To Sing Frogs Chapter 32a

Sarah catching the bus on her first day of school

Chapter 32

 

Who is Dad’s Buddy?

 

  Summer was over. Change was in the air. I have a favorite picture of Sarah marking that commencement. In it, the yellow bus is stopped in front of our house and Sarah is bright with anticipation, waiting for the door to open.

The first day of school is always a big deal. With Sarah it was an unusually significant marker. Amy and I had always planned to hold her back a year to help her get a grasp on English. As the summer progressed Amy didn’t “feel right” about our decision and convinced me we should enroll our oldest daughter in school.

Amy was right. Five year olds don’t see words as correct or incorrect. They are simply tools to communicate. If that goal is achieved then the applied effort was valid. Kindergarteners gave wings to Sarah’s English. Her grammar soared. So did her vocabulary. The thick accent remained as a constant reminder that our daughter did not automatically become a new person when she arrived in her new family.

We were learning more every day that Sarah had an intense personality. Her accent seemed to increase the feeling in everything she said.

Sometimes the Russian sounds were charming and playful. It was if they were spoken by a flirty Eastern European mail order bride, ripe with dreams and intentions, unable to commit with any degree of seriousness.

The accent intensified anger. It was a survival skill Sarah learned from her first days with a drunken and abusive birth mother. In the child’s earliest years that woman had applied coarse and abrasive tones to words with intent to cause fear. The demon mother used anger and violence to intimidate and elicit submission. It wasn’t her size or strength that made Sarah’s heart tremble. What child is ever afraid of a parent for only such reasons? Oksana’s power came from rage. Power gave her control. When Sarah was in control she felt safe. Twisted as it sounds, there were times when only expressing hatred and rage could make Sarah feel secure.

Most of the time she was pleasant. She was almost always sweet with me. That was part of the problem.

“I know this is going to sound stupid,” Amy told me one morning as I got out of the shower, dripping onto the tile. “But I think Sarah is trying to come between us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“She’s really having a difficult time attaching to me and there’s rarely friction with you.”

“She’s just never had a healthy relationship with a mother. It’s going to take some time.”

She’s never had a healthy relationship with a father, either. Wake up! “I know it’s going to take time. I need some help, though. I think she’s manipulating you to get to me.”

“Maybe we just need to switch gender roles from her last family environment. I’ll be the abusive father and you be the neglectful mother.”

Why do you always have to exaggerate to make someone else’s point seem stupid? “Please be patient with me. We just need some good times with all of us together, and with Sarah and me. It can’t just be you and her all the time.”

The honeymoon was over. “Sure. Fine. I’ll make her like you.”

Jerk. “Thanks. Anything you can do to help would be great.”

 

Go to other sections of To Sing Frogs

Go to John M. Simmons’ blog