A Blog of Flashbacks Diaspora
May 2026
Why do the nations rage so furiously together?
—Psalms, 11.1.2. In Handel’s The Messiah.
Diaspora: dispersion, scattering, coming from a Greek word meaning “to sow.” Originally applied to Jewish people who were dispersed from their homeland, it is also applied to other groups—the diaspora of white Russians fleeing their homeland, the diaspora of African Americans to northern US cities, the diaspora of Hispanics from Mexico to the States, the diaspora of Native Americans. I also think about the diaspora of soldiers. They are trained, sent off as units in World War II, as individuals to Vietnam, as units to Iraq and Afghanistan. From World War II they came home by boat, a week or two of forced togetherness, a chance to weep, to talk, to hope for the idyllic home they left behind. From Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, they arrive by plane. They sleep, or sit with the thousand-yard stare. Before they realize their surroundings and can talk with their buddies, the plane lands. They have mere hours to change from battlefield to billboards, city noise, and hundreds of people in a mall.
When I leave my home in Alaska—off the road system, remote, four hundred people—and go to New Orleans or New York, Lima or London, I am lost. I don’t speak the language of these scurrying, preoccupied people. I feel confused, defensive, and have a wish for everyone to evaporate. I revert to old habits developed from living in New York City or London. I pause to view store windows to see who may be behind me; I don’t give a hoot what the store is displaying. Looking can pass as normal. Only if I flatten myself against the window or a wall and don’t move, only if I refuse to leave my apartment or house, am I outside the frame that would make someone take notice. I can roil inside, but if it leaks out before I calm the oceans, it is a problem.
If I feel disconnected in my own country, what must soldiers feel when
they come home? Occasionally, when I look at or listen to my husband, I see
a man who was at war. Most times I see someone as normal as the rest of us. I see someone who wouldn’t qualify for a PTSD label. But still . . . there are
those worst moments that let me know I married a veteran.
When I look at veterans, I see a scatter, a disconnect. It’s as if there are
parts of a skeleton that needs reassembling. It’s not a foot here or a femur
there, but the hand of an emotion, an eyebrow tormented by anger. I can’t
see what courses through my husband’s feelings when I walk up behind him
and he jumps and snaps at me. I often see it in the morning as he sits in the rocking chair, staring out the window while sipping his coffee, his dog or cat
by him. Most web their way through that veil and heal themselves. Some,
though, are scattered, dispersed within themselves—a diaspora. Somehow,
they need to re-sow the seeds of their emotions and thoughts, grow new
roots, sprout new plants, and heal the connection from the intensity of battle to the calmness of today.
The above is from The Soul of My Soldier, Publisher: Familius, Inc., 2015.
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To this I add that we must consider this country of ours is comprised of a diaspora of people from across the planet. Only the Native Americans are the original occupants of the Americas coming 15,000 to 20,000 years ago as people began to populate Earth. The rest of us have come to this land that is now the United States within the last 400 years. We are from the other continents—Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and islands of the Pacific. We live here in this mixture, which is a part of our uniqueness and beauty.
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