mind always wants to lead me to these memories back to Ukraine, all of them painful now. Even these objects and events that are seemingly not necessarily linked to Ukraine still somehow manage to construct a whole chain of remembrances that guide me back home.

A sonic panorama that includes my grandmother’s voice fills my head whenever I remember her cooking in the kitchen; it’s eerily accurate, down to the precise pitch and tone of her actual voice that I hear. It’s kind of surreal.

To this day, when her voice sounds in my mind, the memories she used to share with me flood back into my head, many of which were about food due to the many traumatic hunger episodes that she experienced in her life. Her mother, my great-grandmother, and her three children survived the Second World War by drinking a spoonful of sunflower oil every day when they had nothing else to eat. I’ve heard her repeating this story countless times over the years. According to my grandmother’s narrative, my great-grandmother experienced a prophetic dream shortly before the beginning of the war. In this dream, she received guidance for buying a big bottle of sunflower oil, as it was promised to be essential in saving her and her children’s lives. Consequently, she followed this advice and purchased the oil, which indeed became lifesaving. Before that, my great-grandmother had survived the man-made famine Holodomor in the 1930s and passed the memories of this event to her children. So, after witnessing the horrors of hunger firsthand, my grandmother transformed her home’s kitchen into a haven of comfort food for all of us.

I look at that small pepper shaker pig and continue hearing the echoes of her speaking in my head. What would she even say if she knew that there is war again? What would she say if she knew that there is no Kakhovka sea to see out of her window anymore? I’ll never know. But I hear her kitchen’s sounds and smells in my memories, and they feel very real. I wish there was some method to record and recreate them for others too.

My eyes snap awake, and I look at that tiny Soviet porcelain pepper shaker pig. I actually don’t like it. It is super inconvenient and even creepy, but I don’t think I can bear to get rid of it.

P.S. My roommate, whom I never told about my memories of my grandma, entered the kitchen and started cooking while I was writing the section of the memoir about my grandmother baking a pie. The delicious aromas that resulted from the process immediately resonated with my memories of grandmother’s home. Because this coincidence stunned me, I took a little detour from writing to ask, “What are you cooking, Jen?! It smells delicious!” “Oh, don’t expect too much!” she said. “I am not sure the recipe works out this time. A pie!” …