Ukraine
Reuters (and Mykala, when I woke up this morning) told me this happened today:
Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Thursday in a massed assault by land, sea and air, the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War Two.
Right now I’m sitting with a panoramic view of pine, arborvitae, maple, and birch trees encrusted with little cakes of white, fresh snow. It’s quiet. Peaceful, even. I’m comfortable on the couch with my feet up, watching more snow fall gently; Ess is drinking hot chocolate, Mykala is making a fresh, savory, delicious evening meal. I’m warm, safe, healthy, with my family around me. In the garage to my left, we have three damn cars because there’s an extra one just waiting for when the oldest dies. If you drive a single mile from where I sit, there is a grocery store with more fresh food than we could ever eat, and there are twelve… twelve (TWELVE?!) other ones in this town with all the OTHER foods we could ever eat. Our power has gone out once in three years. Our natural gas has never failed in multiple decades to keep us warm in the winter, and to ensure we can always take warm showers and cook our food. We have four toilets. We’ve never once worried about bacteria or parasites in our water and we have a dedicated filter that makes it taste perfect. There is a drawer in our house that continually refills itself with ice. I’ve never, ever, gone hungry.
Why me?
I’ve done nothing to deserve this security, this endless bounty, this peace, this happiness. In the forty-plus thousand years of human history, I’m one of the luckiest single god damn persons.
I’m not sure what to DO with my profound sense of how unfair this is for the hundreds of generations before me and the billions of others suffering this instant. It is unfair that some of us live such a long time and others die too soon. It is unfair that some of us get fifth, sixth, seventh chances while others don’t even get a single one. It is a breathtaking waste and a heartbreaking loss that those who could’ve been our greatest poets, sculptors, writers, peacemakers, discoverers — that they died in squalor and obscurity, of preventable diseases, unnecessary famines, in meaningless wars started by shortsighted, murderous, foolish, barbaric, stupid, greedy men.
Which brings me back to Ukraine. Masha Gessen, yesterday:
Ukraine shares Russia’s history of tyranny and terror. It lost more than four million people to a man-made famine in 1931-34 and still uncounted others to other kinds of Stalinist terror. Between five and seven million Ukrainians died during the Second World War and the Nazi occupation in 1941-44; this included one and a half million Jews killed in what is often known as the Holocaust by Bullets. Just as in Russia, no family survived untouched by the twin horrors of Stalinism and Nazism.
Why was I born here and not there? Now and not then? Why?
Why me?
I have absolutely no answers. Haven’t even figured out yet what to do. I just have to sit with this jaw dropping, life-defining, universe-confounding stroke of good luck I have been given… and figure out how to honor it, what to do with it.