What's next? The past, my Latvian past, and Ukraine today

 

 In my mind’s eye as sleep is descending, I see a field of sunflowers against a blue sky.  This image is far easier for me to handle than the daily horrors of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Every day brings new heartbreak.

This same week I discovered truly depressing information about my father’s life.  I never knew much about his life before he fled Latvia as a refugee in the US.  There’s a Facebook site called Latvian Genealogy which I contacted about him, not expecting any information. Much to my surprise, Laura Zvirbule, (one ot the monitors of the site) responded with the UN refugee document from my father.  Now I had the names of my grandparents: Antons Peipins and Magdaliene Bolins!  It was a missing piece of the puzzle of his life.  My father was from a small rural town, Izvaltas, with less than 300 inhabitants that even today is underpopulated.

            Like the Ukranians, Latvians suffered the horrors of Russian occupation during the Second World War.  My mother’s home in Livani, Latvia, was bombed after she, two brothers, her mother and sister fled.  She thought they’d be able to return in a week.  Of course, that never happened.

            The story of my father took a different turn.  Instead of the Russians, he was forcibly taken from his farm by the Nazis and conscripted into forced labor in Germany. His situation got worse.  He was sent to Poland to work on farms and then to work in the forests cutting trees.  In the documents provided by the German government (to detail Nazi atrocities) he’s shown to work until he is so ill he’s unable to continue.  Throughout those years of physical torture, he is never given documents until he is finally able to connect with the displaced persons camps and registered, the first step on his journey to America.

            Despite the deep sadness of his story, I have to marvel at the life he created.  His lungs were filled with asbestos from his work at Dunlop Tire and Rubber.  His health was compromised but he worked hard and accomplished his dream of owning a farm with fields of grain and farm animals.  Perhaps they helped compensate for the great losses of his life.  When I found this information, I felt sad that I had not carried on this lineage but somewhere there is a Peipins from his first marriage when his young wife died in childbirth.

            What will happen to the Ukranians forced to flee?  Will they lose their loved ones and be unable to return home like the Latvians after the war?  Will another generation struggle to make sense of a meaningless war?

           

On the Anniversary of my Return to Buffalo

 

The Return

Delaware Park, Buffalo

 

 

               With each step around Delaware Lake, I feel their presence.  The ground squishy with moisture, as I walk, the first face appears.   Like when I was a child back from a day out, my uncle asks me what I have seen on my adventures.  “A rabbit?  A fox?’  And as if such things were even possible in the city, I vigorously shake my head.   Crossing a grove of trees I relive all the trips to the hospital for chemo, my mother clutching the plastic container she vomits into.  Five years of her pain see me through high school and give me the possibility of escape. 

            Yet I can recover great pleasure too.  I find my first love, Daniel, looking like Jesus in a Rafael painting.  We lay on a rooftop in August or under a blanket on the winter floor for hours on end pulsing to the universe.  His scent acrid like a farmhand’s sweat fills my brain.

Each moist step forgives and brings back the past.  Dunlop Tire and Rubber filled my father’s lungs with asbestos, leaving him on mood altering steroids and an asthma inhaler.  The delicacy of his peeling my fruit and mending my clothes contrasted sharply with the bouts of rage that erupted from nowhere and found me shaking in silence. 

            This city provided a framework to my existence, the years when I was so shy as to be unable to speak.  The heritage of an immigrant past meant never to stand out, as such pride could lead to a trip to Siberia or even worse.  On my return I find the remains of that person who had no way to construct the boundaries needed just to survive.  I could flow into the rivulets that empty into the lake, a motionless expanse of water. 

            This place resides in my blood, inhabiting a white winter landscape and the endless sunlight of summer.  This verge of spring fills each cell with longing and memory. 

            Across the street, I gravitate to the anonymity of the local university library, doubting I can still pass for a student.  The clock chimes the quarter hours as definitively as the local cathedral in the Spanish town I inhabited for so many years.  Another fifteen minutes and my mind is still racing, facing the blank page in front of me.    From the window, the grey sky is the color of a Paris winter where buildings and air meld together. 

            The old me, who I thought I’d squelched so long ago resurfaces.  In my dream I am lying in bed.  The doctor comes to visit but turns out to be my French dentist.  He examines me and tells me the problem is my heart.  I get out of bed to walk outside to find giant snowflakes swirling in the night sky. Can a return bring recovery?