Their kitchen is very like mine: a coffee maker, bowl of fruit, and a shelf of spices, under a window that looks outside. On their counter is a small TV or computer screen. Yes, it almost exactly mirrors my kitchen here in New Hampshire, but theirs is in an apartment building in Kyiv and one whole wall of their kitchen has been blown out from a Russian missile yesterday morning.
Their family is very like mine. Together today, we are three generations: my wife, our son and our daughter-in-law, and our two grandchildren. They are having breakfast at our house, stopping here on the way to Logan airport for a two-week vacation. I’ve been playing number games with my grandson and our granddaughter is learning to say “Aloha.” As a family, we look very much like them, but they, with their small children, are taking shelter in a subway station as the air raid sirens wail and the sounds of nearby shelling shakes the benches they are sitting on. I see joy and expectation in the face of my grandchildren and fear in the faces of that Ukrainian family. Mine knows where they are going. They have no idea where or when they will be safe.
Their neighborhood is very like mine. The houses are along a tree-lined street with cars parked outside. My neighbors are cleaning up after a snow storm, grumbling when the town snowplow deposits a plug of ice at the end of their newly cleared driveways. But the family outside Lviv is outside trying to halt a line of Russian tanks making its way through their otherwise quiet neighborhood.
Their neighbors are very like mine. Across my street lives a physician, next door is the owner of a construction company, further down is a retired school superintendent and a business executive, and beyond the owner of a tech company. Even in Covid times, we gather in one of our driveways to share a beverage in the evening and catch up on local news. But in Kharkiv, the neighbors gather to collect empty bottles — just like the ones we have — to make Molotov cocktails. And there, too, the counterparts of my neighbors — a physician, a builder, an executive, a retired superintendent, don makeshift uniforms and take rifles into their hands, many of which have never even held a weapon before. Why? Because their country means so much to them.
Empathy is the very human capacity to feel as another person might. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is like no other war in my experience. I do not read about it in a newspaper 24 hours later. Instead, it is broadcast live into my kitchen as it is happening and through those media relays from Ukrainian kitchens, families, neighbors and neighborhoods so very like mine, I am drawn deeply into their plight because it is now so possible to imagine what such a conflict would entail in my otherwise safe life.
They are fighting for democracy and their country. They are also fighting for us. We must help in any way we can.