To Sing Frogs Chapter 39b

Mike, Cory, and Steve didn’t get it. They had voted the troubled one into the family. The thanks they received was abuse. Worse yet, our older boys didn’t understand that their parents entered into the situation with eyes wide open. We knew possibilities probabilities of extreme difficulties would come with the last adoption. We had been honest with our sons and told them the risks. Still, they never believed it could get so bad. Everyone always thinks they will be the one to beat the odds. That’s how tobacco companies stay in business.

The boys thought a new addition should pay homage to the parents who rescued her. She bowed to no one. The world had betrayed and violated the child. To her we were nothing more or less than part of that world.

The young woman had known nothing but brutality and persecution. To her, the only difference between people was whether they were on the giving or receiving end of savagery. This girl had changed to the other side of the only equation she knew to exist. She would never, ever, go back. Ironically, the harm she inflicted was not limited to others and her body began to show witnesses from anything sharp she could find.

A dry autumn finished up with a huge snowstorm at the end of November. December and January saw some of the coldest temperatures residents of the state could remember. In February and March the blizzards returned, loading the mountains with snow. Record breaking heat in mid-March sent water racing out of the mountains in raging rivers. The wet spring brought on unusual amounts of weeds and wild grasses. The excess of spring growth coupled with extremely hot months in June and July dried out the plants and resulted in the worst wildfires Utah had ever known. It was the second dry autumn in as many years. Then a raging snowstorm slammed our mountain home again in December.

Everything in our lives was running at an extreme. It felt like Armageddon. We didn’t know how long our family could hold on while trying to beat the odds with the one who looked like Oksana. It was a horrifying time in our family. Each day when we awoke we were relieved to find that no one had died.

 

 

A year after Mike graduated from high school he decided to serve a two-year religious mission. Our churched asked for volunteers who were willing to serve, without having any say in where they would spend their time.

Mike had planned on this missionary service for years. He had worked and saved since he was twelve to be able to support himself while he was away, and unable to have employment outside his missionary responsibilities.

The rest of the family and I had been well aware of Mike’s plans for missionary service and the details of the type of mission he planned to serve. Ever since our first experiences in that strange and foreign land, Amy and I had hoped Mike might spend his two-year mission somewhere in Russia. We waited in anticipation while he tore open the envelope and unfolded the single page.

Like any other young man reading such a letter, my son’s hands shook. The tremors were amplified by the paper, which rapidly quivered as he began to read out loud.

We were on the edge of our seats as he read through the mundane opening of the letter while waiting for the answer to the big question.

“You are assigned to labor in the Spain Malaga Mission. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of twenty-four months.” Mike paused and looked up at Amy and me. “Spain?”

“Wait! I interjected. Malaga is in southern Spain. I think that might include Jerez de la Frontera. That’s where Julia lives.” For the Mysterious Way Believers this occurrence would need no explanation. That was good because I couldn’t possibly explain what had happened. I was growing more and more confused all the time.

“Waht Mama? Waht? Mike go see Julia?!”

 

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