Natalia Shudruk stopped in front of the escalators at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and tried in vain to calm her 9-year-old nephew.
“Breathe, rabbit. Breathe. Please!” Shudruk pleaded into the phone to the terrified child, who doesn’t speak English and was responsible for getting himself, his younger sister and his grandmother through the last leg of their journey from war-torn Ukraine to the United States.
“Everything will be OK. I will find you.”
Fifty days of worrying. Thinking. Preparing. All of it seemed to hinge on this moment, when Shudruk’s nephew, niece and mother would finally walk though airport security en route to a new, safer life in the suburbs just outside Portland.
“Breathe! Please!” Shudruk said in Ukrainian as the sparkly rabbit ears she brought to cheer up the children slid forward on her head and two stuffed toys hung out of her open bag, on the verge of falling out. “Go where the people are going.”
Shudruk’s experience is a microcosm of the countless consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which stretch far beyond the tens of thousands killed and millions displaced. Like many in the Ukrainian diaspora with relatives still in their home country, her existence in Portland has been turned upside down.
The primary form of action for some locals originally from Ukraine is the refuge they now provide. Hundreds of Ukrainians fleeing the war may have already arrived in Portland, refugee groups say, drawn by a large existing community that has grown over decades through successive waves of immigration.
It’s vital for those refugees to land with someone they know, immigrant groups said, because the U.S. government has been slow to offer them support.
Shudruk is providing that safe haven for her family. And, in doing so, she’s effectively taking on the role of a fill-in mother by providing financial and emotional support for her 9-year-old nephew and 7-year-old niece, with no firm timeline for when the children will reunite with Shudruk’s sister who remains in Ukraine.
Locals with Ukrainian family may certainly feel a sense of relief when their relatives are safe, but the changes to their lives as they become caretakers can be substantial, said Peter Newbegin, executive director of the Portland Refugee Support Group.
“They have their own lives to deal with,” Newbegin said. “Now, they have the added stress of providing for a family that doesn’t have any other resources.”
To say nothing of the obstacles that come when relatives try to settle in. Official refugee status can open up access to financial, health care and other benefits, but getting it can take years. “Humanitarian parole,” granted at the U.S.-Mexico border, allows people into the country, but doesn’t give them access to support. And those arriving on tourist visas, like Shudruk’s family, aren’t eligible for benefits either.
That means hundreds of Portland-area lives may have already been transformed as they accept Ukrainian relatives into ad-hoc living situations, stretch budgets to accommodate new arrivals and ask acquaintances and strangers on Facebook for furniture donations.
Tatiana Terdal, a prominent Portland-area activist supporting Ukraine, listed other challenges for local hosts, such as finding health insurance, registering children in school or simply making sure their homes have enough space to accommodate newcomers.
For Terdal, though, the danger Ukrainians face by remaining in their home country overshadows all other considerations for local benefactors.
“The main thing right now,” Terdal said, “is trying to get people to safety.”
***
When Shudruk’s 7-year-old son heard Russia had invaded his mother’s home country, his first thought was of his cousin.
“Is Yaryk going to die?” Danya asked his mother, Shudruk, speaking of the 9-year-old he had come to love after several summer trips to the village in west Ukraine where his mother grew up.
“No, no, of course not,” Shudruk, 39, recalled telling her son, knowing the boy got anxious easily, even without a war. As she pretended to know the answer, she thought of more than a dozen close relatives who could die, including two nephews deployed by the military, her parents and her sister’s family in her home village, as well as her husband’s extended family in Kyiv and east Ukraine.
Before the war, Shudruk’s story was not atypical for an Eastern European person looking for a better and more interesting life abroad. Originally from a two-street village near the Belarusian and Polish borders, she was the first in her family to go to university in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.
In 2008, she got a gig as an au pair in Portland, where she met her now-husband, also a Ukrainian immigrant. They had Danya and several years later moved to California, before moving back to Portland in 2021. He works remotely as a finance director for a manufacturing company and she got a job teaching English as a second language.
Despite years spent thousands of miles from home, Shudruk stayed deeply connected to her family. She talked regularly to her parents and her two sisters, one of whom stayed in their home village and had six children, and the other who moved to Poland.
Shudruk’s son absorbed her love of Ukraine, and quickly became best friends with his older cousin after three back-to-back summer trips to his mother’s village.
When the war began, Danya wasn’t the only one worried about the family’s safety. Almost immediately, Shudruk phoned her older sister to urge her to leave Ukraine and join their youngest sister in Poland. But Tetiana Tsisaruk refused, saying she didn’t want to go without her husband, who by law had to stay, and she was worried about losing her job at a daycare and leaving their livestock untended.
Finally, their sister in Poland became so enraged that the older sister would willingly put her children in harm’s way that the older sister agreed to leave Ukraine, if only temporarily. By Feb. 24, the day Russia launched its invasion, Shudruk’s mother, older sister and the sister’s four younger children were on a bus headed to Warsaw, Poland, where the six of them would stay together in one room.
“Thank god,” Shudruk recalled thinking. “They’re leaving. This is victory.”
***
As the war progressed, its ripple effects slithered into Shudruk’s home.
Each morning brought fresh news of the growing destruction in their country. The house grew increasingly tense as each of its three members struggled to find ways to let their feelings out.
After days unable to focus on work, glued to every development in the news, Shudruk’s husband, Andriy Serezentynov, said he felt tense and needed to do something to get his mind off the war.
He decided to go crabbing. On the way to the coast one morning, he saw an 18-wheeler through the pre-dawn fog with the letter “Z” spelled out on the back in small red lights. Found on many Russian military vehicles, the letter has become a symbol of support for the invasion. Serezentynov shook with anger virtually the entire way to the coast and was still visibly upset when talking about it days later.
Meanwhile, Shudruk became worried about her son’s anxiety. He was unable to spend any time in a room alone, and would last only several hours in his bedroom at night before getting in bed with his parents. He was clamming up, Shudruk said, refusing to say what was upsetting him.
Shudruk, who usually prides herself on maintaining consistent care of her emotions, fared little better.
She stopped journaling, a practice she picked up after her brother died unexpectedly several years ago and that had become central to her identity. She became more reactive and would blow up at her husband over trivial things, she said.
“You keep it together, you keep it together, and then you fall apart,” Shudruk said. “You feel like you have no emotions, and then suddenly you are weeping.”
But even as Shudruk’s domestic situation was teetering, her sister made a decision that brought single-minded focus and purpose to her life.
***
Shudruk’s relief that at least some of her family was safe in Poland didn’t last.
Within a week of moving to Warsaw, Shudruk’s older sister insisted she needed to return to Ukraine. No amount of arguing or shouting over the telephone could change her mind.
“What, are you crazy?” Shudruk recalled thinking.
But her sister wouldn’t budge.
That’s when Shudruk decided to try to get as many of her relatives to the U.S. as possible. She convinced her sister to stay a little longer in Poland — just long enough to secure a tourist visa to America that would allow them a six-month visit.
Shudruk filled out the paperwork online. She stayed up late to call the consulate during the day in Poland. She wrote a letter for her sister saying she would have a place to stay and would be supported. She did hours of research on how to successfully interview for a visa, then coached her sister.
Meanwhile, Shudruk was planning how to rearrange her life for her relatives’ arrival, and considering how it would affect her family, especially her son. Shudruk feared he didn’t understand it would not be like the summer vacations he remembered. Already a handful for his parents, Danya would have to learn to share — not only his toys but also his mother’s attention.
Shudruk also felt that it would be her responsibility to help manage her nephew and niece’s emotional turmoil after the weeks they spent in an unfamiliar country escaping war with their distracted mother.
Shudruk recalled a conversation with her sister the first day of the war. Shudruk asked how the two youngest children were doing.
“They’re fine,” her older sister responded.
Yaryk, the 9-year-old, overheard the question and his mother’s answer.
“I’m not fine,” the boy shouted, she recalled. “I was just sitting here in the corner and crying.”
In preparation for becoming a mother of three overnight, Shudruk started to take parenting classes. She planned fun things for the children to do after they arrived, like going ice skating and to the Portland Zoo.
By March 21, her sister and the children had visas.
Yet Shudruk’s sister still felt drawn home, saying it was time to start planting in preparation for the summer harvest and that she was worried about her cows, hogs and chickens and her job at a daycare. She also didn’t feel that she could stay in Poland and take up room in her youngest sister’s one-room apartment.
She decided she and her two teenage children would return to Ukraine. But she decided to let her two youngest children travel to Portland with their grandmother.
***
Shudruk’s sister soon second-guessed the choice to send two of her children halfway around the world.
Shudruk called her sister March 29, the day before the children were supposed to leave Poland, to make a list of what they would bring to America so she could figure out what else to buy before their arrival.
But as soon as her sister picked up, Shudruk knew something was off.
“Yulia told me tomorrow you are going back to Ukraine?” said Shudruk, referring to their younger sister. Shudruk was sitting amid the disordered boxes and bags in the guest room of her three-bedroom home in Washington County’s Cedar Mill area.
“Yes,” her older sister answered, sighing wearily.
“Early?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you sighing? Are you not happy you’re leaving?”
“I don’t know,” the normally confident sister said.
“I understand,” Shudruk said, sitting with the emotional tension on the line before turning the conversation back to preparing her list.
Within 10 minutes, both women were crying. The sister was no longer sure she wanted to go back to Ukraine and say goodbye to her 9- and 7-year-old children. But the plan was set, and it wasn’t going to change.
Shudruk got off the phone, collected herself, and proceeded to prepare the guest room for her mother, moving her desk and boxes of supplies.
***
But the March 30 flight was not be.
Shudruk’s mother wasn’t allowed to board the plane because she wasn’t vaccinated against COVID-19. Shudruk said her mother had been vehemently anti-vaccine, but finally decided to get a Johnson & Johnson shot for the children’s sake. The flight was rescheduled for several weeks later.
The night before their rescheduled flight on April 16, Shudruk’s living room and kitchen were strewn with new things she had bought in preparation for the kids’ arrival.
A wicker box for toys. Clothing. Trash cans and laundry baskets. Two beds and a mattress on the floor in her son’s bedroom.
Standing in front of the kitchen counter around 8 p.m., Shudruk unpacked Easter eggs and Easter-themed kitchen towels between phone calls from her younger sister, who was seeing their mother and the children off at the airport.
It seemed everything was in order.
Shudruk’s sister had printed out pieces of paper for the children that said, in English, “Can you please connect me to the Wi-Fi?” and other requests for help, and they had instructions on how to transfer to the Seattle flight in Amsterdam.
Then, Shudruk remembered — nobody had called the Amsterdam airport to make sure they would have a wheelchair for her mother in case she was tired. She called her sister, who said she could no longer see the children or their grandmother as they disappeared through security.
“It’s not like I can do anything now,” her sister said. “Mom has already left.”
***
Around 7:30 a.m. the next day, Shudruk drove to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where the children and her mother were scheduled to arrive late in the morning.
Since it was the day before Easter, she grabbed her blue, sparkly bunny ears, two stuffed toys gifted by her neighbors, a bouquet of paper sunflowers and her travel journal.
The flight was hours late and while she waited in the airport, Shudruk wrote in her journal, recounting the journey to that point, her nephew’s fears, and the joy she felt that they would all soon be together.
The plane landed around 2:30 p.m. Soon after, Shudruk found a spot in front of the escalators from international arrivals, amid groups of other families holding welcome signs and flowers.
Wave after wave of travelers from Paris, Bahrain and London came up the escalators as Shudruk paced. She partially unzipped her backpack and let it hang off of one shoulder so that the stuffed toys would be within easy reach.
She petted them nervously as she peered down hoping to see her family on the escalators — only to step back in disappointment and wait for the next wave. Her sister called to ask if the family had arrived, and Shudruk waved her off, promising she’d let her know as soon as they did.
Then, Shudruk got a call. It was 9-year-old Yaryk. The plane had landed, but he didn’t know where to go. Shudruk tried to calm him down, promising she would see him soon. The boy handed the phone to an airport employee, and Shudruk explained the family needed to get to the exit.
“OK, thank you so much,” Shudruk said before hanging up and resuming pacing.
And then, she caught sight of them. Moments later, Yasya and then Yaryk ran into her arms.
The pink stuffed puppy fell out of Shudruk’s bag onto the floor and Yasya picked it up, barely balancing under the weight of her stuffed “Hello Kitty” backpack. Shudruk’s mother kissed her daughter on the cheek as Shudruk held onto Yaryk, his face just reaching her neck.
“It’s yours, it’s yours!” Shudruk told Yasya when she asked about the toy before placing the bunny ears on the girl’s head.
Later, as they walked through the sky bridge connecting the terminal to the parking garage, Shudruk asked about the scariest part of the trip.
“When it goes down and then suddenly goes up,” Yaryk said, motioning with his arms in imitation of a plane.
“Going side to side,” Yasya interrupted, swaying left and right with her arms out.
“OK, who is going to press the elevator button?” Shudruk asked.
“Me!” Yasya said.
Shudruk’s laughter echoed against the cement walls as they neared the car.
“I brought you presents,” Yasya said quietly to Shudruk.
“Oh, really?” Shudruk exclaimed. “I have presents for you, too!”
The family swiftly packed into the car and got on the road to Portland. By the time they crossed the Columbia River, the children were asleep.
