ANTONE AND ALEXANDRIA

 

A series of essays….

MY UKRAINIAN GRANDPARENTS ON THEIR WEDDING DAY:
ANTONE AND ALEXANDRIA MOSHAK

….as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

Russian forces bombed a maternity and children’s hospital in Mariupol in southern Ukraine on Wednesday. Babies, pregnant mothers, women in labor were all inside! The attack came despite Russia agreeing to a 12-hour pause in hostilities. “How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror?” asks President Zelenskyy of Ukraine.

I believe that good gives everyone and all actions the benefit of the doubt while evil  immediately takes over, suffocates everything good with its lies and brute force, and removes all semblance of good and its imminent possibilities. Timing is everything, my friends. This is dedicated to the bold determination of the Ukrainian people!

At the beginning of this unprovoked, horrendous war orchestrated by Vladimir Putin, I sat listening to the Ukrainian negotiation delegation holding a press conference in Lviv with foreign and Ukrainian news media. My mind wandered back in time to my grandparents home in Mishawaka, Indiana and me asking questions about this rhythmic, Slavic language singsonging in my head; holding me hostage in the past and now, doing the same in the present.

THE HOME PAPA BUILT ON CEDAR STREET IN
MISHAWAKA. HE DUG OUT THE BASEMENT 
AND LAID EACH BRICK HIMSELF.

Antone and Alexandria. According to the sound of their names, they could have ruled their own Slavic nation and brought goodness into an evil world. Actually, after having twelve children plus enduring three miscarriages, they could have easily populated their little nation, as well.

Frustration at not being able to understand what my grandparents were saying to one another prompted me to ask my Papa Moshak to teach us, his grandchildren, the language he brought over from his homeland. Because he did not speak English well, he always hesitated to comply. Oh, how I wish he could have taught us this major part of our heritage! He had brought over language course books but told my Mother they were all in Russian, not Ukrainian. I didn’t know the difference. But, he certainly did. He told my mother that it was all he could grab before leaving his homeland for America.

We were given tantalizing bits and pieces here and there, for example: Give me a little kiss (дай мені трохи поцілунку), hush your mouth (заткни свій рот) this was usually accompanied by the contact of my mother’s foot on our shin under the dining table, I love you (я тебе люблю), which was, of course, the best one of all! 

Mother and her eleven siblings were not taught to speak Ukrainian either. Sadly, Ukraine was a place they all wanted to distance themselves from as they were Americans, born and bred. Papa and Grandma only reminded them of a life to run away from; one with no future possibilities, one best to leave behind.

MY MOTHER, OLGA, STANDING SECOND FROM
THE RIGHT IN THE SECOND ROW WITH MOST
OF HER SIBLINGS. I AM THE BABY SITTING 
ON MY GRANDMOTHER’S LAP.

As this complicated sounding language flowed from the TV into my head, I had to wonder what the difference is between the Ukrainian and Russian languages. Despite their similar origins, there have been enough factors to push these languages into their distinct branches today, including time, culture, and politics. Papa told us that the Ukrainian language was greatly influenced by the Polish language. Recently, through Ancestry.com, I’ve learned that the small village grandma grew up in, Strae, Ukraine, is located a short distance from the Ukrainian/Polish border. 

Grandma’s delicious dumplings, pedaheh, were our ultimate comfort food, filled with cheesy potatoes, or dried plums, or sauerkraut, they were similar to Polish pierogi but, lovingly made just for us by grandma. Her borscht was never my favorite meal with its sour taste, deep purple color, and dollop of sour cream on top. I remember crushing as many saltine crackers into it as possible to create something palatable and always under the scrutiny of grandma’s penetrating gaze.

Thinking about all of the things we’ve seen, learned about, discovered, wondered about, and often failed to discern in one human lifetime only makes me wonder even more about everything we know absolutely nothing about and may never learn within one go around on this fragile planet.

During his State of the Union Address, President Biden spoke about our veterans being exposed to burn pits; the toxic equivalent to Agent Orange during the war in Vietnam. The first I’d heard of burn pits was when our troops evacuated Afghanistan this past year. And, even then, I had to do some research to fully understand what was going on. I suppose it does make sense to destroy everything you’ve touched and utilized during the occupation of another country in order to erase your information and undermine its influence on your enemy. But, at what cost?

Isn’t Russia playing by its own rules in the attempt to destroy everything touched by the Ukrainians, especially the children,  in a blatant act of erasing them as people altogether?

What many veterans are having to live through now, with their health in jeopardy, is merely one true cost of war, I know. (Making mental lists as I type this article.) Having knowledge of the use of burn pits, even after the fact, has enlightened many of us to the hazards of war created by the one institution that should always have the welfare of all of its people in mind—the Federal Government. As Commander in Chief, President Biden is introducing a bill to aid all veterans suffering from the lasting affects of burn pits.

As this unprovoked war on the kind people of this beautiful country of Ukraine wages on, many of us who have this noble blood flowing through us intensely react to their deep pain and sorrow. We pray for ultimate reasoning and fundamental peace to emerge from the ashes of this nonsensical conflict. May the uncompromising spirit of the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, spread its strength across the nation as he displays both bravery and media savvy during the Russian invasion.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY
PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE
A TRUE WAR HERO

Now, I don’t know if Antone and Alexandria, my Ukrainian grandparents, ever stepped foot in the historic and beautiful cities of Kyiv, the capital city, or Odessa (Odesa), the port city on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. I hope they did. They were both born and raised in separate villages that bordered on Poland and were quite a distance from the capital city of Ukraine. Leaving your small village to travel around your own country was considered a luxury and one not readily available to all Ukrainian citizens. By the time they both escaped the terror reigned upon them during the Bolshevik Revolution beginning in November of 1917 and led by Vladimir Lenin, whose regime would soon create the first communist country called the U.S.S.R., they met one another in the United States. Each escaping the terror of their homeland in order to create a better life here, they married and raised a large family in upstate Indiana.

Olga, my mother, was the kindest most sensitive parent any child could have and with her fiery red hair framing porcelain skin sprinkled with sun kissed freckles, she epitomized the ‘Daughter of Ukraine’ in so many ways. When grandma passed at the early age of fifty-six, my mother lost her best friend; her true tie to the land she would never visit.

VLADIMIR LENIN, FORMER PREMIER AND
DICTATOR OF THE SOVIET UNION

Photo courtesy of The Guardian

Given the current war instigated by yet another brutal Russian dictator, as well as the many conflagrations foisted upon the Ukrainian people during, as well as since she and Papa fled to the west, Alexandria could explain to my mother firsthand the important role that the western countries of Europe have taken in aiding refugees fleeing Ukraine. Olga could learn, via her own parents, how history constantly repeats itself. 

Now is not the time to let up; Putin must fail. Since the end of the Cold War, we took our eyes off the ball and allowed people to harm one another, again. This time around we are defending democracy and the right of an independent nation to embrace the freedoms they had worked so hard to obtain. 

Will this latest war open up our own eyes to the possibility of losing something as precious as our own democratic beliefs? Will it help to pull our country together and make us understand how important our freedoms truly are? What is Putin’s endgame? These are the questions we should be asking. I see a lonely, confused, and desperate man seated at the end of one of his long tables in the Kremlin.

Yes, I wish I had been taught how to speak the Ukrainian language by my grandparents, if only to bring me that much closer to a heritage that I am so proud to be a part of. As my distant cousins, perhaps sleeping in metro stations and basements in an attempt to survive another day, hold their children close as they wipe away their tears, my arms are opened wide letting them know it will be okay; we are here for you.

ST. ANDREW’S CHURCH -
KYIV, UKRAINE

 

Courtesy: Art, Culture, and Civilization

Believing in Antone and Alexandria keeps hope alive. There is a stronger, better world that will outshine the rocket’s red glare and bombs crushing the life from the Ukrainian people today. However, their spirit, so far, remains intact and we must all help to keep it this way until the monster hiding under the bed (behind the Kremlin walls) is defeated!

I thank you, Grandma and Papa, for your courage so long ago. The darkness and shame people carry having to leave a place in fear for reasons of self preservation surely must have been eased by your love for your children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. We feel blessed by your courage every day of our lives.

The more love you put out in the world, the more you get back..

WITH LOVE TO UKRAINE
AND HER AMAZING PEOPLE!

Copyright © 2022 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

 

THE INTEGRITY OF DEMOCRACY: BLESSED OR CURSED?

 A series of essays.....

THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY
BY SALVADOR DALI

Courtesy of: Artsy

.....as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E. Hughes

The world has officially turned topsy-turvy in my lifetime and what I once considered to be an ordered life has turned into a state of utter disorder and confusion; it has turned upside down and infused with a bitter anger that leaves a sharp, pungent taste on the palate of our existence.

By virtue of applied math and science, the average American citizen could or should be on the verge of either a mental breakdown, experiencing heart disease, stomach ulcers, or, at the very least, mired (become stuck in swamp mud?) in a state of total confusion!

Others opt to exist within a ‘state of oblivious bliss’ and completely ignore the chaos that describes the state of our nation, which may include the fate of hundreds of children caught-up in the right wing politics of the Family Separation Policy issued by the Trump administration. Innocent children who have been separated from their parents at our border are being placed at risk and used as pawns to create anxiety and fear in the hope of deterring future immigrants from crossing our borders to seek refuge from the unfiltered chaos they leave behind in their own country. 

Through her tears, Digna, an immigrant mother from El Salvador, who had her young son and daughter taken away from her over a month ago, asked, “Why was it so easy for them to take my children away from me and so difficult to have them returned?” My heart aches for her.  

Until a California judge decreed that these vulnerable families needed to be reunited, immediately, these children had slipped through the political cracks with no hope of ever being cared about or heard from again; lost between heartless leadership and a policy that should be totally disconcerting for all of us who care about the health and well-being of one another. 

If ignorance is indeed a form of bliss, then those of us who refuse to react to this hatred or even acknowledge that this hatred exists among us, will suffer a rude awakening in the near future. While this administration chips away at every conceivable program designed to enhance and protect people and the land we hold so dear, it is unfathomable to think that there are those who would not react to this form of governmental terror that exists in Washington D.C. today! 

We’ve already seen a popular response via organized, massive marches and instant protests where the voices of the people can be heard loud and clear, day and night. Organizations have been instantly established, such as INDIVISIBLE, whose mission is to cultivate and lift up a grassroots movement of local groups to defeat the Trump agenda.

Internal terror attacks are happening around us all of the time. The very people we’ve chosen to represent us in Washington have elected to place their personal needs of Money, Power, and Politics before the needs and desires of the people who elected them. 

When was the last time the word ‘ISIS’ rolled off your tongue? Instead, our fear concentrates around mass shootings initiated by fellow citizens armed with guns, the stronghold of foreign political influences that have wrapped their emboldened fingers around the neck of democracy itself, and the lack of leadership by a narcissistic and heartless president whose agenda seems to be working on weakening or abolishing our democratic government and ideals.

It should concern us that there is what we call this president’s ‘small base of supporters’ who, unflinchingly, uphold every move he makes....even to the point of harming themselves and their families in the process. I am speaking about the loss of affordable health care, shared values, and of monetary growth and security due to the lack of jobs based on the destruction of healthy trade relationships with friendly foreign nations. Not only does his ‘base’ support his constant flow of manipulative lies, they seem to bask in them to the extent that the lies become the truths they are searching for under the influence of this shallow, harmful man.

If you have become familiar with the many terms that have surfaced due to the political unrest and divisiveness of our country within the past several years, you will recognize the phrases ‘Nuclear Options’ and ‘Collusion,’ as well as the two men who own them: Kentucky Senator, Mitch McConnell and Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, respectively. I’m uncertain as to which man should frighten us more; the manipulator from within our government or the powerful foreign manipulator outside of it!

We now live in a world where the sky is green, the grass is blue and just about ‘anything goes!’ Suddenly, the rules and ideals that reflected an order of normalcy have been thrown out the window and are melting away like the clocks in Salvador Dali’s painting, The Persistence of Memory. 

Will we choose to throw the Integrity of our Democracy out with the dirty bath water or, if time remains on our side, decide to experience a profound sense of vigor and change growing within us as a nation that cares enough to believe in a new sense of hope for all people? It’s not too late to move out of ‘Topsy-turvyland’ (Trumpnation). We just have to want to badly enough.

If we do not work together to make positive change happen...time, the American Dream, and the Integrity of our Democracy could be melting away, forever!

            

Copyright © 2018 by Jacqueline E. Hughes

All rights reserved