“8 years, 100 days...

...and four centuries."

It’s been a bit difficult to find the time to write an update on what’s been happening in Ukraine with Hannah and Misha. The end of the school year has been more intense than I expected, and other unexpected things have happened that have stretched us a bit. There have been so many things to do. But as Hannah said in the last update, “Slowly, patiently, and without panic.” That’s not only a philosophy that is helpful when family members are directly affected by war but for life in general. Thank you, Hannah.

I think about sending an update, but then I want to go to bed instead. Then I feel guilty for wanting to snuggle down in my comfortable bed while so many other people are suffering innumerable tragedies. I guess that is the nature of the times in which we live. Not everyone is directly affected by tragedy every day, and there is tension between living and enjoying the life you have been given and realizing others are enduring so much suffering. Perhaps the key point is for us to not forget the suffering of others, to do whatever we can do to help others remember and to give and do whatever we can to help those who are suffering.

I am sitting on our back patio thinking about what to write, and my dear daughter, who beautifully paints pictures with her words, just posted an update. There is no sense in me trying to duplicate what she says so well, so here’s the latest from Hannah:

“Being married to someone from a different country is a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and paperwork, and it turns out that being married to someone from a different country in a time of war is much of the same. Misha officially became a citizen of the United States last July after 7+ plus years of me wiping my sweaty hands on his pant leg underneath the table at our immigration lawyer’s office and receiving his citizenship at this time turned out to be incredibly fortuitous. I always say that Misha is touched by gold, lucky, and slippery like a fish. Nothing can catch him. So, Misha having an American passport these past several months has allowed him to slip in and out of the Ukrainian border, like the lucky, slippery, Ukrainian-American that he is.

Because Misha technically still holds his Ukrainian citizenship and for a variety of other logistical reasons, it became necessary for Misha to leave Ukraine and go back to the United States. We both decide that I’ll stay in Ukraine. The night before he leaves, he asks me to go for a walk with him because he wants to say goodbye to his city. We take our shoes off and walk in the grass by the river and he asks me to tell our Ukrainian family dog, Rich, why he had to leave. “I forgot to tell him goodbye,” he says.

I promise that I will, and we walk back to the apartment, slowly and quietly. We get back to the apartment and we stand on the balcony, shoulder to shoulder, and watch the sun go down behind our apartment building. I point at some clouds on the horizon and tell Misha that if you use your imagination, they look like mountains in the distance, and he agrees with me. The next morning at around 4:30AM, he leaves to go back to our other life, back to our dog, back to my parents, back to a country not surrounded by the fog of war and genocide.

I start spending my mornings at the local children’s hospital, just like I did all those years ago. I feel like I go back in time. I wear a white lab coat that is just a little bit too tight and go in the quiet morning hours to hold a little boy who will soon be transferred to an orphanage; he’s seven months old and is named Dennis. For the first several days, I cannot elicit much of any kind of emotive reaction from him; I play Disney songs and sing and baby-talk to him, but his face remains, for the most part, fairly blank. However, when I attempt to set him down or leave his room, he screams and latches onto my lab coat with his tiny hands.

On the third day, as usual, we are alone in the hospital room. It is raining and we are listening to the Jungle Book soundtrack. He’s lying on my lap, with his back against my thighs as my legs are propped up on the bed. My phone starts playing “I Wanna Be Like You” and suddenly, he’s bobbing his head to the music, and he starts grinning at me. He laughs in that funny way that babies do, and I am so overwhelmed by his raspy little giggle that I pick him up and we start dancing around the room together and I’m singing: “Oh, oobee doo, I wanna be like you” and he’s shaking his little body around to the music. An older nurse pops her head in and laughs at us.

It’s been more than 100 days, or as Misha says: “8 years, 100 days, and four centuries.” Kyiv was bombed again this morning. The war continues on, and on, and on, and the Ukrainian people continue to resist and fight. They do not have a choice. We work in tandem with a group of women volunteers that have been resisting and supporting the armed forces of Ukraine since 2014; they work tirelessly and constantly and with steel grit. These women and I picked up 55 pairs of quality, Ukrainian-made tactical summer boots (purchased with your donations!) for the soldiers and by the time we got back to the warehouse, they were already being passed out.

A Ukrainian seamstress continues to crank out handmade MOLLE bags to pack IFAKs in. About $3,000 dollars’ worth of combat tourniquets will make their way to me this week. The IFAKs are distributed to soldiers as soon as they are fully packed and just yesterday, I sent out 10 more to a friend who Misha and I lived with in Denmark who is now a soldier. I message him and say that we love him and be safe and it seems like a lifetime ago that we lived in that little farmhouse on the Danish coastline.

I know that humans only have so much capacity and endurance for grief and pain, and war is full of grief and pain. Ukrainians are not given a choice of whether or not they would like to bear this grief and pain, so they bear it. They have to. Misha is back in the US now and I think about how every Ukrainian abroad now lives in a split-reality and that is its own kind of brave.

 If you are ready and willing and looking for a way to support Ukraine 100+ days into this, I would like to offer you a couple practical options. Firstly, you can show up for Misha and Ukraine on June 11th at the Corvallis/Benton County Courthouse at 12pm. He will be there waiting for you. Our seamstress here even sewed some flags for the occasion! Secondly, you can donate to my PayPal or Venmo (or my dad’s) and the money will go towards purchasing some rescue/combat medical supplies that will be carried over in just about two weeks by our good friend, Reid. Thirdly, if you would prefer, you can directly purchase items that we have selected online and have them shipped to our home Oregon. You can also bring the items on June 11th to the rally in Corvallis. If you would like to do this option, I can provide you with details if you message me!

I wish I could say a personal thank you to every person who has donated. Until then, thank you, thank you, thank you.

PayPal: hellohannah2@gmail.com or info@nwstudentservices.com

Venmo: Hannah-Bittner-1 or @NWSS-LLC

Or, you can mail a check payable to NWSS to P.O. Box 667, Corvallis, OR 97339”

Hannah said all that I was going to say in a much more eloquent way. Misha is back here in Oregon, and Hannah will follow soon, but the work is not finished. As mentioned above, this didn’t start on February 24th, and the fight is not over. It’s been going on for, “8 years, 100 days, and four centuries.” Please continue to remember and #standwithukraine .

Maybe we’ll see you at the Courthouse on Saturday, standing for Misha and all of Ukraine?