Luba and "dimok"
The recent Occupy Wallstreet protests have really struck a nerve here on October Revolution Street. And, let me tell you, defending yourself against a couple of women who lived through one famine and two wars is no easy task. When I left for school this morning (in my down jacket with detachable faux fur hood) they implored me to add more layers because snow had fallen in New York overnight. New York’s location over 4,000 miles from our backyard seemed of little importance. Yes, so entwined have I become with Luba and Anya’s idea of America that I must dress for New York’s weather even here in Ukraine.
I just had to apologize to my friend, Peter, for not calling back because, yet again, I was set the daunting task of defending capitalism and democracy (which have, by the bye, become synonyms in our house of late) on a Tuesday afternoon. The lively debate pretty much ended after this sixty-four thousand dollar gem,
“Of course you live well, you’re middle class!”
Which is what Luba said to me when I sheepishly tried to defend America’s relative successes throughout the last century to her accusation that we (a.k.a me, America) have caused all the problems in the world. She was sitting outside in the yard sorting seed potatoes for next Spring and I’d just walked through the gate from school. “Welcome home to you, too!,” I thought.
She next told me that tomorrow she’d have to go to the nearest small city to get her two bottom teeth fixed, adding that if I wanted that pumpkin we’d have to chop it up tonight.
Were it a few weeks ago, I’d have been curious about how these two statements found themselves in the same conversation; the pumpkin mutilation alongside the demise of the American ideal. But something about my impending departure has brought out the boxing gloves and, most recently, it’s been capitalism squirming up against the ropes.
Usually I just sit and listen to her side. Which lately, really has been a valid one.
Next year is a parliamentary election and the candidates are already mobilizing the masses by giving free dental care to pensioners. That is, as long as it costs no more than 500 griven. Which is less than a hundred dollars. And, let’s be honest, when was the last time you paid less than that for dental care? Even with insurance. It all feels a little “swindly” to me, especially when you consider the serious dangers affiliated with dentistry in Ukraine. (Have I mentioned that I know more than one Ukrainian who’s gotten Hepatitis from substandard dental care?) Our house’s general belief seems to be this:
“I’ll take the new teeth but like Hell they’re getting my vote!”
Which is just one of the things that makes Luba so cool.
And the woman’s got style, too.
Earlier this Fall, when I was leaving site to attend my friend’s wedding, Luba helped me carry my things to the bus station down in the center of town. As we walked out the gate, she fished her sunglasses out of the bottom of her purse. They are of the variety that all grandmas are likely to fish out of their well-used pocketbooks: big with grayish lenses and light purple frames. They match the pink lipstick magnificently.
She wears a black, flower print skirt and carries my mandolin on her back. We walk down the central street in town and her hair, newly trimmed, bounces as we go. And walking down the hill, discussing the bandits in government and their choice to raise gas prices for elderly, veterans and persons with disabilities, I can’t help but think one thing. This woman who has been my roommate for the past two years is so cool.
And the more I sit here and think about it, the more examples I find to support the fact that I’m probably the luckiest Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine. Who else has gotten to sit and drink plum wine on a Sunday night to memorialize the beheading of John the Baptist? Or chill out in the garden on tree stump stools discussing the presence of a higher power?
It’s not a bad deal, that’s for sure.
But just because she’s got style and moxie, doesn’t mean we don’t go at it sometimes.
Especially when it comes to the nostalgic patriotism we both seem to have embraced of late – mine for the hyperbolic American homeland to which I’ll soon be returning and hers for the glory of the Soviet Union that’s past and gone. In a phrase, we are both drunk on the idea of our countries as we imagine them to be. I think, too, that we are worried we may never live in the world into which we had always thought ourselves born.
Luba believes strongly that living in present-day Ukraine wouldn’t be such a struggle if people hadn’t experienced better conditions during Soviet times. But democratization, she believes, loused all that up royally. And, of course, whether I should or shouldn’t, this afternoon I decide to counter in defense of the only political system I’ve ever known.
“Of course,” she laughed back, clearly feeling sorry for my ineptitude on this matter, “capitalism served you well because you’re middle class!”
Which was quite a blow to my belief that all these years it had been my hard work affording me what I’d earned. And as I watched her store the bad potatoes for Spring, draped in a coat that’s she’s worn for longer than I’ve lived, I began to understand a bit how it might be that middle class Americans could fit neatly into a bourgeois box in her eyes. And how someone outside the silver living might just take issue with that.
It gave me pause. How much of America (and how many Americans) have I gone without noticing for the better part of my 26 years? How much have I benefited from the institutionalized policy of inclusion bestowed on white kids from Long Island? Why isn’t there poverty in Nassau County? And if it is there, why can’t I see it? We surely can’t keep blaming Robert Moses and his low bridges for keeping this kind of socio-economic stratification going. Bridges, after all, can be rebuilt.
And though I’ve spent the past two years volunteering, “helping” and spreading the wealth, it feels like a fraudulent, half-cocked attempt when you look at the numbers. I mean, the dollars and cents.
Sure, on the creative, intellectual and emotional levels, there’s good getting done and I’m proud when I catch glimpses of it. I see it when my most troublesome third former leans heavy against my hip, desperate for a sort of human support that doesn’t exist at home. I see it, too, when I learn that the Kharkiv city government has committed to helping fund ABC Camp in 2012. In those small moments, I know that I am creating hope and belief in a better world.
But on a fiscal level, I’ve got to admit that I’m failing a bit at keeping my privilege in perspective. Despite two years here, I still don’t talk about money the way Ukrainians can. I’m not even home yet and already a realtor sends me emails about apartments that cost more per month than my yearly Peace Corps stipend.
Yup, here I go – running right back to the capitalist middle class from which I came.
It all gets rather frantic in my brain for a few hours until evening. Luba calls me into the kitchen to clean the pumpkin. I have a good, long chat with my Mom over Skype. And I resolve to see more of America. Like, the real America, so that I can write and tell Luba about it.
Next day, we sit down with two thick, gooey slices of pumpkin cake and herb tea. Luba turns down the national radio and says she’s sick of talking about the bandits, “yours and mine.” I feel guilty and grateful.
Because at dusk, when the sun buries itself deep among the corn fields, the meat of the matter is this:
We’re both just getting ready to be parted.
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