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I’ll admit, I had to look up Ukraine to find it on the map when this needless war began. I knew little about the customs, the religion, the ethnicities of Ukraine — and really, in the final analysis, none of that really mattered.
I just kept trying to imagine what it would feel like if, for no reason, someone invaded our town, bombing and burning buildings, looting our homes and leaving gigantic piles of rubble in their wake.
About the closest I’ve been to anything like the destruction of the cities in Ukraine was a visit to the east coast of Florida after the devastation of Hurricane Andrew in August 1992.
A few months after Andrew, when my husband drove down the coast and witnessed the unbelievable aftermath: the rubble of destroyed structures piled two stories high and many people on the roadside, selling food, crafts, etc. The sight of destroyed homes, yet to be razed, as well as the destruction surrounding us left me thinking about the now homeless homeowners, witnessing what was left of their homes being scraped into piles by earth movers.
Here in Dripping Springs, few of us have any idea what it would be like to lose everything we owned in an instant. My heart goes out to the East Coast victims of floods a month ago or the families (it seems like in every state) seeing their homes burn to the ground in forest and range fires.
Once, many years ago, our home was broken into, drawers were rummaged, jewelry boxes were emptied, closets were looted, even our mattresses were flipped. The material things taken were covered by insurance, the objects with emotional value could never be replaced…and after the initial shock, the surprising emotion I felt was one of violation, of being attacked.
The drug-addicted criminals who came into our family’s private refuge and helped themselves were uninvited strangers (of course) but the haunting thought of these people we didn’t know, being in our house, would stay with me for months afterwards.
As the war in Ukraine slogs on and we see the inhumanity and destruction, I keep thinking about the outgunned Ukrainians and pray for miracles, like cruel and power-hungry leaders having a change of heart — which is probably just as likely as a battalion of Super Heroes coming to end the war.
I try to imagine how it would feel if, one day I was going about my normal routine, seeing kids off to school, running errands, sitting down to a family meal before homework and bedtime — and the next day, having our city bombed, burned out and invaders ransacking our homes, sending us somewhere — anywhere to save ourselves from blood-thirsty enemies.
Honestly, I cannot begin to imagine, mainly because we don’t have trains to take us to safety, no bus system in Drip and private automobile transportation only promises traffic snarls, like we’ve seen in the hurricane evacuations of the past. Could we even begin to survive an invasion…or worse?
Most of all, I think of the Ukrainian children, leaving familiar surroundings behind, having to say goodbye to their fathers, who stayed behind to protect whatever’s left of their neighborhoods. I worry about the children who must continue cancer treatment if it’s possible and hope U.S. medical teams are recovered enough from COVID to provide support for the Ukrainian doctors and nurses, trying to carry on, even as their hospitals are bombed.
Years ago, John Lennon wrote a song titled, “Imagine.” Among the lyrics, he asks us to imagine a world where there’s no killing, nothing to die for. He also wants us to imagine a world where we can all live together peacefully.
Believe me, I keep trying to imagine everything John Lennon wrote about, but it’s not easy.
My fall back is another song, written by Jill and Sy Miller in 1955, titled, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” In this song, the wish is to, “Let peace begin with me and let it begin in this very moment.”
Maybe if we make an effort to let peace begin among the people in Dripping Spring, we’ll start something that will spread across Central Texas, through Texas Hill Country and then up and down I-35 and beyond. This I can imagine.
