To Sing Frogs Chapter 26d

Marriott Moscow Royal Aurora

We collapsed into the lobby chairs for half-an-hour and then re-loaded luggage into the vehicle. Ten miles and two hours later we arrived at the Marriott Royal Aurora and spilled through the door into the lobby. Most of us were cranky. Bill doesn’t get cranky, but he asked if we would be offended if he just went to his room and skipped dinner. Of course we didn’t mind. It was nine o’clock at night in Moscow, four A.M. in Vladivostok. Everyone needed to get some sleep.

Amy ordered room service before the bags even made it upstairs: Chicken fingers and French fries. We figured nothing could be faster or less of a conflict. We were right. The food was there and gone by 9:30.

“Pará Spaht!” I said while making one loud clap with my hands. Time for bed.

“Nyet!” Sarah objected. Her face registered utter surprise. “Nee boodah. Kopahtsa, papashka. Kopahtsa.” I only understood the word for daddy. I wasn’t in the mood. It was time for bed.

“Pará Spaht!”

Sarah melted down. She shrieked. She screamed. She cried. She spoke rapidly in Russian. One word was more prevalent than any other. Kopahtsa.

            “Yá nee pan-ee-mai-oo, ‘kopahtsa,’ Sarah.” It sounds like a long sentence for basic Russian but it’s the first one you learn. I don’t understand.

“Kopahtsa. Kopahtsa.Ko-paht-sah. Yá-haw-choo-ko-paht-sa.”

Yá haw-choo.Okay, I knew that one. I want. The big problem here was the other word. Kopahtsa. I dug out my list of Russian words, phonetically spelled in English. There was no Kopahtsa.

“Yá nee pan-ee-mai-oo, ‘kopahtsa’ Sarah. Pará Spaht.”

She freaked out again. “Yá haw-choo kopahtsa,” she cried almost hysterically. Mooshna, papashka, mooshna. Okay, I didn’t know what mooshna meant either. What in the world did kopahtsa mean?

Sarah continued to cry, as I grew more and more frustrated. Amy was staying out of it while she rocked a sleeping Denney. Celeste was out-cold slobbering on the bed. Finally I had an idea. We had used it in the past and Sarah knew the English.

“Show-me, Sarah. Show-me.”

Sarah shoved one of the suitcases over and unzipped it in the same motion. A fraction of a second later clothes were flying in the air. Nope. Wrong suitcase. I helped her to carefully look through another. As we reached the bottom Sarah quickly removed the soft books. She opened the one about the family and turned through each of the pages. The book sailed into the air. Wrong book. Then she rushed through the one about the trip home. Suddenly, light filled her face. She would be able to communicate what was so important to her.

“Kopahtsa, papashka. Kopahtsa.” She smiled and turned the book so I could see the page as she said the mystery word one more time. “Kopahtsa.”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me…”

“What?” Amy asked in anticipation. “What’s kopahtsa?”

“There’s no way. I’m not doing it tonight.”

“What?”

“She wants to go freaking swimming.”

Amy laughed.

“Nyet, Sarah,” I said. “Pará spaht.”

She lost it again. She was still screaming in the background while Amy pleaded her case. “Sarah has obviously looked forward to this, Sweetheart. Are we going to put her to bed screaming and dejected or can we take a half-hour and make the dream come true?”

“You want to make the dream come true? Do it. I’ll hold Denney.” I took my sleeping son from her arms and traded her places. Sarah stopped crying when her mother went to the suitcase and began removing the swimming suits for her and Celeste. The older girl stripped and changed immediately, rapidly chattering in her native tongue the whole time.

Then Amy woke Celeste. At first it went as badly as I thought it would. Celeste just wanted to sleep. Then her mother showed her the hot-pink swimming suit. What?! More new beautiful clothes?! Her eyes flew open like spring-loaded blinds. Within seconds the girls and Amy were in their swimming suits, holding towels and waiting at the door.

“Pazyaloostah, papashka. Pazyaloostah.”

Amy was right. Everything we had sacrificed, all that we had endured, each and every moment of waiting had all been about fulfilling dreams.

We went swimming.

Go to other sections of To Sing Frogs

Go to John M. Simmons’ blog