I had a routine checkup and was wearing a vyshyvanka (Etsy link) from Nataliya, a lovely woman from whom I have now bought similar ones for my granddaughters.

One was to be for Lillian’s third birthday? There was the surprise of a small bracelet of red wooden beads tucked away in the package in celebration of a child she did not know simply because she wanted to share in the joy.

The female doctor and nurse admired my blouse and I did a little advocating for Ukrainian starving artists.

But what really made my day was the older woman I passed on my way out who stopped me and with a thick Slavic accent asked, You shirt! You make eet?

A woman in Ukraine did, I explained.

Ees beautiful! Beautiful!!

She was so happy to see something clearly so familiar to her and in that moment it felt like we were offering each other this wonderful, mystical sense of a universal place called home.