When you hear that a building fell down, or an old high school teacher passed in the town you lived in a long time ago, you feel something - but you do not fall down on your knees crying. You look out the window, or at children playing in the street and think of them, that kind face, those old bricks, and you honor them. You replay a perfect moment - a wisecrack, a rainy night, a car ride, a snowy afternoon. And then, it gets tucked away. There is so much work to do, and we are out of milk. And yes, you carry this unexpected loss with you as you walk - but it only goes so far.
This is how I feel about the latest disappointment, the latest straw to break, the messy headlines from that place I no longer call home as the expected appears, and I wonder why anyone is surprised. There are people with death-wishes, with nothing to lose, people that crave power and control, people that think they have nothing but have no idea what it is to really have nothing. How did they find seats of power? By plucking them from the earth like early flowers. There are no gatekeepers, no guardians, just a facade of morality, a sheen of goodness. There are no good guys. There is no good party, no opposition. It is all one sandwich, owned by someone else. None for you, just scraps if you are lucky. It is a miracle anything good happens there, not that people see that. They see what they want to see, but when you live across an ocean you see it all from a distance and your toes curl up in your shoes as you witness such blindness, such worship of false heroes, such obsession with charisma over substance. That is the real pandemic, and it has been infecting every soul in my old home for decades. Obsessed with feel-good decisions, the walls were falling and no one wanted to see it. That was just about when I left, fifteen years ago, well - I was forced to leave, and did not realize the consolation prize would be perspective.
In my old country, any child going to school can be cut down by gunfire, so many thousands of times more than other anyplace I have been. I live in a poor country now, where doors may not even be locked. Children from good families play in the dark, yelling in the streets at 2 in the morning and come home unscratched. And yet, every day people “from back home” ask when I am coming back because “it is so much better there.” This is the grand delusion. The emperor’s clothes were lost decades ago, and yet all I hear is “you have to get out of there and get back here, where things are so much better.” Here is a crazy thought - women in Ukraine have more abortion rights than they do in America. People in a war zone have more rights than half of my friends back home. Now, please tell me why it is so much better there?
So, the long walk is taken. I feel sorry. I mourn a collective loss, a loss I have seen coming for years. It comes as no surprise, but today is the day it went down. So much of what we live through, every single one of us, is living with a constant understanding that it is all backsliding, that the volcano is smoking and we’ll all be covered in ash before dinner. Some of us blind ourselves to it, and who I am to judge? We all have our cockroaches, as the Russian saying goes.
I am just thankful to be in this country, where we can afford to live, where we can find new friends, where we can talk about wine every day and learn something new, where we can take a walk on a Saturday night and eat well, stretching wild and looking up at the stars, knowing all too well that no one is doing this back home.
This is very good and absolutely true. I do not recognize this country. I don't recognize some family members and some friends from long ago. How sad it is to think that battles fought long ago, my daughter has to fight again. I shake my head when I hear pro lifers bang on about how precious the unborn are, but have no concern for the children who are routinely slaughtered at school. Those folks cuddle their guns, close their eyes and offer thoughts and prayers. So many of us are so tired.
We are living in very sad and scary times.