08/10/2026
My doctor told me that according to my tests, I am lactose intolerant and should probably stay away from dairy containing lactose.
I sat there thinking, seriously? No milk? No cream? No real dairy?
And then, for some reason, I didn’t think about my refrigerator or what I would have to change in my diet. I thought about my grandmother.
I thought about being a little girl in Ukraine, when a summer could begin with one hryvnia in my pocket and a ride on an electric train to my grandmother’s house.
Someone would put me on the train, I would ride to my station, get off, and then walk through the fields to where my grandparents lived. Their little settlement didn’t even have a real village name. Everyone simply called it Mine No. 39.
Шахта №39.
It sounds almost sad when I write it now. A number instead of a name.
But to me, there was no place on earth more beautiful.
I knew I was home before I even entered the yard. Our gate was painted a soft light green, with little white lanterns along the top. I would slip my hand through, reach for the latch on the inside and open it myself.
If Grandma wasn’t home, I never worried. I knew where the key was.
Grandpa had hammered one tiny nail into the back of the bench and the key always hung there waiting for me. It was an ordinary old key with one little tooth, and I can still remember exactly how it felt in my hand.
Isn’t it strange what stays with us?
I couldn’t tell you what I was wearing on most important days of my childhood. I don’t remember many presents I was given or things I thought I desperately wanted. But close my eyes and I can still feel that little key in my palm.
I can still smell that yard.
There were grapes hanging over the porch, making shade even on the hottest days. The shutters in the house were usually closed against the summer heat, and when you stepped inside after walking through the fields, the coolness wrapped around you. The wooden floors were cool too, with little woven runners laid neatly across them, and there were almost always daisies standing in a pitcher on the table.
I would leave my little bag inside. There was hardly anything in it anyway, maybe one sundress for the weekend. I would change into one of Grandma’s garden dresses, throw off my shoes and run barefoot toward the summer kitchen because that was where I knew she would be.
Between the house and the summer kitchen there was another little gate with a big spring on it. It slammed so loudly behind me, and I loved making it slam. I can hear it now as clearly as if I were standing there.
Bang.
And then I would run.
The stones beneath my feet had been baking in the sun all day, so I would half run, half dance across them because they were so hot. Grass grew through the cracks, and along the path Grandma had planted those enormous daisies, little bells and pansies.
Before the summer kitchen stood a big table under a roof. Grandpa had enclosed the space with old window frames left from a renovation, and somehow those mismatched windows made the coziest veranda in the world. Grandma had planted wild roses around it and they had climbed everywhere, even over the doorway, where the branches hung down so low that you almost had to brush past them to enter.
They were that faded, dusty pink.
I have loved wild roses like that all my life.
I suppose now I know why.
The moment that spring gate slammed, Grandma would look out from the kitchen to see who had come running.
And then I would hear her voice.
“Oh, my Sanechka is here.”
God, how much I would give to hear somebody say those words to me one more time.
She would be standing there in her peach sundress, wearing an apron that was always a little dirty from whatever she was cooking, with curlers in her hair. Grandpa would be coming home for lunch soon, and by then her hair had to be done. She had been married to him forever, but Grandpa was coming home, so Grandma had to be pretty.
As a child, I never thought anything of it.
Now it breaks my heart with tenderness.
That summer kitchen had its own smell. Herbs were always drying somewhere in the draft. There was dill, tomatoes, apples, bread, flowers, something simmering on the stove. The roses smelled from outside and warm air moved through the open windows.
It smelled like summer.
Not the expensive candle version of summer we try to buy as adults.
Real summer.
The kind that gets into your hair and your skin and somehow stays there for the rest of your life.
And then I would go down into the cellar for the milk.
I had just been running barefoot across stones so hot they burned my feet, and the cellar steps were metal and unbelievably cold. I remember putting my feet on them and almost squealing from the difference. I would go down into that cool darkness and bring back the big clay jug of milk.
It was terribly heavy for me.
But of course I carried it myself.
Grandma would pour me a full cup, and before the milk even came out, the thick cream from the top would fall into my cup. Sometimes it felt as though half the cup was cream. Real cream, so thick it was almost like mascarpone.
Then I would tear off the crusty end of Grandma’s homemade yeast bread.
Not cut it. Tear it.
I would dip that warm, rough piece of bread straight into the milk, let it soak for a second, eat it, and then drink the cream.
And I swear to you, I don’t know if I have ever eaten anything better in my life.
I became a pastry chef. I have tasted extraordinary chocolate, beautiful cheeses, rare ingredients and desserts made by enormously talented people. I know what technically perfect food tastes like.
But there are flavors that technique can never compete with.
Because you are not only tasting them with your tongue.
You are tasting them with the person you used to be.
I would sit there with my cup of milk and tell Grandma everything that had happened on the journey. Who was sitting on the train. What funny people I had seen. Who said what. What happened on the road from the station.
To me these were enormous stories.
And to Grandma, apparently, they were too.
She listened.
That may be one of the greatest luxuries of childhood that we only understand when it is gone: there was once someone who genuinely had time for every silly little thing you wanted to tell them.
After a summer at Grandma’s, my cheeks would become round and rosy from all that milk, cream, bread and fresh food, and I looked like every other village child. I ran barefoot with the children from the street, came home dirty and hungry, ate again and disappeared outside again.
In the evening Grandpa came home.
We set the table and listened while he told us about his day at work. We didn’t interrupt him. Afterward we went outside to feed everyone. The chickens and rabbits were my responsibility, or at least I was completely convinced that the entire household would collapse without my assistance.
And then it got dark.
And tomorrow there would be milk again.
And bread. And Grandma.And Grandpa.
And that stupid loud gate.
And hot stones.And cold cellar steps.
And another whole day in front of me.
I think this is the part of childhood that hurts the most when you remember it.
We had absolutely no idea how happy we were.
Not because everything was perfect. It wasn’t.
But because we believed, without ever having to think about it, that all of this would still be there tomorrow.
Grandma would always be in that kitchen.
Grandpa would always come home for lunch.
The key would always be hanging behind the bench.
The roses would bloom again next summer.
There would always be another glass of milk.
Nobody tells a child to look carefully because one day this ordinary afternoon will become one of the most precious things she owns.
So I didn’t look carefully.
I just lived.I drank my milk.
I tore another piece of bread.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and ran outside.
And maybe that is why, all these years later, I can still remember it so clearly that it hurts.
So when my doctor says, “No lactose,” I understand what he means.
I really do.
But somewhere inside me a little girl immediately says, “No.”
Not an angry no.
A stubborn, slightly offended, very childish no.
Because how exactly am I supposed to explain to her that milk is suddenly the enemy?
That little girl survived enormous cups of fresh milk with a layer of cream on top. She ate homemade bread without knowing that one day people would become frightened of gluten. She ate what grew in the garden, what Grandma cooked, what Grandpa brought home, and then ran barefoot until sunset.
And she was so unbelievably happy.
Of course, if something truly makes us sick, we have to listen to our bodies. I am not arguing with medicine. I am not suggesting anyone ignore a real medical problem.
I am only realizing that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life removing every beautiful thing from it simply because somewhere on a piece of paper it says that my body might prefer otherwise.
If I can tolerate a little milk, I want my milk.
If I can eat bread, give me the crust.
Life already teaches us to give up so much.
People leave. Houses disappear. Grandparents become photographs. Gardens belong to someone else. Keys no longer hang behind old benches. One day you realize there is no train you can board, no field you can cross, no little green gate you can open that will take you back to the place where Grandma is still standing in her peach sundress with curlers in her hair.
So forgive me if I am not eager to voluntarily give up the taste of it too.
Call it lactose.
I call it summer.
I call it being barefoot.
I call it Grandma pouring milk into my cup while I talk too much.
I call it Grandpa coming home soon.
I call it a little girl who had one hryvnia in her pocket and somehow possessed the whole world.
And if you ask that little girl whether she would like her milk lactose-free now, I already know what she would say.
She would wrinkle her nose, pull the bread closer to herself and say: “No, thank you. Grandma’s is better.”
Your O ❤️
