Belarusian's Reflections: The Stolen Summer of Our Children

The LSM portal has published an excerpt from a Belarusian author's essay titled 'Dumki belarusa' (Thoughts of a Belarusian), with the headline 'The Stolen Summer of Our Children.' In this opening passage, the reader is taken to a village very early in the morning, where daily life has already begun.

According to the text, it is five o'clock. The village is still asleep, but a grandmother is already in the outbuilding, clattering buckets and feeding her livestock. Above the vegetable patch, a white fog lingers, and from the nearby thicket a cuckoo repeats its call, seemingly keeping time as it counts someone's years. The narrator, still half-asleep, listens to these sounds from bed.

He does not get up right away. Only after two more hours, once the grandmother has heated the stove, does he fully wake. He rubs his eyes and shuffles off to weed the rows of vegetables. The scene is ordinary, yet it carries a quiet rhythm that many will associate with childhood holidays in the countryside.

What makes this fragment striking is its title. 'The Stolen Summer of Our Children' suggests a lament about how today's children are being deprived of such experiences. The essay likely explores the gap between the narrator's own memories and the lives of the younger generation. But in this published portion, no argument is made, no conclusion is drawn. Instead, the reader is left with a vivid picture of a summer morning and the unspoken question of what has been lost.