by Tom Shafer
February 24, 2022
Wednesday, February 23rd was a fairly normal late-winter day for me. I had no freelance work to attend to, but had some errands to perform: an appointment (to order new glasses) with my ophthalmologist in early morning and a visit to Kroger for some much needed groceries in late morning. After a quick lunch, I decided that I would take advantage of decent weather (a coolish 30° but little wind) to hit golf balls at a local outdoor range (with heated stalls). For dinner, I made personal pizzas for the wife and I, then sat down to watch my Dayton Flyer basketball team thrash UMass, keeping hope alive for a bid to the March Madness that will be coming to America soon.
As usual, I was reading late into the evening, cat Rainbow at my feet, with the television on in the background, tuned – really, digitaled – to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. A little before midnight, my phone chirped a CNN alert about explosions being reported throughout Ukraine, and I knew that Vladimir Putin’s “peacekeeping force” was now softening Ukrainian defenses for the full-scale invasion that most of the world had been anticipating.
I digitaled (like this new word) over to CNN and started watching coverage of this fast-evolving story nee war. The images coming in were reminiscent of those that so many of us had witnessed when Iraq first invaded Kuwait in August of 1991: spectacular pre-dawn explosions in the distance, filmed from inner city rooftops, and tanks rolling unabated to unknown destinations. Local residents, stirred from their sleep by the tumult, were now hurriedly filling their vehicles with whatever they could, and video captured the kilometers-long traffic jam aiming west toward Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.
Around one in the morning (Eastern Time), sunrise in Ukraine (seven hours difference) was now revealing the catastrophic effects of the shelling. I was getting ready to head to the hot tub when a CNN correspondent in the city of Kharkiv (a mere forty-two kilometers from Russia) – who was covering citizens filing into a bomb shelter (which the day before had actually been a subway ferrying people to and from their jobs) – interviewed a young mother with her two children, aged nine and six. The Ukrainian woman, neatly attired and carrying only a bag of chips and a large bottle of water, had come to the shelter when awakened by concussions of a bombardment near her suburban home. In somewhat broken but still efficient English, she explained that she didn’t understand why Putin would do this, but that she thought of Russia as a brother country and had many friends and family who lived there. At the end of the interview when asked why she had brought only the chips and water, she related that she had never believed that something like this could happen, that “it’s just so impossible!”
I was struck by her calm demeanor – yet absolute shock at what had transpired there over the past several weeks. My late winter day had been rather ordinary. Consequently, I couldn’t begin to comprehend what she was feeling, let alone what she must have been wondering about her (and her country’s) future. In America, this kind of displacement only occurs with natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes – not the result of annexation, invasion, or coup.
I am lucky and fortunate – and should never take for granted – that I was born and live in America. I should never take for granted what we have here, that I am blessed to live under the protection of the best military in the world.
This young Ukrainian woman could have been anyone in our country, living contentedly in any community in any state. But here she was, standing in a subway tunnel with her two children, unsure about what the next few hours might bring, even more unsure about the coming weeks, months, and years. Her normal had changed forever.
Toward the end of the interview, the CNN correspondent turned to the woman’s nine-year-old boy and asked him if he was scared. Timidly though bravely, he responded that he was a little, but his eyes suggested otherwise.
I find it difficult to understand how any leaders can lose their humanity enough to attack or invade the sovereignty of another country – especially if they have children of their own. It would be my wish that any who are thinking to do so watch this interview, witness the frightened strength of this young suburban mother, then look into the eyes of little nine-year-old boy. If those “leaders” can still follow through with their plans of invasion, then they are clearly monsters.
Moreover, I wish that ALL leaders, from aldermen and council members to presidents and premiers, could see the world through the eyes of a child – and always lead that way. Maybe ours would be a peaceful world, one that is actually living up to the ideals and common humanity set forth by all major religions and their gods.
It is so sad that we can’t get there – though ALL of us know that we should.
