Icing on the Cake

~62~

Calum and I were at home when he came up to me with a few pieces of computer paper.

“I emailed the flight information to Jenny.” Calum said, referring to the fight information for our birth mother and the twins.

“Oh my God!” I said. “It’s only in three days!”

“I know!” Calum said. “We should get back to Rosetta Stone immediately!”

We knew that the biggest obstacle we were facing was the language barrier. The birth mother, Julia, was learning English and trying to teach it to the twins. She was also showing them our pictures to get them used to us. We were also trying to learn Ukrainian.

That night, Calum and I were cooking dinner and trying to communicate strictly through Ukrainian. It was failing miserably, because we would have to replace words we didn’t know with English, which lead to us speaking in sentences that would contain one or two Ukrainian words, and that’s all. Deciding that cooking was a task that required too much specific communication, we waited until dinner to speak Ukrainian because we could turn the conversation into whatever topic we wanted.

“I eat pizza at the party.” I said very slowly in Ukrainian, hoping that my pronunciation was correct.

“I eat ham and cheese sandwiches with my friend.” Calum said back in Ukrainian.

“We’re going to be able to communicate so effectively with Julia.” I said sarcastically. “Telling her about what we eat, who we eat it with and where we eat it.”

“I’m so scared.” Calum admitted. “This is happening so fast, I’m afraid that…what if the language barrier makes it so that they never think of us as their parents?”

“They will. Maybe not immediately but they will.” I reassured, taking his hand. “We’ll just have to take the suggestions that the agency has given us. We’ll hold up an item, let them see it and touch it, and repeat the word of what it is over a few times.”

“And she said she was teaching them English as well…” Calum tried to convince himself.

“She’s still learning English, too.” I said. “And she will probably still teach them Ukrainian. And we can get tutors if we need.”

Calum’s eyes were red. “I’ve never been so scared before in my life.”

Notes

Guys the Word Doc that I'm writing this story in (I still have chapter one on there) is now 107 pages! I've written 107 pages of this story!

And you've read 107 pages of this story! I love you all so much! <3