My reasons for moving back to Ukraine are so convoluted that it will take years for me to understand them.  I’m realizing that my entire identity is wrapped around this question. 

Maybe every choice I’ve ever made is connected to all my prior decisions and experiences?  Trying to pull out a reason for a particular decision unravels the whole sweater.

In the spring of 1997, as I was finishing sixth grade, my parents told me and my sister that we would be moving to the United States for a two-year living abroad experience.  It was unbelievable, as unbelievable as someone telling me that I’d be flying up to explore the surface of the moon.  Everything I knew about the US I learned from “Home Alone”, “Coming to America,” “Police Academy,” and “Twins.” 

I was curious about visiting the land, where people throw away their handkerchiefs after a single use, eat hamburgers, which are sandwiches that are warm, and live in giant, stand-alone houses.  But mixed with the curiosity was frustration and anxiety. I didn’t want to leave my friends, my town, and my school.   

The Soviet Union fell apart in 1990-1991, just before I began first grade.  I will never forget the exuberant, celebratory atmosphere of the months that followed.  The giant Lenin statue in the city square, which happened to be right outside of our apartment windows, was pulled down – it was the fifth of about 6000 Lenin statues to be pulled down in Ukraine – Ukrainian flags were flying, organizations that were forbidden by the Soviets came back up from underground. It was the culmination of generations of work, sacrifice, suffering, and bloodshed.  I was among the lucky generation.

I was in the first group of students who would not have to take any Russian language classes in school, or participate in mandatory communist groups.  The air was saturated with gratitude, hope and patriotism, and I breathed it all in.  I joined Plast, a Ukrainian scouting organization, that combined outdoor adventure/survival, environmentalism, service, and patriotism.  

In third grade I entered an academic magnet school, with smaller class sizes, and a community of forward thinking teachers, ready to prepare a generation of leaders for the new Ukraine.  I participated in almost every activity offered and loved all the kids in my cohort.  I have never felt as sure of myself, and as “home” anywhere as I did at that school.

Jumping from this environment to huge American public middle school was jarring and traumatizing.  Despite three years of English language lessons in Ukraine, I could not put sentences together.  I had outdated clothing, an unpronounceable name, and six English phrases with which to express myself:  “thank you very much,” “excuse me,” “I love you,” “my name is” “God bless you,” and “time is money, you know.”  I was failing in the lowest spelling group, had no friends, and suffered frequent panic attacks.  I did not improve my situation by cutting my own bangs.

Nobody knew that Ukraine was a country or on which continent.  I felt so insignificant. Lives were being lived all around me, but I was just standing there, alone.  Every day I checked the mailbox for a letter from my friends back home. But they too, reminded me of all the things I was no longer a part of. The world had turned and left me here.

My parents made comments about the need to prepare for college, and how they were looking to buy a house.  We never talked about it, but somehow the promise of going back in two years evaporated.  At the end of seventh grade, I realized that I had to completely immerse myself in everything “American” or I would experience a full psychotic meltdown. 

Eighth grade was far better; my English improved and I made three new friends: Sandy, Matt, and Keith.  It was like I stepped back onto the automated-airport walkway of life. I started living again, and it all happened fast.  High school graduation, college, an American marriage, grad school, kids…  I lost my Ukrainian accent and became infused with the American culture of the Pacific Northwest variety. That decade after the onset of puberty is quite a time for cultural infusion.

When I was pregnant with Lucas, I was fully determined to speak Ukrainian to him exclusively.  Even though it’s not a useful foreign language in the way that Spanish or Mandarin are, I read several convincing articles about the benefits of bilingualism, regardless of the language.  I met so many people who said they wished that their parents had taught them their native language, or parents who wished they would have taught their kids.  It sounded like a big challenge, but that only motivated me.  I freaking survived moving to America! Bring it on!

From day one I spoke to Lucas in Ukrainian only.  It was a bit awkward at first because I hadn’t used the language on a daily basis for years, but a new habit soon formed.  My parents lived nearby and spoke Ukrainian to my new baby.  Everything was all going according to plan.  I was doing it.  I WAS DOING IT!!!  Lucas’s first words were Ukrainian: mama (mom), tato (dad), myach (ball), baba (grandma), dido (grandpa), shche (more), dva (two). 

But it was short lived. By the time Lucas turned four, my success, my plan, my vision, it all started to fall apart. My parents had moved away. I already had two younger kids. I was exhausted. Speaking Ukrainian required more effort. Lucas started preschool. He started to respond to me in English and translated my Ukrainian into English for his sisters. As he grew, and our conversations got more complex, he got frustrated that he didn’t understand my Ukrainian.  He was upset that I wasn’t speaking to him in “his language”. He knew I could. Obviously. I spoke “his language” to his father at home, to friends, strangers, and the neighborhood kids; why was I torturing him? I was so frustrated about his resistance. I started to grow resentful.

Over the next couple of years I bribed, begged, tried to reason with the kids to use Ukrainian.  They would refuse, complain, or ignore me.  Their mood and attitude made me angry because I felt like they were rejecting me.  It drained me.  As they became older and our conversations increased in complexity, it was difficult to communicate, “we don’t understand YOUR language!  Speak in OUR language!”  

After months of consideration and soul searching, I decided that my relationship with my kids had to be my number one priority.  They should feel my love for them. They should feel free to ask me anything.  It did feel like defeat when I decided to speak English to them, but I had a much more positive relationship with my kids, and this was a huge relief.  

In time… friends, school, books, movies… and they were no longer Ukrainian speakers by any definition.  This failure to teach my kids Ukrainian intensified a constant, deeply brewing guilt.  And I felt like I wasn’t being an honest mother to my kids.

Adding to the pain was the fact that nobody understood why this language thing was such a big deal to me. Nobody asked, but had they, I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it.  

Due to their history, Americans associate “a people” with statehood.  The reason there is such a thing as an American is because at one point a group of people organized a country called United States of America.  If USA never formed an independent country then there wouldn’t be such a thing as Americans.  

This isn’t always the case. My great-grandfather, born in a village near Lviv around the turn of the last century, was technically born in Austria, and thus an Austrian citizen. Over the next five decades he would survive the Nazi Germany occupation and live in four Todd Hollis claimed that the site allows users to post lies about him anonymously, such as that he was gay, had pfizer viagra price fathered several children, suffered from herpes and gave a girl a STD. Here are just a few of their findings: * More than 30 million men use cute-n-tiny.com free viagra without prescriptionound the globe. * 50 percent of males who purchase viagra do not renew their prescriptions. It has levitra online pharmacy been found that at least a subset of migraineurs have a dysfunction in their life. ED is something no man likes to deal with, and thankfully we have the option these days of ordering prescriptions through online pharmacies to get ED drugs to enhance our buy viagra on line body resistance and strength in order to treat you. countries: Austria-Hungarian Empire, Independent Ukraine, Poland, and USSR without ever stepping out of his village. The town Berehove, Ukraine has been a part of five different countries in the last century. Yet my great-grandpa was never Austrian, Hungarian, Polish, or Russian. He and his ancestors have spoken the Ukrainian language, practiced Ukrainian traditions, and considered themselves Ukrainian back to the times of Slavic tribes. These people never moved. Same with the Hungarians of Berehove, who, unfortunately found themselves on the wrong side of the post-WW2 border with Hungary.

Ukrainians have lived in the areas of current day Ukraine for a very long time.  Originally it was one group of tribes and the people in that tribe were called Slavs, or Slavic people.  As they multiplied, some of them spread out in every direction from current-day Ukraine.  Now Slavic people can be divided into Czechs, Kashubs, Moravians, Poles, Silesians, Slovaks, Sorbs, Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Gorani, Pomaks, Montenegrins, Serbs, Solvenes, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Rusyns, and Russians.  

Those that stayed in the area of present-day Ukraine organized into a large federation, called Kievan Rus’ (do not even think about confusing this with the modern day word “Russia”), and were ruled by a monarchy until the thirteenth century.  From that time on, they were conquered by Poles, Lithuanians, Austrians, Mongolians, and Russians.  However, the people who lived on this land were the children and grandchildren of those same Ukrainians.  

New overloads came and brought with them some new rules and local rulers, but ninety percent of the population never changed.  They continued to farm their lands, practice their trades, speak in their language, and worship in their tradition.  At times the new overlords left them in peace, but other times they did everything possible to exterminate them by denying them education, protection and jobs; by bullying, intimidating, belittling, imprisoning, relocating, and textbook genocide.  

But Ukrainians were connected to their land.  They were numerous and stubborn.  Resilient.  In the last seven hundred years there were periods when they rose up, asserted their independence just to be silenced by various political forces of the time.

In 1991, they finally emerged, bruised and mangled.  Somehow, against all odds, after seven centuries of oppression from so many sides, Ukrainians did not assimilate into Poles, Russians, or Germans.  Somehow Ukrainian was still spoken, Ukrainian culture still practiced, there were still people who called themselves Ukrainians.  I imagine that Jews and Native Americans can relate to this feeling.  

My grandparents were sent to prison and forced labor camps in Siberia for trying to practice their culture.  My family’s lands were confiscated.  My parents endured discrimination at work and university and had to chant pro-communist Russia slogans, glorifying the people who caused so many atrocities.  

Here I was, the privileged generation that got to see Ukraine’s independence.  Even more privilege for the fact that I was born in the western part of Ukraine where language and culture had the biggest chance to be preserved – thank you Austria. Yet, I was blowing it.  Even with all my advantages, I wasn’t strong enough to pass it on to my children.  I was not prioritizing it. 

Maybe it was the timing of my immigration to the US, the brink of puberty that split me into the Ukrainian me and the American me. Instead of mixing into a new whole, I felt fractured, and it did not feel good. I tried to let the Ukrainian me go to feel whole. I reasoned with myself : “it wasn’t your choice to move to the US.  You were a child and had no control over your circumstances.  If the language thing is causing anger and a rift with your kids, then you need to let it go.  Give them a loving, positive upbringing.  You can be a good person.  No other Ukrainians you know have moved back.”

When I finally collected all my reasons and mustered the courage to let go, I couldn’t.  The Ukrainian thread was woven into me in such a complex way, that as I tried to let it go, other parts of me started to die.  It was too big of a part of me.  Without it, I wasn’t myself.  It was depressing and hopeless. I felt like something was wrong with me.

In 2014, as Ukraine was going through Euromaidan protests and political upheaval, I tried to get involved in any way I could but it only made me feel the guilt deeper. 

For a community, a nation, a people to thrive, everyone capable who has the desire to contribute must contribute.  People need to build schools, businesses, and government.  Yet I was not contributing. 

I learned something about myself: all I wanted was to be a good person, to have a nurturing, positive environment for my family, and to enjoy life.  Yet these goals are only possible when I live within the boundaries of “me”, the genuine me. When I try to change a fundamental part of myself, the attempt takes so much energy that none is left to nurture.  Being Ukrainian is one of those fundamental parts of me. 

The idea to move back to Ukraine didn’t arise out of the blue. It was in the background of my and Zach’s relationship from the beginning. The recent years precipitated it to foreground, and I could not NOT address it.

There was a cost to moving, but there is a cost to being inauthentic.

We compared the costs and decided that in was worth it to. Zach wrote about his arithmetic HERE, and why it was worth it for him.

As for the kids – they are a good age. They are all in elementary school – young enough to be flexible, yet old enough to remember their experiences.  I got very positive comments from friends who lived abroad as kids, that it changed their worldview, that it enriched their life, that it forever became a part of them, even if they no longer spoke the language. 

Spending some time in Ukraine as a family would provide an opportunity for my kids to connect to this long chain of people that managed to survive despite the odds, and of which I am the last link.  They will learn Ukrainian and see that there’s more to the world than the United States of America.  It will allow my favorite person in the universe, my husband, to understand my Ukrainian-ness in context.  It would provide an opportunity for me to try to reconcile the two parts of me. 

It is possible that after all our effort, we won’t achieve any of those goals in a meaningful way, but for the last two years, Zach and I couldn’t get this thought out of our heads:

In twenty years, we will regret not trying this.