Goodbye, Facebook. I need time to process.

I have not really said much about the election since Tuesday. My quiet has been for two reasons. One, I have been struggling to put into words the anxiety and disappointment I have been feeling, and, two, I have been too disgusted by the total lack of empathy which I have seen displayed time and again. What’s the point of saying how my family and I feel if no one can look beyond their own noses? I have only lasted a minute at a time checking facebook because it doesn’t take long to get to the person calling us crybabies or saying those of us who are upset need to grow up. Seriously? After eight years of listening to people say about President Obama “Not My President” and insulting him and calling him a terrorist dictator anti-Christ, we can’t have even one day to be upset about Trump winning? If you are actually interested in thinking about this situation from a viewpoint other than suburban white Christian heterosexual, here is why I am upset.

I’m not mad that my candidate lost (even though she did get the most votes and the whole electoral college thing is dumb, and even Trump was agreeing with that before the election and people from both sides in the past have said this system is messed up). I’m frightened that Trump and Pence won. To say that he is just another candidate or that the choice was simply between the lesser of two evils is to live under a privileged rock. What they want to do, and what Pence has already done in Indiana, is going to hurt a lot of people. They already have hurt a lot of people. Don’t believe me? OPEN YOUR DAMN EYES. Sorry for yelling, but talking hasn’t seemed to get people to see things.

Know what conversation I have with my daughter every day?

“Will Trump send Tato back?”

“No, honey. Tato is a US citizen. He can’t be deported.”

“But Trump wants to? What about my friends? Will they be sent back?”

Then I have to explain the logistics of mass deportation and why it is highly unlikely. She still comes back round to, “but they want to do it.” That hurts. And we aren’t having this conversation daily because I am a bad mom who over exposes my kids to the news. This is what they have been talking about on the playgrounds since Trump first started his campaign based on racism, and on the playground they aren’t thinking in terms of logistics or constitutional law. They are thinking about their families and their friends. They aren’t thinking “it’s ok because my dad is white and he is only talking about Muslims and Mexicans” because they aren’t that fucking racist. If someone says immigrant they think of their dad and their neighbors. They think of our friends who are refugees. They think of their relatives still living outside this country and wondering if they will be allowed to visit. Do you have any idea how much anxiety this causes? Do you have any idea what kind of affect that anxiety has on them? Are you willing to even try?

People say, “oh you should just explain things to them and not let them listen to Trump.” Two problems with that. First, I have explained things but the fear is brought up again day after day as the same hateful rhetoric is repeated. Second, I do try to shield them from Trump, but he isn’t the only one saying this stuff. His followers and apologists are saying it. The alt-right is gleefully shouting it now that they feel validated by our President-elect.  Are you saying for the next four years I can’t let my girls listen to their President? Forcing them to hide their heads in the sand will not help.

As for us overreacting or predicting disaster before it hits, it has already hit. Hate crimes against Muslims is up. Hate crimes against the LGBTQ community is up. Anti-Semitic rhetoric is up. People are being threatened. People ARE being attacked. The fear is justified. Do you know what that fear looks like in a little girl? She stops eating. She complains she can’t breath. She starts compulsively chewing on her lip. She doesn’t want to go to school. This is a real problem not an imaginary one. She has seen and heard and physically felt the increase in attacks as people feel emboldened to share their hate. When the top leader of our country and his sidekick are spewing hate, of course the lower haters feel validated and empowered. That is then manifested even in middle schools.

I won’t even get into the misogyny stuff or violence against women or threats against the press (my husband is a journalist, so these threats I take VERY seriously). If you can’t see the racism manifesting or empathize with the victims of homophobia and Islamaphobia, then I’m not holding out hope here either. 

To say we have to be ok with all this or that it isn’t so bad or that we need to get over it IS condoning it. It makes you an accessory to hate. Sure you won’t personally be burning Pride flags or beating Hispanic homeless men to death, but you are allowing it to happen by looking the other way. You are saying there is nothing wrong with it happening. You are saying you don’t care about the suffering of other people. You are saying you don’t care about my family or our closest friends. You are name calling the people being punched when they crying out.

I don’t unfriend people for political differences. I think political discourse is good. In the past, however, it has been about differences of opinion regarding the details of policies. We have been heading towards the same goal but discussing different paths. That discourse has helped us think more broadly. Now, though, what I see is a total lack of empathy. That is something I have been struggling to accept. How can these people who say they love my daughters also say they don’t care about them? We are just trying to wrap our heads around what the future will be and come up with ways to survive our new hostile America. What we need is hugs not “oh, grow up!” While I try to figure out what to do about all this, I think I better just stay away from facebook. Until I can decide how to handle friends being ok with people hurting my kids, I better just not handle them at all. Otherwise I will soon just start unfriending people or screaming “FUCK YOU” at them. Until this mama bear can CTFD (as I have been told to do by people who claim they didn’t vote for Trump but they don’t think he or Pence are that bad), I will just live in my real world. My daughters are going to be needing my extra attention now anyway.

"Where Did We Come From?"

I recently went to the girls’ school and got to chat with their teachers a bit. My younger daughter’s teacher said that periodically my daughter will claim, “I’m Ukrainian; I can’t remember that!” Her teacher wanted to know why Ukrainians can’t remember things. I nearly fell over laughing and pointed out my daughter is only PART Ukrainian, so that’s a BS excuse (and Ukrainians aren’t known for memory isssues, so really it’s a double BS excuse). The truth is only her father is Ukrainian. I’m something else entirely. And even her Ukrainian father considers himself to be a mix of things. To keep things simple, we call ourselves American and Ukrainian, but if we move beyond where we were born, then things get more complicated. So how do we define what we are and why does it matter?

Both my husband and I have traced our families back many generations, and we are both very proud of our family histories. We love the mix we have. On both sides we have people who were adventurous, crossing borders, marrying into new traditions, learning new languages, and taking on challenges that make anything I’ve ever faced seem like nothing. Our mixed up family trees make answering the question, “what are you?” a little complicated and long winded sometimes, but it makes parenting so much richer. As long as people accept the answer of “American and Ukrainian” or “well, mostly Irish-Polish-American and Ukrainian” then we’re fine. At home, the girls get the full stories, though.

My father’s family has been in what is now the US since the early 1700s and originally came from Wales, however almost every generation has married an immigrant. What can I say? We like accents. The stories of my ancestors on my father’s side are wonderful for inspiring the girls when they find themselves uncomfortable in new situations. I remind them of my great-grandmother who came to America from Poland as a young teen, without her parents, riding on top of her trunk in steerage because she was too poor to afford a real ticket, and started a new life in a new county and had to learn a new language. And she did it. We have stories of my great-grandfather who traveled from Vilnius, Lithuania, to Lviv, Ukraine, to St. Petersburg, Russia, to Poland before moving to America and settling in Chicago. Or my grandmother who went back to Poland so she could receive the best music education studying piano in Warsaw just before World War II. The girls ancestors through my father were brave, going where they needed to go to have the best lives they could. Fear didn’t hold them back. That’s a pretty nice lesson for the girls. Plus, they picked up great food traditions along the way. I mean, is there any better food in the world than Polish food? Seriously. It’s the best.

My grandmother on my mother's side.

My mother’s family is proud Chicago-Irish. I have come to the conclusion there is nothing stronger than a Chicago-Irish woman. My grandmother, mother, and aunts are the iron women who could bend Wonder Woman in half. I have never doubted their awesomeness, and they set a very high bar of excellence and inner strength. My mom’s family began coming to America in the 1850s from Ireland and continued to come in waves until just before 1900 including one young man who stepped off the boat and right into the Union army during the Civil War. They were all poor and mostly illiterate according to census records until my grand-parents’ generation. The census records are depressing. They show that often as many as three quarters of each generation would die before reaching their teenage years. While the women were burying their babies, the men were literally building Chicago. Growing up, I used to love walking around the city with my mom who would proudly say, “my family built that bridge.” My mom’s family survived because they worked hard. They didn’t give up. When the girls want to quit because they think a task is too difficult, I remind them of their Chicago-Irish blood. If their ancestors had given up, people wouldn’t be able to cross the Chicago River. The McLennons didn’t give up, and the girls won’t either.

On Saturdays, the girls go to Ukrainian school to learn Ukrainian and celebrate their father’s side. Part of it. He reminds them his grandfather identified as Polish (again, EXCELLENT food traditions) and tells them the more complex stories of his family. Yes, he was born and raised in Ukraine, but his Ukrainian family history is just as rich as my American family history. He has heroes whose stories culminated with him being born in Kyiv which are the things of legends. They lived through countless wars and famines, slept in cemeteries, and spoke more than one language. When he tells them he is Ukrainian, that is just the first sentence in a long book.

Looking back at our families and where we have come from makes our lives so much richer. It gives us a plethora of stories to tell our girls at bedtime. We can draw from more than just our own experiences to teach them and inspire them. I am proud to be more than just one thing, and I am so happy I continued my family tradition of marrying a hot immigrant with an adorable accent. I hope our girls remember these stories and continue to tell them. And eat Polish food. Because it is good. And that can't be said enough.

Ukrainian Enough?

Sure fire way to piss me off is to start talking about whether or not my kids are Ukrainian enough. I hate that. I hate the whole idea of measuring someone’s ethnicity in general, but this particular term really irks me. For one thing, it is usually applied in an inconsistent way. Usually the person who is telling me – the non-Ukrainian parent – what is or is not Ukrainian enough is wrong herself and is basing her ideas about Ukrainian-ness on her experience growing up in the diaspora. Example: “REAL Ukrainians don’t put ketchup on holubtsi.” This is a pretty undisputed fact within the diaspora, however in modern Ukraine ketchup is common and is put on a lot of foods including sometimes holubtsi. I've witnessed it first hand and don't understand why it is a big deal to say it happens. The problem for me with the “Ukrainian enough” statement is two pronged. First, I don’t want anyone narrowly defining my kids. Second, their criteria are outdated and inaccurate to begin with.

Learning through experience, walking around
Chernivtsi, Ukraine with her dad's cousin and friend.

What do we do instead of throwing varenyky at people who say stuff like that to us? We hug our daughters and make a big fuss about how wonderful MY side of the family is. We on my side aren’t Ukrainian at all, but we’re still pretty dang fantastic. Then my husband teaches them how to speak and read Ukrainian. Disney princesses speak Ukrainian, too (we get our movies from Ukraine). We decorate our home with a mix of the different cultures – Ukrainian, Polish, Irish, and anything else we like. And most importantly we take the girls physically to Ukraine. The REAL Ukraine. The best way for them to know what real Ukrainians do and do not do is for them to go there and spend time just hanging out with Ukrainians. I’m not going to tell my girls that Ukrainians don’t eat ketchup because I know they do. Ukrainians are modern people who like foods that taste yummy. They also watch tv and drive cars and wear tennis shoes. They aren’t all named Tanya and Taras. They give their kids names they like which are sometimes traditional Slavic names and sometimes they aren’t. They listen to rap music and pop music and sometimes traditional folk music. They don’t all drink horilka or wear head scarves. They are a variety of religions with a variety of political view points. Some like the west and some like the east and some don’t have an opinion (just like Americans!). Not everyone owns an embroidered shirt, and there are people in Adidas who love their country even more than the most embroidered, blue-and-yellow-ed, flower wreathed person you can find. Learning the old traditions is great, but it doesn't define being Ukrainian any more than apple pie and baseball define being American.

That is what we want our girls to know and understand. Being proud of Ukraine and being proud of America don’t mean fitting in one tiny cubby. Both are great countries with many wonderful traditions, and both are dynamic countries which are growing and changing with the times. The people are adapting and eating ketchup in both places, and that’s fine. As long as they don’t get it on their hot dogs. That’s just not Chicagoan enough. ;)

a mix - Irish shepherd's pie with Ukrainian insignia and curry seasoning