“You should leave now!”
“I don’t know, are you sure? Russia always does this, people here are saying that nothing will happen.”
“No, this is different. Russia has their military on the northern and eastern borders. You need to go now!”
Tanya didn’t seem worried, and that scared the shit out of me. She, like millions of other Ukrainians, couldn’t fathom that Russia would start launching ballistic missiles and come over the border with guns blazing, like how Americans could never imagine Canada coming over the border to take New York.
The first time I ever talked to the woman who would later be my wife was in February 2014. Russia had sent little green men into Crimea and seized key sites within the country. At the time I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the news — that Russia had annexed the territory of a sovereign nation. I wasn’t seeing a lot of coverage of the event on U.S. news outlets. I thought we would go to war for sure over this blatant violation of the Budapest Memorandum. I was honestly a bit excited to go fight the Russians. Wolverines!!!
I had visited Odesa, Ukraine in 1998, with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, in support of Operation Sea Breeze. I remembered how proud Ukrainians were of their independence. The country was on shaky ground with their newfound freedom. They were happy to finally be recognized as a singular nation with their own identity.
I got on Facebook and messaged some people from Odesa to find out what was going on. Tanya was the only person to message me back. She says its because I looked handsome and figured it would be a good way to practice her English.
Back then she was scared that her country was going to go to war. I would check in with her every day to see how the situation was developing, to find out how Ukrainians felt about Russia stealing a piece of their land. The daily, ”Hey, how are you” eventually evolved into a long distance relationship. We talked as if there wasn’t a language barrier and thousands of miles of ocean, land, and culture between us.
“I’m scared. The city is burning.”
That was the message I woke up to on May 2nd, 2014.
Pro-Russian and Pro-Ukrainians clashed in the streets of Odesa. The vapors of the violence of the Maidan in Kyiv had made it’s way to Odesa fueled by the Russian incursion into Donbas that took place in April. The tinder box hit its ignition point on the 2nd of May when the House of Trade Unions caught fire and 42 people died.
She told me she was afraid to leave the house, that the war was going to come from Donbas into Odesa. There was nothing I could do. I was in the Army and had recently been stationed at West Point. I gave her the standard terrorism brief; avoid populated areas, infrastructure, and large gatherings. Stock up on non-perishables and water.
Almost ten years later I was surprised that she wasn’t worried about an impending invasion. Holy shit woman! Take the kids and get the hell out of there is what I wanted to say. I had read somewhere that a unit of Chechens was deployed somewhere to the North of Ukraine. My mind ran wild with what they would do to women and children. Thankfully her brother and her father were also encouraging her to leave. She was waiting for her former sister-in-law and her niece to arrive from Kharkiv. They were having difficulty getting out as millions started to make their way west. Every day I would check in with her, and on the 24th the unthinkable happened. They sat glued to their phones watching images of buildings being destroyed as Russia flowed over the border.
As she was getting ready to drive to the border, her car broke down. It took a few days to get fixed. Five days later she finally drove out of Odesa with her 12-year-old son, her brother’s ex-wife, her niece, a little dog, and four suitcases.
While I was in Poland she had stopped in Moldova, like many Ukrainians. At the time, many people — including her brother — were scared of Russia using a nuclear weapon. Her brother told her to get out and keep going. She had some friends in Poland who told her to come and stay with them. As I was preparing to leave for Romania, she stopped in Budapest to rest for a few days before continuing the drive. It just so happens that I had never been to Budapest.
I took the bus from Krakow to Budapest. I was one of three men on the bus. The rest were Ukrainian women with children in tow. I sat on the bus for six hours trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. I didn’t want to go back to the states, and had nowhere to go back to. No one talked. It was mostly sobs and babies crying. I sat near the window, and a young girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, sat in the seat next to me. She fell asleep on my shoulder and stayed that way until we arrived in Hungary’s capital.
Tanya and I had a relationship online for months. When I ended it, it never truly ended. We stayed in touch for nearly ten years. She was that one woman who was always on my mind. She was my what if. When we met in real life for the first time before the war, I realized she was my always will be.
We spent the next two days sightseeing in Budapest. We would walk past little playgrounds where her niece would want to play. The playgrounds were filled with children who had also fled Ukraine. Everywhere we went, we met other Ukrainians who had stuffed what life they could fit in a suitcase and ran. At that time, over two million people had left Ukraine. It was hard to visualize that kind of human migration. So many of them had no place to go home to, communities like Mariupol, Volnovakha, and villages across the country had been completely wiped off the map. No schools, hospitals, homes, running water, nothing.
Her niece was only six. Her pockets were full of treasures scooped up along her travels. She had yet to sit in a classroom to start school. COVID had closed the schools. War made sure they stayed that way.
At one point we found ourselves walking along the Danube her rainbow mittened hand in mine and stopped near the Jewish Shoe Memorial. During WWII, Hungarian Jews had been lined up along the river at gunpoint, told to step out of their shoes, shot, then dumped into the Danube. Myraslava was tired from walking all day. Half a century later this little girl rested her head in the same place where evil men murdered other girls who wore the same size shoe as she did.
The next day I helped the little band of displaced persons load up what they had taken from Ukraine. There was no room for me to go with them. I kissed my Tanushka goodbye and walked to the train station.
This is part of an ongoing series. If you missed the first installment, start with A Rolling Stoner Gathers No Moss.
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