(244 words) Today I returned home. I walked from the station and caught myself thinking that I was not thinking about anything. Just inhaled the warm autumn air and looked into the azure sky. Quiet, clear, peaceful sky above your head. There were black-and-white sentry-birch trees along the path. I remember in childhood I still saluted them. And today they are for me, and smallpox bullets gaping on their sides.

I heard a lot of songs about the house and about how the soldier returns there, and “the enemies burned his own hut” and “destroyed his whole family”. But I’m not afraid to go home, although I don’t really know what it is. But sometimes it’s bitter. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m just walking along this dry, fragile foliage, occasionally I notice mushrooms, and then it will flood ... Tears well come for no reason. Everything is behind, I know it, but I can not do anything. I so wanted to come back here and didn’t think that it would be so. Unbearable, terrible things happened, which cannot be conveyed - it hurts. And here everything is behind, but something the heart aches and does not give rest. Here she is, my beauty, Russia, wholesome, and I, a cardboard fool, dismissed the nurse. And now I’m standing on a hillock, I see my native hut, but I can’t take a single step or take air into my chest.

I am back. Something in these words warms the soul, although they are simple, although I heard them more than a hundred times. But now repeating them again and again, looking at the cheerful yellow expanse, I understand how dear to my heart is the homeland.

First-person essay-story plan based on Feldman’s picture “Homeland”:

1. Introduction (a story about returning home);
2. The main part (feelings and sensations of the returning soldier);
3. Conclusion (words about love for the motherland).

Watch the video: A View From You: Our National Dialogue (November 2024).