This I Believe

My dream was to be president of the United States. 

When I was seven, my mom bought me a poster of all the U.S. presidents, and I would read it over and over again, fascinated by the names, years, faces, and the labels of “Democrat” or “Republican” under each man’s picture. I asked my mom what the label meant, and she said something along the lines of “One is for poor people, and the other one isn’t.” I still didn’t really understand, so I just picked my favorite president as the one who was in office during my birth year, 2007: George W. Bush. 

As a child, I was so confident and sure of myself becoming president that I told everyone that I was going to become the future president of the United States. I specifically remember telling my uncle that I was going to be the first woman president of this country. It’s funny how kids are so sure of themselves until the impending feelings of self-consciousness and doubt arise. 

I can still hear his voice coming through the speakers of my family’s dusty old Dell computer. I would sit on my dad’s lap as we stared at the bright blue “call connecting” screen, the light illuminating our faces in the dark. It would be late at night in our South Brooklyn apartment but 7:00 a.m. in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. The Skype ringtone would play on a slightly annoying loop as we waited for my uncle to answer. After the call connected, his face would pop up, an older version of my father, with the same M-shaped hairline and large nose but starkly contrasting eyes: my dad’s and mine were a light blue, and his were a dark hazel. He would greet us, always calling me princesa. My dad and uncle would catch each other up on the news of the past couple of days while I would sit and listen. 

That day, when I told him about my plan to become the first female president of the United States, he said, “Wow, a princess and the president, what a combination!” I then told him that I was going to go to Harvard since it was the only college that I (and likely my uncle) knew. 

This was in 2013, right before the Crimean conflict. Not long after, my uncle was called to serve in the army. I remember my mom telling me that he operated a tank, but I didn’t really understand the conflict happening overseas. One day in sixth grade, when I attended a Ukrainian school, a veteran came to speak to us. Both of his legs were amputated, and he had to hobble up the stairs of the school on crutches with the help of two other teachers because our elevator didn’t work. I sat in the shabby auditorium around other Ukrainian kids; many of them likely had family members involved in the war. I only remember him telling us that his best friend was blown up right in front of him.

 As the years passed, my uncle became a sniper; currently, he is a military sergeant. He is only allowed to go home for a few days at a time. Needless to say, we haven’t Skyped on that ancient Dell in years, but I still remember those times, before everything changed. 

My dad called my uncle on Viber last week, and he said that he was at the farmers market. After a quick two minutes on the phone, my uncle abruptly said, 

“Ok, I have to go. They turned the air raid alarm on.” 

My dad simply replied, “Keep yourself together, brother.”

That interaction reminded me of when my mom’s nephew called her two weeks ago. His name was Paul, or Pasha, the same as my brother. He was 19. He was dying in the hospital and couldn’t reach anyone in Ukraine.

I listened from the other room as he cried hysterically and laughed in his last moments. I always imagined people at death’s door to be lying on a bed, relaxed, taking their last breath around their family. Instead, Pasha was cursing at everything, laughing, and then crying as the wound in his stomach that was killing him ripped at his insides. 

My mom began to ask for his location, but he declined, saying that he could be spied on by Russians if they had tapped phone lines.

“What about the rest of the troop?” my mom persisted, through her sobs.

“All of them, they’re all dead,” he replied, followed by a string of Ukrainian curses and violent, sad laughter.

My mom started crying uncontrollably. 

My brother and I were confused, not remembering who this was.

Pasha was three years older than me. He had an entire life to live. He should’ve had it. 

I was the first person in my entire extended family to be born in the United States. 

My parents’ sacrifice was supposed to be for me so that I could achieve my dreams. But I’ve met kids with parents as heart surgeons, lawyers, businessmen, yet not one mailman. The girl who sat next to me in my computer science class had immigrant parents who went to Harvard and MIT, so what was my parents’ excuse? 

I brought up that bitter, selfish thought to my mom but regretted it immediately when I saw her face. She laughed, biting down on her lip and looking down at her hands. The same cracked, pale hands that cook and clean endlessly for the entire family. And I had the nerve to make her feel as if she hadn’t done enough for me. 

I was raised in a household where no one spoke English, which was not uncommon in New York City, but somehow I had learned to read before kindergarten. This home situation only sabotaged me once on a first-grade reading test, in which we had to read a passage about baseball. It was easy enough until one of the questions was about the use of the idiom “butterfingers,” referring to a girl in the story who couldn’t catch the ball. I was flabbergasted at this word; English idioms were something I had never heard. I ashamedly told the teacher I had no idea, and even though she tried to get me to understand, I had already given up and only understood the question years later.

I believe that education is the way to my dreams. It is my way of catching up to the Harvard parents’ kids, to make sure that my parents are taken care of, and someday my kids will be too. Maybe I can reach a place of power where Pasha’s story not only gets heard but will also never occur ever again. 

Sometimes, I wonder what my younger self would think if I told her,

“George W. Bush started wars in the Middle East, the same type of war that kills your family members whom you feel bad for not remembering.”

Sometimes, I’m jealous of American kids because they don’t worry about the war. I doubt they have ever heard a family member die on a phone call in a random army hospital miles and miles away. Nor did they have a 24-year-old soldier with no legs tell them about a Russian bomb that killed his entire troop. But then I remember that I don’t get to choose that, nor do I have the power to change where my parents are from.

Despite not being president, I know I can demonstrate gratefulness for my parents through my actions, whether they are cleaning up the kitchen, doing laundry, or making lunch for my brother. As I’ve grown older, I’ve appreciated that life is hard and that its complexities will affect your everyday life, no matter how much you try to compartmentalize. 

Maybe this is my childhood naivety still kicking, but I believe that I need to change the world. I believe that I can work to aid people all over the world and hold others in power accountable for being complacent about war and genocide. I envision a future of peace, and though we are currently far from it, standing up for the right causes and even knowing your independent impact on large-scale issues is helpful. I try to understand where my peers come from and how they are impacted by our messed-up world to put into perspective what someone may be going through, even as they try to live their lives normally. As long as people from my family’s country die every day while I learn about useless binomial theorems, I can try to become president for that little girl who promised her uncle that she would.