Who we are supposed to hate

First, let me tell you a story, a real-life adventure in the “Wild East” of the early 2000s.

I was backpacking through Ukraine during a frigid March with American freelance photographer Kirt Vinion on the trail of a rumor about illegal coal mining operations in the Donetsk region. We’d been on the rails and the cold streets for three weeks and my stamina was wearing decidedly thin. A contact of a contact of a contact finally led us to the apartment of a woman named Svetlana in a mid-sized, out-of-work coal-mining town.

She’d agreed to put us up for the night and get us connected to local people who knew about the mafia operations in the old mine tunnels. Kirt offered her money for her trouble, but that wasn’t what she wanted. Svetlana was educated and she knew a couple of foreign journalists, thread-bare as we might be, could be important in the struggle for a better future for her town and region.

The heat had been off for months and Svetlana kept all four burners of her range stove going, trying—mostly futilely—to heat her apartment. She said the future would be bleak unless the mafia could be brought under control. She took us to a local pub in search of food, and several rough-looking men surrounded us and loudly stated that they were going to kill us. Svetlana played cool, said her “Papa wouldn’t like that” and they melted away.

Creative Commons image by John Karwoski

“Everyone has connections,” she shrugged. “It’s how we survive.”

The next day a local writer friend of hers smuggled us out of town, lying down in the back of his hatchback. The “Papa” trick hadn’t quite worked well enough, they said. Vasya, the writer, dropped us off at the edge of a leafless woodlot as snow began to fall again and told us to walk down the track to the right for two kilometers, then turn left at the fork and we’d find “it.” He sped away before I could get clear on what “it” was.

There was no cell signal out in Eastern Ukraine in those days. This was all low tech, so we shouldered our packs and hiked. I could tell Kirt was uncomfortable and doubting my language interpretation skills. I was, however, much happier out in trees, away from too many people. Snow or no snow, this I could handle.

Sure enough, after some anxiety and floundering around, we came to a tiny, dilapidated village bordered by towering slag heaps. We stumbled out of the trees and a wirery old man came out of the nearest house, grinning from ear to ear with delight.

“Valeriy,” he told us his name was. He gave us hugs and double-cheeked Russian kisses and hustled us into the warmth of his “kitchen,” which was an open-sided shed in his garden enclosure. There he had a fire going and he started to fry up a small pile of potatoes. My hunger was almost overpowering. We hadn’t eaten a decent meal in a week and we hadn’t had anything to eat all day—with our escape from death threats and all.

When I thought I couldn’t stand it a second longer, Valeriy divided up the fried potatoes, sprinkled on salt and we fell to ravenously. “Yes,” we’d found the right place, he confirmed, bobbing his head up and down. “Yes,” someone had told him to expect us.

“Svetlana?”

Well, he didn’t know her exactly, but through someone else, a grape vine, one way or another, he knew about us and wanted to help.

“Tonight, you sleep!” Valeriy boomed heartily. “Tomorrow you will see the mines.”

“Will the mafia be upset that we’re here?”

“No, no, silly worries,” he guffawed. “Don’t worry. You’re safe here.”

The next day, true to his word, Valeriy introduced us to his relative-of-some-sort Vasily, who led us into the woods and introduced us to two different teams of illegal mine workers. One group was crawling in and out of a ventilation shaft in the a wooded draw half a mile outside the village.

While Kirt got outfitted to accompany the miners underground, I sat talking to the young women who made up a good part of the crew. They were in their late teens, little more than girls, but their faces were hard and black with coal dust. They showed me the hundred-pound sacks of coal they had drug up out of the shaft by hand without equipment beyond old helmets and headlamps.

“Isn’t it dangerous?”

“Of course it is, but there is no food here without money... The state controls all the farmland. If we don’t work, we don’t eat and neither do our children.”

Where were the older people? I asked. Mostly anyone over thirty was so sick with lung diseases from breathing the coal dust that they could no longer work. The crews got younger and younger every year, the girls told me.

The second shaft we visited went straight down like a well. There was a twelve-year-old working there, squirming into places the adults were too large to reach. “Yes,” they worried. The women in that group showed me the shrine for a group of colleagues who had died in a cave-in a month earlier. But here the same desperate explanation was repeated, and their gaunt faces and the fact that we could barely find food to buy despite our hard currency made it very believable.

We returned to Valeriy’s house exhausted that night but excited to have finally found what we had been looking for all those weeks. Valeriy had more planned for us the next day. He talked animatedly about how good this land had once been to his family. Showing me a portrait of Joseph Stalin, he kept in a place of honor in his living room, he explained that his parents had been resettled here from some place in northern Russia. They’d been hungry all the time and here the land was open.

“No one living on it,” he smiled, thinking back to his childhood. “The soil grew food as easily as weeds, and there was coal and good jobs for everyone.”

I was practiced at not showing my shock. I’d interviewed on both sides of grisly wars before and I knew how to keep an interested, open expression and just ask questions. But I picked at his memory a bit, tried to ferret out any concern over Stalin’s image in the rest of the world. Nope. Nada. If Valeriy had any clue that Stalin was not widely considered a working man’s hero, he was a better poker face than I.

We bedded down in the living room, covered in beautiful Russian wool carpets, paintings and antique furniture. Obviously this household had once known much better times.

Then, at five o’clock in the morning, as light was just breaking through the trees, Valeriy shook me awake. His face was drawn and ghostly white. His hands trembled and his voice rasped in a terrified whisper.

“Get up! You’ve got to get out now! Go! The FSB is coming for you! Someone snitched.” The FSB is supposed to be the Russian secret police, but colloquially that could mean anything from paramilitaries to mafia to rogue state actors.

Valeriy’s terror was all the more contagious because of his certainty of safety the day before. Kirt and I threw on our packs and ran through the trees on a trail behind Valeriy. We burst out of the woods along side a narrow highway and Valeriy flagged down a bus with letters spelling out Kyiv across the front.

“Don’t come back,” he called out as we swung aboard.

That was my experience in Eastern Ukraine in a nutshell. The most important theme across the whole week we were in the region was the incredible kindness of complete strangers, who—usually for no self-interest that I could discern—risked everything to help, shelter us, smuggle us from place to place or direct us to the next contact, all because they knew the medieval system of mafia-run, black-market coal mining that employed the labor of starving children was terrible and untenable.

The chain of good-hearted, brave people it took to get Kirt and me to that story was humbling. We published it in a major feature for the international newspaper The Christian Science Monitor. It inspired other researchers, but sadly it likely didn’t lead to any immediate improvements in the lives of the people of those desperate villages.

We tried, but the work of a journalist is to highlight one crisis after another. Usually, the follow up falls to others.

But today that story takes on new significance, and my knowledge of Eastern Ukraine—such as it is—is sought out due to the current war. I’m always hard pressed in these conversations to explain, “No, really these people were Russians. They spoke Russian… Yes, they helped us. They probably saved our lives a few times… Yes, they had portraits of Stalin… Yup, they were clueless… Yes, they literally shared their last remnants of food with us.”

And damn it! That is not a political statement. It is just a fact.

Yes, the Russian invasion is wrong, illegal and unwarranted. Yes, even in the East where there are a lot of “ethnic Russians,” it’s still wrong. Putin is a madman. So many Russians are duped by propaganda. Valeriy was. He thought Stalin saved his family. Heck, maybe Stalin did save his family, after he murdered a third of the Ukrainian population, which was why all that good farmland was empty and waiting for Russian resettlement back in the 1930s.

That doesn’t make it less of a fact that Svetlana, Vasya, Valeriy and Vasily risked their lives to help us, a couple of shoestring American journalists, get the word out about the excesses of their mafia overlords, That doesn’t erase their kindness and courage. And it does not mean I will ever hate all Russians or feel comfortable around the online vitriol and hate speech about ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

It’s understandable, and if your family or friends are under bombardment or held hostage in a blockade, you get some free passes to emote, in my book. But don’t ask me to go along and laugh at sick jokes about killing scared young recruits who don’t know where they are. I’ll work on planning routes for refugees and aid workers until I am sleep deprived and tottering, but hate has nothing to do with it.

I know there are Russians who do know the truth of the matter and they are horrified and ashamed at their state’s actions. They have my sympathy, not my hate. I’ll help them too, if I can.

And those who don’t know… Those who are taken in by the propaganda? I hope they’ll get out of that and force this war to stop. I’ll help there if I can too, and I know to be careful, because those guys who threatened to kill us in the pub, they were ordinary small town Russians too.

This isn’t naïveté. It’s just realism. People are people here or over there.

If given a chance, some people will go to extremes, grab all they can for themselves no matter who it hurts, hurt others just for kicks or a sense of power, scream hate and even kill. People here have that capacity, when they think they have the backing of those with power, as they did on January 6, 2021. And people there do too. The greater the feeling that violence is condoned, the greater the atrocities.

It isn’t a fundamental difference in humans. It’s just whether or not we let the bad wolves in our midst be in charge with guns or whether we insist on good wolves and the rule of law.

No matter the times or the conflict, there is always someone we’re supposed to hate. Most often, it seems like it’s right-wingers and rural “conservatives” preaching hate against this or that group, sometimes someone we’re at war with, sometimes someone coming to work the hard, dirty jobs they don’t want.

But the war in Ukraine has seemed to give educated, liberal folks a weird kind of license to hate. And the terms and jokes I’ve heard out of people I thought were level-headed and kind are sobering.

It’s one more reminder that no category really matters, not left or right, not ours or theirs. What matters—and it matters a great deal—is what kind of person an individual chooses to be right now in the moment, relating, thinking, talking. That line you cross when you let a little hate speech go because it feels good to release some of the pent up frustration, that’s the line that matters.

Breaking taboos: Empowering the vulnerable

Sit down where your kind is not allowed to sit. Demand a seat at the table when the discussion is about you. Take up space. Talk about sex. Talk about race. Talk about bodies. Talk about disability. Love whomever you love and say it loud and proud. Talk about rape. Mention sexual abuse. Talk about real history. Take a knee even though it makes someone uncomfortable. Call out the euphemisms, like “collateral damage,” that cover cruelty with a nice or confusing glaze.

Each of these actions represented at one time a shocking shattering of a taboo. Each of these actions was undertaken by people whose personal empowerment had been suppressed. The thing they have most in common is that disempowered people took the one thing they could do and used it “unfairly” against their oppressors.

Creative Commons image by Paul Wicks

Disempowered people “took advantage.” They found that one thing where they had an advantage—breaking a silence, being physically inconvenient, being visible on national TV—and they damn well used it. In each case, they were told that was a line too far, that good people support their struggle BUT “This kind of shocking action just drives people away,” or “It does more harm than good.”

And thank the gods someone eventually didn’t listen and took their personal power up and used it anyway. Breaking taboos like those has been a key part in the ongoing process of saving the soul of humanity.

Last moon’s post turned out to be one of my most controversial ever, because I did just that. I broke a taboo. It was uncomfortable, and I felt the resistance of the taboo while I was writing. But I had found myself in a small walled pit in my life, a dark place with only one way out. I took the one thing I could still do, the one place where I am not disempowered—this blog—and I used it to break a silence that had gone on too long.

That taboo is against speaking out about private psychological abuse within families. Several of my most supportive readers were shocked and expressed disappointment that I had taken that step. No one showed that they fully believe me, except those members of my family who have witnessed the abuse and who are still fighting so hard just to survive this crisis that they aren’t reading blogs right now.

I’ll admit it stung. I wasn’t expecting much of a response. People don’t leave a lot of comments on personal blogs, mine or anyone else’s. And I’ve had negative responses before. I’d be a pretty bland writer if I hadn’t. But the fact that that was the one post that disappointed and even offended some people shakes my belief in the moral arc of the universe somewhat.

Really?? Keeping silent about private family matters is that important? Even when it’s been going on for ten years and the person being abused has been directed to keep silence about it? Even when every descrete method has been tried? Even when “just leave” truly isn’t a physically possible option? Even when it’s hurting kids?

I didn’t mention names, though anyone very close with my family probably knows who I was talking about. That’s because most people close to my family have either witnessed a sample or two of the insults and verbal attacks I’ve been receiving for more than a decade, seen my responses or felt the tension.

I’m sorry we all have to live in a world with this sort of thing in it, but it is not my job to keep silence about it. I did for many years at the request of family members I love and respect. Part of that request was a promise that the situation would be handled, that my children and I would be protected. It wasn’t handled, and my eleven-year-old and I have taken the brunt of the results.

Now we are just beginning to deal with this long-term psychological abuse pattern realistically as a family because others saw the devastating effects on a child and how it could have physical and health consequences. Because we’re now handling it, I will probably not continue to talk about it publicly. But I decided to write this second post, because the taboo of silence is so disturbing.

Writing about it was something I did because it was my only point of empowerment. Otherwise, I am disadvantaged in the situation in every way. I’m a disabled woman. My voice when I speak is often considered “shrill” and thus discredited because I’m a woman, while a man can raise his deeper voice with less consequence. I was traditionally dismissed in my family because I showed emotion, rather than keeping a cool exterior. I can’t drive, so it is much harder for me to just leave a situation and impossible for me to dramatically stomp out and win by absense. My kids have developmental/neurological disabilities that make caring for them and protecting them complicated.

I had a lot of strikes against me. But I had one thing where I am strong—writing.

And I used it when I was pushed to the limit and my kids were significantly affected. Using it in this case required breaking a taboo and that has made some of my readers uncomfortable.

Had I been able to just take my kids and drive away from verbal attacks, had I been able to raise my voice and talk over others like a man, had I been able to buy and pay for attractions to keep my kids away from the conflict and abuse… in short, if I’d had a lot of the advantages the person attacking me has used against me, I doubt anyone would complain.

But I don’t have either the ability to drive, a man’s privilege or much money. I have the gift of writing and a blog I’ve built up over many years as a way to be heard. So that’s what I used when in a moment of desperation and need.

I hope this explanation helps some who felt the understandable tension around this taboo breaking. I certainly meant no disrespect of you, my readers. I am very thankful for your presence and for those who read, when you have the time and energy. It means a great deal and helps to combat the isolation of this day and age.

I do hope you will stay with me. If I lost a few on that last post, they probably weren’t looking for my kind of writing. Many of you have written to me over the years, saying that you love my posts and my writing because of how “real” I keep things, how I look at deep issues both in my life and in the world. I hear you and this is part of “keeping it real.”

I talk about injustice when it’s there, but I generally avoid pointing fingers. In fact, the blog I’ve been trying to publish for the past two months, the one that was supposed to be out last month but is instead accompanying this post is about the importance of curbing our urges toward hate speech against an entire nationality, no matter how extreme the circumstances. That’s why a lot of you read my posts, for the realist, yet non-judgmental take on things.

I appreciate that and the principles are still applicable when something is personal. But individuals are truly individuals and their actions have consequences. Avoiding stereotypes about an entire group is very different from avoiding criticism of an individual. Putin… yeah, have at him, as far as I’m concerned. The same goes for individuals closer to home, who have demonstratively used power and privilege to hurt or demean others.

Yes, sometimes there are two sides to a story, but part of being real is being able to own one’s own part in conflict. I have and I do. I’ve been in regular arguments. I’ve even yelled insults at someone in a moment of intense anger. I wish I didn’t and I apologized, even if I still think they deserved it. But a sustained campaign of verbal and psychological abuse over years is not the same as arguments or heated moments.

And just because writing empowers me, that doesn’t mean I have absolute power here because of it. Readers are free to dismiss, criticize or just plain not believe what I write. But it is probably no accident that writing about private family psychological abuse is something patriarchal society tells us is wrong and “too far.” Writing things like this corrodes the patriarchy.

Gaslighting the whole world

A friend asked if it’s possible that Putin really doesn’t know what he’s doing in Ukraine and how badly things are going for his troops. He has the internet. He and his advisors have always been world-savvy. How can he just not care that everyone sees his crimes?

Well, now. That’s quite an interesting question.

I know Russia fairly well. I can predict how Putin’s restrictions will play out. Russia is still a country with inadequate access to media and information for most people. It’s also a country with a lot of tradition around the symbol of a strong leader/national father figure.

So, in short, at home he can put it over on a lot of people. Not all of them anymore, hence the brave members of the Russian intellectual and professional classes who have protested once and then been silenced. I root for them, but unless enough of Putin’s closest friends feel the same way, little is likely to change his thinking.

But beyond knowing Russia, I know his "type" all too well.

Putin has a double, you see. Not a physical double in this case, but a psychological double… in my life.

This is a person who is highly intelligent, immensely arrogant, physically self-controlled, consumed with inner anger and contempt for others as well as utterly convinced of his own righteousness. Both Putin and his psychological double in my life have at times claimed their crusade is about spiritual and moral purity. They also both show signs of a kind of hyper-masculine fragility.

Both regularly accuse others of the actions they have either just committed or are about to commit. Both insist that any casualties of their actions are the fault of those they are attacking. Both appear to be immune to all attempts at diplomacy or discussion.

I am sure I’m not the only one with a Putin double handy, but mine has been copying Putin in real time. This is a family member who has been waging a decade-long campaign to tear me down as a parent, much as Putin has nursed his personal grudge against Ukraine for years. First, when my kids were babies, it was always, “She can’t possibly be safe with kids when she’s visually impaired.”

Photo of a room reduced to rubble. Through the wreckage of a smashed television set, we see a gas mask amid other debris. -Image via Pixabay

Sometimes it was stated openly to discredit me in front of others. Other times it was a quiet jibe for my ears only, but in hopes that I would react and bring down the criticism of others for tainting a family get-together with drama.

It would have been irritating enough if this person’s opinion were just an opinion. As it was, it meant that my kids and I were more isolated from the rest of the family because unlike other parents, I was “never to be left alone with anyone else’s kid.”

Need I say it? But ok, nope, I didn’t have close calls in the safety arena. I fished an infant nephew out of a swimming pool before anyone else could react. I prevented a number of possible accidents involving babies and batteries, which I heard clattering in just that particular way that only batteries clatter. My kids were all-in-all physically safer than their cousins and even when I wasn’t allowed to babysit, I still managed to be handy in a few crises.

Then, when that outright falsehood wasn’t as easy to pull over on the rest of the family, the campaign switched to my “overly rigid” parenting methods. As you might already know, my kids were both adopted from Eastern European orphanages and had trauma and health issues as baggage. I went at parenting much the way I go about most things—with research first, exacting planning and then enthusiastic implementation.

I usually had one or two “attachment parenting” books under my arms in the early years and when doctors said, “Routine is so very important to children who have experienced attachment trauma.” I didn’t just blow it off. I first made a plan for meals and bedtimes and stuck to it. I also noticed the chaos that happened when I occasionally didn’t.

The long and the short of it was that both of my kids needed a lot of structure, routine and cushion to be emotionally regulated and healthy. So, there were a lot of family arguments when I insisted I needed to leave an event in time for my kids to be only one hour late for bedtime rather than four hours late, as other parents found acceptable. Or when I insisted that massive doughnuts at 5:30 pm are not a good idea, since I was giving them dinner at 6 no matter how inconvenient it might be.

And yeah, I insisted they not have sweets right before real food. I didn’t just mouth it. I meant it.

This Putin double was always criticizing and rallying others to blame me and my parenting choices for any difficulties.

Well, once my kids got older and my daughter was diagnosed with severe ADHD and a neuro-developmental disability as well as attachment trauma, there was extra fodder for the cannons. Suddenly, the Putin double went from someone who quoted studies to a science denier on child development.

“There is no dis-ability. Arie is pathologizing her kids. There is trauma behind these kids’ terrible behaviors to be sure. Trauma she created through bad parenting.” That is a lot more concise than the lengthy, berating, yelling lectures this Putin double regularly delivered, but it uses all the key words and phrases.

When asked what exactly caused this “trauma” or what was the “bad parenting,” I’m told it is things like “using the wrong tone” or “not setting enough limits” or “making an assumption.” Because the internet is full of a blame and shame culture, it’s dangerous to repeat this sludge, but I trust that even just reading about my parenting journey has given my readers some context for this.

Yeah, I’ve had my parenting moments. Who hasn’t? I guarantee you that no one parenting kids with attachment trauma and FASD can claim to have never used a harsh tone they regretted. When a neuro-diverse kid has an “executive functioning disability” as in this case, consequences and behavior modification methods don’t work the way they do with other kids.

A lot of consequences still happen anyway, but getting mad at the child because the standard methods don’t work on them isn’t really helpful. But there is no one I’ve ever met who can truly manage to never get mad when an otherwise reasonably healthy twelve-year-old colors on freshly painted walls again or throws a two-hour fit about brushing their teeth for the tenth night running.

But I digress… The heart of this post is about Putin and the kind of thinking that allows someone like my difficult family member to take things to open war “and devil take the civilian casualties.”

I guess the civilians in this case are the kids.

Putin spent the winter sending tanks crawling across Russian grasslands toward the Ukrainian border. His double spent the winter criticizing my tone of voice or yelling at me over conversations he misheard from the other room, since I’ve relocated back to his neck of the woods. Both were warned. Both claimed innocent intent.

“Just training exercises. We have a right to develop our defenses,” said Putin.

“I have a right to an opinion. I’m just giving valuable parenting advice,” his double said.

My eleven-year-old son who was adopted from an Eastern European orphanage had a hard time getting attached to our family when he was little. Hearing this constant criticism of his primary parent really confused him. He started repeating the same words, yelling at me, insisting he didn't have to follow any rules or do his homework because I am “bad at parenting.” Kids that age don’t generally use the word “parenting,” but they do repeat what they hear.

Then in February, Putin sent his troops storming into a sovereign country, a nation that had long thought of the Russians as their friends and called them “brothers.” They started bombing schools, hospitals and residential buildings as well as “legitimate” military targets, if such a term can be applied to an unprovoked war.

The Putin double near me started lecturing my easily manipulated neuro-diverse kids behind my back about how my parenting is “rediculous” when he took them and cousins on “fun” outings. He encouraged them to disregard any instructions I gave. He spoke of me and to me with contempt and hate. He yelled and demeaned me in front of the kids because I asked my son to look through a pile of cast off socks to pick out his.

The criticism, shouting and covert attacks on my children’s relationship with me was very much like bombardment. And while it didn’t kill, it wreaked havoc on my children’s psyches.

The world said “no” to Putin and demanded that he cease hostilities and stop wantonly killing civilians. Putin obfuscated, denied, twisted facts and blamed the victims of his aggression. He said the civilians were “human shields” because they had not left the war zone quickly enough. Then he closed humanitarian corridors for fleeing refugees, trapping them so that they could not escape. And when some did, his troops shot and bombed them.

Meanwhile, my family united to demand that Putin’s double stop the harassment. And the double obfuscated, denied, twisted facts and blamed the victims of his aggression. I supposedly wasn’t sensitive enough when my son said he didn’t want to sort socks. My kids’ have learning disabilities because I must not have used the right “behavior modification methods.” He had to step in because his conscience demanded he let “the truth” be known. If I said anything, he shouted over me, never allowing a word or phrase to be heard through the barrage.

And the children saw that a loud voice and a large, male body is what wins. They saw their mother shamed, treated with contempt and shouted down for no particular reason. And they learned from that. They learned what a mother is worth in this patriarchal world. They didn’t die, but they lost something immensely valuable as they repeated his words and screamed, “I hate you! I want a real mother! You’re disabled! You’re a bad parent!” for days after each family gathering with the Putin double.

As the weeks dragged on Putin accused Ukrainian forces of using chemical weapons. By now, many world leaders were savvy to his mind games and hazmat forces went on high alert. With no evidence that his accusations were anything but wind, another reason for those accusations was apparent. He was covering for and confusing the discussion about his own chemical attacks. And evidence of the use of white phosphorous by Russian troops has already emerged.

At the same time, Putin’s double fell in love with the word “abusive,” screaming the accusation at me over and over again. Allowing no word about actual events in edgewise. To confuse the discussion and to cover for his own abuse, the easiest angle is to accuse others of the actions he himself has committed.

Why do I belabor this point of comparing these two men?

Partly, it’s simply because they took their actions at the same time, and that made the comparison striking. I, like many who thought they knew Russia, was taken in for much of the winter by the insistence that while the criticism from Putin’s double was irritating and insulting, it was basically harmless, just an abhorrent and insulting opinion. Then, I got a rude awakening when my son started screaming hate at me, throwing objects and even pummeling me with his fists. We’ve already had to call the police twice to help him calm down and keep everyone safe, including him.

But more than that, with these two situations side by side in my life I can see them both more clearly. Putin’s actions are not just those of a war criminal. That is plenty bad, certainly. But it is important to understand that he is also gaslighting the whole world, engaging in a campaign of psychological warfare.

At the same time, every abuser who employs the tactics of gaslighting and psychological abuse is as dangerous to the people in their life as Putin is to the people fleeing his bombs. More than ever before, I have come to understand the pleas of organizations helping victims of domestic violence, asking that we take psychological abuse as seriously as physical abuse.

My family and I waited too long to act decisively. We are acting now. You need not fear for my children’s safety or call up an intervention on their behalf. But I see now that I didn’t act when I should have. As a result, my children suffered a retraumatization of the early terror they lived through when they were tiny infants in a faceless orphanage system.

I let an untenable situation go on too long, partly because I was distracted by volunteering to organize evacuations of refugees from Ukraine. I didn’t realize that while I was off putting out blazes, my own house was on fire.

I hope people hear me on this one. Please take psychological abuse seriously. If you are experiencing a barrage of verbal attacks, gaslighting, manipulation, twisting of facts, a campaign of denigration and contempt, these are classic signs. It can be very hard to take action when the relationship is close and there is often a cost of setting firm boundaries. We often love those who engage in this abuse and our children do as well.

If you see someone else under this kind of onslaught, I hope you will remember not only that but also how easily victims are blamed and issues are obfuscated by psychological abuse. There is often a sketchy narrative in which “both sides” are apparently guilty of misdeeds, but in reality, the misdeeds of one side far outweigh those of the other.

Putin alleged discrimination against the Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine and western support for right-wing groups to justify this war. There is some legitimacy to these claims. Still, while those may be concerns that need to be addressed, they are not war crimes that slaughter thousands upon thousands of people.

Putin’s double also accused me of raising my voice or being overly persistent in a rule with my kids. And for a time, my family was taken in by this and insisted that this was a conflict between two people who had both made mistakes. I even admitted that I had raised my voice and that it wasn’t good.

But finally, my family came to realize that the times I succumbed to frustration or exhaustion were a tiny fraction of my parenting, which has been almost entirely calm in the face of much difficulty, and even my worst parenting moments are not the kind of actions that create the type of internal trauma my children were acting out.

It is not easy to set limits on Putin’s double. For now, he has free rein at the extended family home and while he’s been asked to leave by the legal owners, no one is willing to force the issue in a way that could be traumatic for any of the kids, including his. For now, my kids may miss some family gatherings in order to be kept safe. We will have to find more things to do in our little basement apartment on weekends and we’ll miss the beauty of this spring in the mountains until Putin’s double either leaves or shows signs of working through his issues.

I only wish it was this easy to put limits on Putin, and despite the ordeal I’ve been through, I’m so grateful his double doesn’t have nuclear weapons.

Time for more war?

I’m still at my computer late at night. I shouldn’t be, but I am still here, because on the other side of the world there is a driver in a minivan in a city just west of the front lines in Ukraine, sitting with her phone, trying to get a signal from the struggling cell towers, praying for a map to guide her and her cargo—a family with a disabled child—out of the path of indiscriminate bombs and gunfire.

And I’m the one with that map.

How in the hell…? Well, life is weird. I was in Ukraine many years ago. I can read the maps. I can sort of understand the language. I was also in the Balkans during conflicts there. I was a journalist, but I was also known as “that one is good with a map.”

Image of the Carpathian mountains by https://www.flickr.com/photos/bortescristian/

There was the time when no one could get across the Macedonian front lines and somehow—visually impaired as I am—my eyes were drawn to a faint logging trail on the hiking map I was using to navigate our team around the war zone. It seemed to avoid all the hostile checkpoints and the shelling areas, though not quite all the sniper ranges.

We decided to try it and we got through, so that we could give reports on the situation—kids hiding in basements listening to blasts that rattled the windows—back to the Red Cross, humanitarian aid groups and the world at large.

That was twenty years ago, but as it turns out, I’m still good with a map. Or so my colleagues say in a network of volunteers trying to evacuate the most vulnerable people who don’t have their own cars from Ukrainian hotspots. There are kids hiding from bombs in basements again, and I’m stuck in La Grande, Oregon amid snow melt, muddy roads, preteen basketball games, family dental appointments and IEP meetings, but there are those who still want to call me back in.

That’s the part that floors me. Isn’t there someone with a paid job, who can do this ten times better than I can. “Nope,” says the guy I get orders from. He’s ex-military but he’s a volunteer too and on disability. Some of the other volunteers are civilian employees of the military, but they aren’t getting paid to do this. The US military is strictly hands-off, even when it comes to evacuating kids. The situation is that touchy.

For the past few days, we’ve been evacuating children in orphanages, families with small children, the sick, the disabled and the elderly, people who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten out. Our group has evacuated more than 500 independently and our maps have helped many others picked up by other organizations.

I don’t really have time for this, given that my life was already jammed with multiple health crises—mine and my kids’—as well as bureaucracy and trying to be a writer. That’s why I’m on it after my son is in bed.

And one last report is coming in... I watch in horror a video forwarded from Twitter, showing a bomb falling onto the bridge I was just about to guide that van across. The guy videoing nearly dropped his phone, the blast shook him so badly even hundreds of yards away. His voice is hoarse, in shock, “The bridge… the music place… hit.”

It’s heartbreaking. But I don’t have time to think about it. I am back to the map, scanning feverishly for another route. OK, that one. Yes, it goes by a military zone but it’s only an old training center, no buildings, unlikely to be a target. It’s the only way west left anyway. Send them that way.

I send it off. Pray. Think of the dim photo I’ve seen of some of the drivers in one of our minivans, smiling through exhaustion. Maybe the same one. Maybe a different one. Then I have to sleep, to force myself not to think about it any more.

I have been almost entirely absent on social media and in real life social situations. My friends ask why I don’t have much to say about Ukraine. They know I’ve been there. Don’t I care? Isn’t it terrible that Biden won’t impose a no-fly zone to protect the Ukrainians? Don’t I think it’s all about Putin going after the natural gas reserves in Dombas? Shouldn’t NATO be doing more to help?

I’ve always had an opinion because I have been a lot of places, know a lot of things first hand and research what I don’t know. And my first field was Eastern Europe.

But I’ve seen several of today’s top “experts” on Eastern Europe and Russia on TV admitting that we’re bamboozled. The “old Russia hands” as we used to call people who were supposed to know this stuff said Putin was just posturing. Before Feb. 24, if you’d asked me, I would have said the same. And we were disastrously wrong.

What is worse is that we’ve woken up to a geopolitical world that has shifted in fundamental ways. Our confidence is shaken and we have to recalculate most of our assumptions about the world.

The one thing we do know is that Russia has nukes, a lot of nukes. And yes, their tanks fall apart and their supply lines are in utter chaos. (This is actually something any old Russia hand could have told you ages ago. Russians even have phrase for that sort of thing, “That’s Russia!” delivered in a sarcastic/resigned tone.) But that does not mean all of their nukes will malfunction and their missiles seem to fly well enough, if not always straight.

Russia—the state structure that is—still has a lot of fight in it, a lot of corrupt flexibility and a lot of technical expertise, though often concentrated in certain places rather than spread out across general manufacturing. I like Russiasn in general and consider several to be good friends, but I have never had any doubt about the villainous nature of their authority figures or state bureaucracy.

Just as we thought Putin was posturing, we think—we hope—enough Russian officials are as worried about the prospect of nuclear war as we are that “they wouldn’t go that far.” But we’ve just been taught a hard lesson on what our speculations are worth after the bombs fall.

So, when asked I am much more likely to look troubled, shrug and say “for once I’m glad I’m not in charge.”

The Ukrainians have every reason and right to demand greater help from the west. The west, the US specifically, mucked around in Ukrainian politics, financed this or that party, supported western-leaning figures and nationalist groups. Now our diplomats put their palms forward and say, “Hey, we never promised anything.” But the promise was implied. It is even implied for anyone in all the wordage of UN documents on human rights and peace.

But the choices are stark. Putin has little left to lose. He will likely not survive, if his war fails. And he doesn’t strike me as the self-sacrificing type. I fear he’ll use chemical or nuclear weapons before he’ll allow his forces to lose. That would likely be inside Ukraine for now… likely… again the value of these speculations...

But while I would very much like to believe that the Russian operators with the actual physical means to either launch or not launch long-range nuclear weapons won’t go through with orders to use them, that’s one hell of a bet.

So, I don’t know what to tell our policy makers, except this: I’m a disabled person, living in a basement on disability and I’ve got two kids with special needs to take care of. And I’m now a “key component” in the urgent humanitarian effort to evacuate Ukrainian civilians from the war zone. That is ridiculous!

I’m badass and all—har har—but the people doing this should be paid and have the proper software and childcare and so forth.

Some people are clamoring for a bigger military budget, when our military can currently do diddly crap about the current situation, and there is nothing saying this will be the last time. At the same time, we have only minuscule humanitarian forces.

If we’d had a huge professional humanitarian corps—say funded a third as much as we fund our military (that would be incredibly huge)—ready to step in in crises, including doctors, drivers, administrators, IT support and yes, the occasional map analyst, we could have evacuated the Ukrainian population so fast Putin’s war would have been merely an infrastructure loss that we could have forced his cronies to pay off for years to come.

But we don’t. We have volunteers scrambling, disorganization, chaos and ad hoc efforts.

I know this is scary. (I’ve had nightmares about nuclear war too—like I had as a kid, for the first time in 30 years. I know. I know.) But please don’t be pulled into the same old cycle that goes nowhere. Beefing up the US military and filling the coffers of military contractors is not going to fix this or prevent the next one. The thing that can actually counter the nuclear threat is a humanitarian corps that has the strength and power of a military machine without the weapons.

Maybe some covert ops team will get in and neutralize the Russian capability for launching nuclear weapons. I hope they do, and that would be a good focus for military people. But that does not require all the gigantic hardware or even a fraction of the budget and personnel of the US military. That kind of operation requires focus, specialized skills, people who not only know languages but know the cultures intimately.

So, increase spending on that kind of thing? Sure.

But that’s a long shot and it might easily not work. What is not a long-shot is funding a humanitarian corp that could prevent an entire country from becoming hostages in the first place. Fund a humanitarian corps as big as an army. Train people to fight fire, floods, wounds, disease and every other type of crisis. Have equipment and vehicles ready the way a military does. The reason armies have those things and humanitarian agencies don’t is just money, not any difference in commitment and urgency.

Next time, let’s have an answer that renders the next tyrant impotent.

We don’t send Ukraine fighter jets, not because we don’t have the money, but because the Russians could use that as an excuse to launch a nuke, maybe at us, but maybe just at western Ukraine, into the midst of the millions of refugees streaming toward the west. That’s the scenario I fear most acutely. We have sent humanitarian aid but not enough and not with the logistical coordination that would really matter, and that we could do, IF we were prepared.

I hear the pleas of Ukrainians, begging for NATO—essentially that means the US, my country—to “close the sky.” That sky is raining death and destruction on them every day. And they believe we could stop it. But military analysts know we might well not be able to stop it and it would mean all-out war between superpowers, mostly on top of the Ukrainians. As understandable as their cries are, it would be unlikely to save them.

More armies, bombs and guns has rarely been a good answer in human history. Maybe it was different before the nuclear age. Maybe. I don’t know what it was like to live during WWII. I have generally thought we had to fight the Nazis. And I think the Ukrainians have to fight this war, and the individuals going to fight with them are on there right side of history. But making a bigger war won’t help Ukraine or anyone else.

So, if you’re one of those people wondering what exactly we should do. Build a humanitarian corps. Build international peace and security structures. They matter.

The one time I was facing the barrels of guns in a war zone nose to nose, it was not more guns that saved me and my vulnerable interpreter. It was three unarmed peacekeeping personnel, who put themselves between us and the gunmen. That war could have blown up but it didn’t, and that was one of the reasons why.

My prayers go with all those fleeing war tonight—the people navigating dark back roads winding ever westward or packed into train cars hoping the missiles won’t find them. My prayers go with the drivers heading toward the war with a trunk full of food and winter coats and seats waiting to carry out refugees. My prayers go even with the soldiers, those who have to fight for their homes, those forced to fight, those misled by lies and those who turn aside from killing by jamming their guns or snipping wires in a tank.

I hope against hope that this war, as awful as it is, will not drag out into a longer war, will not cause longstanding hate in mixed families and mixed neighborhoods, will not spill over into other countries. But like so many others, I can’t do much about those things besides hope. What I can do is help to save one more van full of refugees. That won’t change the course of the war, but it will matter to that one.

Laughing til you cry: The perils of overly real comedy for stress relief

This has been one hell of a week in a doozy of a month in the most disrupted year of my adult life.

It hasn't been all bad... I have been making progress to reclaim my health, but it is definitely a rocky and uneven road. I have really enjoyed winter in Eastern Oregon with the sweet air, the trees, the snow, the tracks of wild animals and even the quiet, bermed streets.

But otherwise, seriously... Gods, have mercy!

I don't want to bring anyone else down and mostly it's just the same old things everyone else is dealing with--the long grind of the pandemic with all of its costs. But there are also doctor's appointments of various kinds for me or my kids at least six times a week, my daughter's ongoing crisis, my son's renewed crisis at school and at home, special education plans and meetings for both kids, my grandmother getting covid, the father of my son's best friend dying of an overdose, family conflict and scheduling... this week has just been especially rugged.

One of the things I have learned in my journey back to better health is that the severe stress I have been dealing with for the past ten or fifteen years--largely for reasons I can't control--is likely the primary contributing factor in developing my chronic health problems. And if I want to be healthy and have energy to live joyfully, I have to find ways of reducing stress.

One of the ways I do that is to exercise as soon as my son leaves for school in the mornings. These days it's about six degrees below freezing at 7:30 in the morning and my elliptical is in the unheated free-standing garage. The hardest part is gritting my teeth through the cold until I get warmed up. But I've been listening to clips of Trevor Noah on Youtube and rationing them for exercise time. He seriously helps.

I trust you've probably heard of Trevor Noah. He's one of the few celebrities I've ever loved and it isn't just because he has good politics. It's also that he really laughs at everybody--people like him, people like me, people he agrees with and disagrees with. He has a delightful way of making heavy stuff funny without belittling it.

I get out there to the garage, shivering and working out as hard as I can to get warm and I feel my muscles relax into it as I laugh. I feel the stress shedding off of me.

Image via Unsplash

Except for this morning.

This morning I clicked on Trevor Noah's compilation of videos about white people calling the cops on black people. At first they were really funny. This stuff is so ridiculous. Yes, it's hard not to feel a bit ashamed of fellow white people, but Trevor Noah is so funny that you can get over it.

Except that most of them were about incidents involving little kids. And while he kept on laughing and making jokes and making everybody except the little kids seem like complete clowns, I have two kids who aren't black but they are "of color" and in the Czech Republic, where we came from, they are "the local black." And they're both pretty traumatized by elated crap.

And when I look at those videos, I laugh at Trevor's jokes and I think about the wider social implications, but increasingly with each video what grows and grows inside me is the sense of the trauma that the kids being threatened with cursing and pointed weapons and out-of-control police officers are experiencing.

When I look at those videos, I don't just see incidents involving strangers. I can't help but imagine my kids at those ages and how incredibly fragile and vulnerable to trauma they were at that time. I think even woke white people miss this a bit when getting outraged about how the cops are chronically called on sweet-looking little black kids.

We are upset because it's wrong and unjust and racist. But there is still an "othering" going on in a lot of woke discussions on this topic. The events are presented in woke media as unjust and egregious, but I don't see much comparison to the ultra-careful way we insist our children be treated. Most white parents I know are obsessed with ensuring that no one ever even raises their voice to their child because of possible trauma.

My son is eleven. I recently had to explain to a medical professional that he had been traumatized by "interethnic conflict" in the Czech Republic. The medical professional clearly didn't get it and asked me if the symptoms of this trauma weren't "just normal pre-adolescent adjustment."

I was hesitant to elaborate because my son was present, but in the end I gave this professional a couple of snapshots--like the time my son, at age 9, was picked up by four teens and thrown onto his back while they shouted racial epithets. He had significant bruises and a teacher was watching but did nothing. Afterward. the school refused to intervene and told me I'd have to take it up with the police. And the police said it was the school's problem.

To his credit, this particular medical professional changed his tune immediately and subsequently responded appropriately to try to help. My son is hyper-sensitive to authority, criticism, being singled out and aggression because of these traumas. His response snaps to fight or flight in a split second over the tiniest rebuke. He's back to a wall with fists balled, screaming, fury snapping in his eyes over being asked to pick up his wet towel. When I imagine my son's reaction to being approached aggressively by police with guns and an inflated sense of the threat of darker skin, my blood runs cold.

I'm betting Trevor Noah knows that the incidents he's joking about are not simply unjust but also incredibly traumatizing to the little kids involved, but he doesn't mention that part, possibly because he knows a lot of little kids are watching his show and he doesn't want to retraumatize them.

But still after the sixth or seventh clip, I realize that I'm not laughing anymore. Instead I'm sobbing uncontrollably, still trying to move the exercise machine but gasping raggedly with tears streaming down my face. I don't do the common white othering of black babies that shields us from reality as well anymore.

The last clip I watched involved a four-year-old having cursing, completely freaked-outl cops pointing guns at her and threatening to "put a cap in her head" over a snatched Barbie doll. My daughter took a pack of gum from the corner store when she was about that age. This isn't somebody else. This isn't a symbol. It's a real four year old with the sensitivity, big eyes, vulnerability and lack of developed ethics of every four year old.

I couldn't keep going. This is supposed to be a standard parenting rite of passage. Your kid swipes something from the store and you take the kid back, make them return the item and apologize. For a preschooler, it's both humiliating and terrifying just enough to make a big impression. That's how they learn. Maybe not every kid does it, but a hell of a lot of kids do it around that age.

And any police officers involved are supposed to use a calm voice, squat down to the preschooler's level and give them a good lecture about right and wrong. That's their job, which I have seen them do quite well when the kid caught filching was white.

I rarely turn something off because it's too intense, but I did that time. This was no longer relieving stress. And I know that this stress is just some of the stress that black parents experience all the time. But that is why they also suffer from a very high incidence of chronic health problems a lot like mine.

I'm not going to avoid or ignore these realities. In the interests of relieving stress, writing about it is more effective than just watching and dwelling on it. I'll be back to Trevor Noah another day and I'll laugh at the hard stuff and feel the stress fall away.

We can't sacrifice freedom of information and we shouldn't anyway

I have found that I have an “underlying condition,” so I went willingly, if not eagerly, down to the clinic to get the third dose on a recent Thursday. I did have adverse reactions to the ol’ shoulder jab after both of the first two doses last year—two days of fever, chills and heavy fatigue. But I got the same from a flu shot, so I wasn’t too worried.

I woke up at midnight that night with a rapidly revising opinion. It wasn’t the fact that my shoulder was swollen up like a balloon and painful to the touch or the fever and chills or even the diarrhea that had me worried. It was the searing fire burning off the lining of my stomach. That was disturbing.

I writhed in bed (when I wasn’t crawling to the toilet) for several hours observing as the unrelenting pain grew and grew to a crescendo that had me mewling on my mattress like a hurt kitten. I am used to being able to go back to sleep even with some discomfort but there was clearly no help for it.

I reached out for my phone with a shaking hand and started googling. Was this a regular sort of side effect or some kind of rare and dangerous reaction? I searched on the web and on social media. Surely, if people had this kind of reaction there would be mentions.

Image by Yuris Alhumaydy via Unsplash

But there weren’t. And that scared me more than the searing pain itself. That could mean this must not be a “normal” adverse reaction and it might well be dangerous.

I made the decision then, at about 3 am, that if the pain increased any further I would call 911. I was 20 miles by icy roads from my nearest family members and I can’t drive, though driving in the condition I was in would have been highly inadvisable even if I normally could.

I am not the kind of person to call an ambulance for anything short of the apocalypse. I didn’t call emergency services last spring when my son was injured in a bike accident and he came too close to comfort to dying as a result of my reticence. I have only actually called an ambulance once in my life, when my husband thought he was having a heart attack and our first child was four months old. And that time the ambulance crew griped at me for calling them “over nothing,” because it turned out to be a false alarm.

So, I didn’t call and I waited another agonizing and terrifying three hours until 6 am when a doctor friend in another time zone woke up and answered my text and confirmed that this kind of reaction happens, that she’s seen it and that ibuprofen probably wouldn’t hurt me more.

It didn’t help much either. But what did help a great deal was the reassurance that I wasn't dying of some weird reaction or appendicitis brought on by the chemical brew. And later in the day, my mother braved the icy roads and brought me activated charcoal, which really did help. I still had chills and fatigue and a bit of diarrhea for two days but that is nothing compared to that searing pain.

Spread the word about the activated charcoal as an antidote!

But my advice is that you do so without using the word that I have avoided here which starts with a V or the other word I have avoided which starts with a C. Because if you use either of those words, your post or social media message will be de-prioritized, hidden, deleted or otherwise disappeared.

And that is a sad state of affairs. Really. More than sad. Even dangerous.

Look, don’t get me wrong here. I live in VERY rural, very conservative America. I’ve had a group of sign-waving wackos yell at me for wearing a mask. I’ve heard it all, the nano chips, the fake news virus, and the three people who went blind (or died) from the shot who a friend of a friend told the person I’m speaking to about. I do understand the frustration and I’m even relatively okay with pressuring platforms to cut off rabid purveyors of conspiracy theories and disinformation, as Niel Young did (and yes, he’s awesome for lots of other reasons too).

But there is a vast difference between such conspiracy theories and personal reports of unpleasant side effects to the shot and helpful remedies for those side effects. I am talking to my people, the people who already agree that the virus is dangerous, inoculations in general have deeply changed our society for the better and protecting the vulnerable is important. Please think this through.

There are crucial reasons why we cannot accept the silencing of personal experiences and even the censoring things we don’t agree with.

1. There will be some terrified person who was responsible enough to get the shot waking up in agony tonight somewhere and the next night and the next. And they’ll be googling and they won’t find much except platitudes about how “adverse reactions are rare…” The terror of those hours matters. Allowing comments about side effects may give ammo to a few extremists, but it will calm the fears of those who have done the right thing and it will actually increase the likelihood of some to get the poke.

2. I am not alone in actually trusting science. I know why the messaging hasn’t been consistent. Because it is f—king science, people! They actually have been learning things over the past two years. They were cautious when they didn’t know about this new strain and now they do know something, so they have changed their recommendations. Because they are real doctors and real scientists and they care more about helping people than about appearing to have always been perfectly right. It is not that complicated.

3. By the same token, I trust a pharmaceuticals MORE when the side effects are fully and widely discussed, not less. That means that the companies care about them and are working to improve the given medication and it is unlikely that something worse is being suppressed. That is how trust of science works. This kind of silencing is a worse blow to public confidence in science than any tinfoil-hat influencer could ever dream of striking.

4. And it has never been more urgent to remember that whatever tactics one uses in this country against political enemies WILL be used against you in return one day. I remember back during the days of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when the censorship of critical voices in the American mainstream media was problematic and many of the same people who are now most committed to curtailing the virus were justifiably upset about it. But we had free rein on social media and alternative media was accessible if you just knew where to look. When I think of the devastation a right wing power center could do with the tools of website de-prioritization and social media silencing for political purposes, I really start to worry.

5. Last but not least, we set a precedent—one which our children observe—when we sacrifice important ethical principles to counter a foe. We essentially hand those principles to that enemy. With this kind of suppression, we are handing the principle of freedom of information to right-wing extremists. And that is a crying shame.

While I know that those in a position to actually change these practices aren’t reading my blog, it matters what we, ordinary people, think and talk about. The reason there has been such overt suppression of critical reports, personal experiences and differing opinions on this is because a large portion of the population enthusiastically supported blocking that stuff. I know. We were reacting to pretty extreme provocation but still, this has gone too far and public opinion may still be able to turn back this unwise step.

Please make your concern about this known, if you agree that we can’t, and shouldn’t, sacrifice freedom of information.

In another life

In the spring and early summer—before my big transcontinental move—a lot of people, whether students or friends, wanted me to make plans for October. I sounded like a broken record, repeating over and over, “I have no idea what my life is going to look like in October.”

After twelve years of being all too sure what the next season or two would bring, it was a good—if also terrifying—feeling. There were far too many things I couldn’t predict.

Now, the reality reminds me of that saying about things one might have done “in another country, in another life.” Here I am and it is very different.

I used to wake up to dawn light and a view of my verdant garden. Now I struggle out of thick pillows and comforters in darkness when the alarm on my phone plays.

Image by Arie Farnam

I used to have to go out early and hike up a hill to feed chickens and tend to large greenhouses. Now I have to open curtains to just barely see out of tiny basement windows and I only have to tend to hydroponic plants under artificial lights and fish that make plant food.

I used to eat yogurt with huckleberry preserves delivered by a local farmer for breakfast. Now I eat my mother’s homegrown eggs and whole-wheat English muffins from Safeway.

I used to tutor students in the evenings. Now late morning is my work time because that is when their evening falls. I used to spend most days alone battling depression and isolation and practical survival for my kids and myself. I also used to have a little time to write, not much but some. Now I spend almost every day on the phone with doctor’s offices and bureaucracies or helping with the crises of multiple high-needs family members. I haven’t had time to even feel guilty for not writing.

I used to eat a lot of meals alone. Now I only rarely eat alone. The cooking schedule has changed and expanded. There are a lot more mouths to feed at random times. Half of the raw ingredients are partly or completely different. I used to be able to easily order a very limited selection of groceries online. It was easy but that was all I could ever get. Now, I can get anything I can dream of, if I can get to the store which is once a week at best. There is no online shopping anymore and only very sketchy public transportation.

I used to have the time and floor-space to do a significant exercise routine every day to stay healthy. Here the ceilings are so low that I can't stretch my hands above my head or accommodate an elliptical machine, and my body never did good with the jarring of jogging on pavement. But I do get to go to the mountains on weekends and climb the steep rugged path to the windswept ridge top for stunning views and a bit of exercise.

I used to have to deal with hostility and overt discrimination every time I left the house. Now, I’m bewildered with the number of people who offer to be helpful and kind in small ways and all I really have to do is remember the exact steps of various processes to get what I need to survive.

My biggest worries used to be about my son getting beat up at school or endlessly sitting in classrooms while teachers marked test papers and showed cartoons instead of teaching. Now my worries are about my son riding his bike with his gang of instant friends and not locking it when he throws it down on this or that lawn to run in to various houses for a snack.

But now I also have to worry about my daughter’s medical appointments, which we didn’t have to worry about before because none were possible and she just went without. I worry about my mother who is helping with my daughter and her many struggles. I worry about my grandmother with dementia who thinks I stole her couch. I worry about more here but less of what I worry about is hopeless.

My neighbors used to be openly judgmental and unfriendly but economically comfortable and mostly shut behind big walls with loud dogs. Now my neighborhood is friendly and gregarious with scruffy, unfenced yards and half-joking warnings to watch out for this or that druggie or thief on the corner. My son used to not get invited to even his best friend’s birthday party or sleep-over because of interethnic bigotry. Now, there are plenty of sleepover possibilities and I try not to worry about my son bringing home bedbugs or witnessing the kind of run-of-the-mill domestic violence I witnessed at friends’ houses in low-income places like this when I was a kid.

I used to take weekends to go to my father-in-law’s farm in the flat marshes of South Bohemia, where the skies are always gray and the huge stone farmhouse is empty and sad. Now I go to my folks’ place up on the pine-covered ridge, where the sky is almost always crisp blue and the log cabin is so full of kids, chickens, dogs and a kitten that you end up stepping on them.

I used to struggle to find enough people to invite to a holiday dinner and I had to cook everything all by myself and play the perfect hostess if anyone came. Now, I have more than enough guests and some of them bring food. My mother is also in the thick of it with me.

People ask me how I’m doing and if I like it better here. And they are a bit disconcerted when I am not enthusiastic one way or the other. I have to stop and think: Well, how IS it going this week?

The answer is that it is very different and I am just barely getting my feet under me. The answer is that in the balance, yes, it’s better. And in the important matters of mental health care for my kids and safety at school it is way better. But it also isn’t easy. I’m tired, overwhelmed and even confused most of the time.

Autumn sunlight sparkles off of the Czech cut-crystal decanter and vase I bought across the ocean. They do nicely to collect and refract the light that filters into my recessed window. Bits of light dance over the autumn tomatoes ripening on the wide sill, and just outside I can see brightly colored leaves in the dirt beyond the screen.

I slip out into the yard to uncover the few remaining tomato plants that I covered last night to protect them from frost. Wind chimes tinkle from the branches of the yard’s only “tree,” which is actually a lilac bush shaped to look like a small tree. It has lost most of its leaves without much show of color, but a tree in the back alley is neon yellow and further down I glimpse ruddy orange.

I can find beauty and nature anywhere, even in a basement. I am growing plants under grow-lights too, though mostly they are still small and weak. I do miss my garden, the rolling terraces of green, the oak, fir and linden trees, the plums, cherries, blackberries, raspberries and currants… I miss the herb beds and the greenhouses and even the smelly chickens and the daily chores they required of me. As the nights grow cold, I miss the sauna we built beside the root cellar.

But even as that life had some good things in it, they were there because that was all I had. I had years of time to build up that garden because outside the garden, there was hostility and closed doors. Here I don’t even know what is outside beyond the frantic pace of family life, but some of the things I thought might only be possible “in another life” whisper to me.

If the pace ever slows, there might be writing or studying or teaching or community. I feel too old or at least too sick and too tired to be starting all over again, but there is still something in a new place and a new chance that sparks long-buried curiosity.

Grist in the mill: Fury and awe over vast inhumane systems

Four O’clock in the morning. I’m washed up in a basement apartment in a town I struggled mightily to escape thirty years ago. No sign of dawn yet and I am learning the full meaning of “circumstances beyond my control.”

Let me try to tell this story without giving you the headache I have. Six weeks ago, I shipped twelve boxes with the majority of everything my kids and I own in the world from the Czech Republic back to Oregon, where I was born. I was scared by tales of US customs debacles, so I used a moving company—one recommended by a friend of a friend.

But that company passed me off to an international corporate shell and that company put my stuff in a warehouse in London and doubled the price of the shipment, held my stuff for ransom and threatened to destroy it if I didn’t pay within three days. I paid—emptying out the bank account set up to give my kids a start in a new country and a new school year. What choice did I have? Five thousand dollars all told, maybe not a catastrophic sum by middle class American standards but a decade’s savings for me—and an unimaginable sum to much of the world.

Then, the company insisted I hadn’t paid, claiming the money never arrived. I’d paid by Visa debit card. My bank sent confirmation that the company had received the payment and the money was gone from my account. The corporate hacks on the other end of a $83-dollar international phone call insisted I had not paid and refused to trace the payment.

Tears. Rage. Frustration. I have never wanted to do violence so badly. But I couldn’t even cuss at them safely. My children’s momentos and photos of childhood are at their mercy. The irreplaceable pottery made by Dave Waln, a family friend, is at their mercy. They’ve even got the clippings of every newspaper story I ever wrote.

(Call me stupid but this was supposed to be the safest way to transport our most precious stuff, safer than the mail, safer even than airline luggage, which does sometimes go astray.)

I’ve felt lost and betrayed and utterly bereft a handful of times before—when dumped by the love of my life five thousand miles from home at the age of nineteen, when I miscarried and lost the hope of having a biological child, or when my adopted child’s diagnosis of a serious disability was confirmed to me while I sat in a crowd of judgmental mothers of perfect children. I’ve hit low spots, sure enough.

But none of those were engineered by giant systems with inexorably turning wheels that grind some people into dust while others feed the machines with their little daily labors. Mostly the lowest points are things no human person is responsible for—acts of nature or of the gods. And while they prompt a dark night of the soul and even futile anger, you know that there is no one and nothing that can change the situation.

In this situation, there were people who could change it, people causing it and cheerfully insinuating that my only recourse would be through international lawyers, which would cost far more than their demand to pay the doubled price yet again.

I tried to go through channels, of course. But back here in Oregon, I am the expert in all things international. My family and friends look at me with wide frightened eyes when I describe this. It’s beyond anything they can cope with. I called a national FBI fraud hotline and was told that they couldn’t help me because I had actually intended to pay this company, whereas the fraud they chase is only when someone’s identity or card information is stolen outright. I called Visa and was told again that they could not help because I am not a bank.

i spent more money I couldn’t spare to call the distant bank that had handled the transaction back in the Czech Republic. They insisted their document should be respected and negotiations with Visa through them would take at least three weeks—by which time the threats of the ransomers would no doubt be long since carried out.

I considered trying to get a lawyer, but I’ve heard how different British law is. They don’t even have lawyers exactly. They have “barristers.” How much would that cost? No doubt the hacks who taunted me on the phone from London were right that it would cost more than just paying them again.

Dawn comes gray and pale through the basement windows. I heat water for tea. The water is acrid with the smell of chlorine and something worse. The tea is barely discernible. My heart is so heavy. This is my life now. An apartment with bare walls and frugally filled shelves, missing keepsakes, bad water and a neighborhood full of endless asphalt, gaunt addicts and warnings to lock every door tight.

Creative Commons image by Ekaterina Didkovskaya

Hands shaking, I tap NPR on my phone screen. I don’t have the focus for an audio book or even one of the blogs or podcasts I follow. The soothing voices on this radio station of my childhood will help a little, I hope.

But the news breaks into my despairing gray morning with Afghanistan—desperate families standing in the desert outside Kabul airport, American humiliation and the vicious Taliban. I have to sit down. I’m reeling, pulled back into my own past with the young interpreter I fought so hard to get out of a war zone where he faced execution.

Even if they are completely anonymous to me, those families in the desert haunt me and goad me. As hopeless as my situation seems, as much as I may be nothing but grist in the ginormous mill of the international finance system, that system needs grist, damn it!

In theory, that system is supposed to work for me. And somehow there must be a way.

That’s maybe the most essential difference between the “first world” and the rest. We may be cogs in a giant system, but the system needs cogs and mostly it is built to keep us more or less alive.

I think of the families of Afghans who worked for American organizations, all those who believed in the dream that American imperialism offered. Now mostly they are trapped and the Taliban has lists of who they are. Journalists say the country is about to go dark for a long time and those people will be utterly at the mercy of ideological zealots who previously killed anyone who stepped out of line.

The ginormous system of international borders, citizenship and asylum claims is not rigged to work for them. Not even in theory. I know with absolute certainty that there are women like me there in Afghanistan, who have worked for NGOs or written as journalists, like me, and who now stand in that place of utter despair and helplessness, knowing they may die for it. Their children may die. And there is nothing they can do to stop it.

That helplessness and complete disempowerment. That’s the worst part of this day and age.

I’m sure life was hard back in the day. And yes, there were warlords who took over and massacred people. I’m not saying there weren’t. The difference with Afghanistan today is that we did this. Not just the war. Let’s put all the convoluted arguments about “nation building” aside.

I’m talking about not letting them get on a plane and come to the US earlier, not giving them visas years ago. That’s how our country caused this at the most basic level. We have borders and immigration policies. And yes, I know all the arguments about why we need them. Maybe some of those arguments even have merit, but the fact is that people in offices made those decisions and turned down visa applications.

And people are dying who wouldn’t have if the stamps had fallen elsewhere or the papers were pushed into a different pile. Systems made of people did this. And those systems are by and large a creation of modern times.

That’s why I feel a kinship with the Afghans, no matter how disproportionate the stakes. Our family belongings are at the mercy of multiple systems made of people—the corporation itself, the international finance system and the systems of international freight shipping. All of these are systems made of people.

I’ve lived through natural disasters—devastating storms, floods and even fire. Those things can make a person feel powerless in a way, but there is also a lot of empowerment in it.

When my family lost their home to fire while my mother was pregnant with me, they rebuilt… in the snow… with hand tools. When a storm isolated us from civilization and electrical power for a week, we put chunks of ice on the stove to thaw for fresh water and survived on stored food. When Covid hit, I didn't have to join the frenzy at grocery stores because I already had a well-stocked pantry and homemade masks weren’t hard to make.

Disasters feel indiscriminate, but they are not entirely disempowering.

Creative Commons image by RNW.org

These massive human systems take my breath away in a different manner. There is no recourse, no hope, utter disempowerment. That’s the curse of our times.

Six weeks later…

I’m in the backyard dressed in rag-bag clothes, painting stain onto boards to build shelves. I’m already smiling because my father has come to help me saw and hang them. The sun is shining. I got a really heavy-duty water filter and I can actually make tea, even if my beloved mugs may be gone forever.

Then a guy in a baggy trucker’s shirt comes in through the open gate and looks around uncertainly. “I think I have a delivery for. you.”

“Twelve boxes?” I gasp with fluttering excitement.

“Well, it’s a pallet. I didn’t count them.” He replies.

There are a few more anxious minutes as we direct him to drive around back, so that we can unload the pallet near my apartment door. Then, as he lowers it I count quickly. All twelve are actually there!!!

And they are battered and crushed with corners blown out but mostly the cardboard and plastic wrap held. There’s one large rip in the side of a box. I peer through and find it entirely blocked by a large copy of Erik the Viking, an out-of-print childhood favorite of mine. Good hold on the shield wall, Erik!

Over the next several days, I unpack each box carefully. A few legos and the odd rock from my collection of too many crystals may have fallen out a corner hole, but mostly our stuff is in remarkably good shape. The pottery was packed in layers of tightly secured cardboard. This wasn’t my first rodeo. Almost all made it through. One glass and wood picture frame smashed beyond recognition, one pottery diffuser crushed to gravel (it wasn’t one of Dave’s), some dented tins and a few cracks in plastic toy containers… But really those are small losses against my very real fears of never getting any of it at all.

How did I get them to stop the scams and let go? I’m not even sure what exactly did it. I held off their threats with official sounding emails and a friend letting them think he was my lawyer. I did get the bank to follow up with Visa, though it took weeks. I contacted a British moving industry association and a London-based consumer rights organization. I learned to write brief, very stern, very business-like, non-emotional, realistically threatening emails. I spent countless hours battling this particular incidence of corporate greed and hubris.

And eventually they agreed to trace the payment and they found, of course, that it was in their account all the time. So, they grudgingly fulfilled their side of the contract.

For the record, the company is called Baggage Hub. Mark it down. Tell your international friends and family. Stay away. Beware! Bad reviews don’t even cover it, but when there is time, oh, will I ever be writing some reviews.

Life is looking better here as well. I found a medical transportation service covered by insurance, so I can get to doctor’s appointments even if I can’t drive and public transit is minimal. My son’s school seems to be working out. My special needs kid may be getting a bit more of the help and treatment she needs. Piece by piece, bit by bit. It’s still chaos but there is progress.

And there are stresses that are no longer there. The interethnic conflict of Central Europe is far away. The unfriendly neighbors who shouted and threw stones when I rode my electric scooter have been replaced by smiling, chatty neighbors, even if some of them are in worse shape than I am. I look forward to getting up in the morning and I sometimes get to walk in the dry, semi-desert mountains.

We don’t hear about Afghanistan anymore. The news has moved on, but I think of them, the ones who didn’t get out. And the one’s who did but had to leave loved ones, homes, keepsakes and old photos behind. I still don’t understand why them and not me. OK, I lost my savings and had a few weeks of great stress, but really in the end, I am still one for whom the large systems of humanity mostly work, not one they work against.

My heart carries you, Jayesh and Makai, my Afghan friends met 23 years ago among refugees in Kazakhstan.