The Promise of Wheat

Like many Natalia’s, Ksenia’s and Larysa’s my age I spent a lot of my childhood learning about a country not embossed on my passport but uniquely part of my DNA. My early years were spent singing nursery rhymes on Saturday different than those I learned at Turkey Hill School Monday through Friday. I took on Ukrainian grammar at the same kitchen table with Mark Twain and Calculus.

Every summer, I was swimming and perfecting my overhand volleyball serve with fellow first-generation kids who also shared their weekends with “Ukie School”. We recited The Pledge of Allegiance in our Ukrainian scouting uniforms and learned how to fold both flags respectfully.

I memorized the words of Taras Shevchenko every March, I traced the beautiful profile of Lesya Ukrainka — for whom our youngest is named. I looked forward to spinning at a ridiculously fast rate with one hand during any given church dance or wedding kolymayka. I have a devotion to The Blessed Virgin just like both of my grandmothers. And their grandmothers. Easter is synonymous with incense and buttery, golden paska.

So, unsurprisingly, of course I felt a strong connection finally disembarking that train from Budapest the summer of 1990; the days relatives were unable to visit a loved one’s hotel room, unnaturally announcing their daily, early morning arrival with enthusiastic waves right in front of the sparsely furnished lobby’s big bay window. Via prior government vetting, my teta was granted last minute-clearance as the only person allowed inside the city’s one, foreigner-only hotel to collect me for the day- barely three steps beyond the unforgiving, office-like, stainless steel-trimmed, front door. While passing along a pack of unfiltered Malboro’s to the doorman daily as I exited was enough to secure an unharassed entrance for a 50-year old woman, it wasn’t enough to allow her in for goodbyes. Although, the promise of a pair of Wrangler jeans for his teenage son before I boarded my flight back late July did allow flexibility in terms of the time we called it a day.

After that trip, it was time for college in Indiana, a NOLA law school and setting down roots in North Carolina. Crowned in periwinkle with a bridal bouquet of pale pink roses and wheat, we received our marital blessings under Sts. Peter & Saint Paul’s spectacularly gilded domes- all made possible by previous generations of Ukrainian Americans.

And, I’m sure, like many of my Western peers, I’ve often wondered about what life would have been like had my mother’s family not left buried under the weight of hay covered potatoes one starless and bitter night. And, because of that split-second decision, I was able to pursue the life I wanted to pursue. Government never served as an obstacle to my dreams. My religion was never declared illegal. The language I spoke at home was never banned.

I finally saw the mysterious mark on the fleshy part of my great-aunt’s hand between her thumb and forefinger when I was a college sophomore seated in that scoop seat complete with attached rectangular desk, miles away from her small, red-bricked house. She never hid it, but she never talked about the mark reminding her how narrowly she escaped the camps so many did not. Her hair grew back. The tattoo never faded; it openly defied her, becoming darker and more noticeable as her skin grew more transparent and crinkled with age.

My grandfather had been beaten too many times to count because of his refusals to renounce the Ukrainian Catholic Church or give up his family land.

Turns out my mother never allowed us to wear clogs in the house when they were so popular in the early eighties not because she was overly concerned about scuff marks on the already softened and dull linoleum floor but because they reminded her of the forced marching she routinely heard go through her small village as a young girl.

These were and are the very real remnants of my family’s history.

Just as it hurts me when America is desecrated or pained, I cannot watch the promise of fields of boundless yellow wheat scorched repeatedly, intentionally; blue skies deadened by a horizon limited by plumes of punitive darkness.

With news of the attack on Ukraine, I have not stopped thinking about that split-second decision made so many decades ago.

I think about it as a mother. I think about the Vera’s, Chyrstyna’s and Tania’s who had the dream realized of a completely different Ukraine in front of them. Only to be cruelly decimated overnight by an unchecked maniac. I think about the Adrianna’s, Marika’s and Oksana’s desperately boarding those buses. Or a newly pregnant mother taking refuge underground in a subway station.

I think about the newly married couples returning from long-awaited, pandemic-paused honeymoons. I think about soon-to-be empty nesters fearful of that final hug before sending a son or daughter to fight front line battles. I think about school-aged children afraid of going to sleep at night under the cover of air raid sirens. I think about the elderly leaving this world very similarly to how they entered; fraught with fear and Soviet-fueled terror. I think about the tiny, wild strawberries, poppies and sunflowers waiting to grow in fields this summer. I think about everyone kneeling on cobblestones and concrete praying for peace.

I think about the crack in my tough as nails mother’s voice this morning, feeling her wringing over the phone. The utter despair. The worry. The reality of history repeating itself for her in the form of real-time CNN coverage and a home visit from the parish priest.

I think about my family. It is such a helpless feeling. I don’t know how else to describe it other than half of my heart feeling shattered into countless, cruelly uneven shards of painfully clear glass. It’s the feeling the other side of my heart felt that horrific morning of 9–11.

I pray for all Ukrainian military and civilians. I pray and hope for a miracle. I pray and hope for peace.

Stop Putin.

I stand with Ukraine.