Twas Brillig

This is a continuation of my opera history as requested by Luisa from Novembrance (or “Novey-Lu” as I affectionately call her. Hey, she calls me “Brillig the Tasty”, so I can pretty much call her anything I like, okay?), but also a little more background on me. Because, really, this is MY blog after all, and the only thing I’m particularly good at is talking about myself.

So, I told you that Age 12 was a HUGE year for me. I turned 12 in London, at the beginning of a six month stay there. Daddy was the director of the Brigham Young University Study Abroad there. This was a very exciting time for me. I’d already spent a lot of time in London (though this was before my parents finally bought the home in the Lake District in Northern England). Rather than enroll me in the British school system again (I had already done a year of school in London when I was very young, but by the time you’re in 7th grade in the US, the school systems are so completely different that it’s hard to jump from one to the other and back again) my parents required me to take all of the University classes in the Study Abroad program. Those classes were European History, English Lit (taught by Daddy), Humanities, and LDS Church History in the British Isles (taught by my brilliant mama).

Yes, I was twelve, and I was in college.

And I. LOVED. IT.

London is an amazing place, particularly for a girl who was fascinated by art, history, literature and, of course, music. I ate up every museum, every historical site, every theater that I could manage to get to. I saw some of the world’s greatest performers live on stage. And, of course, my interest in classical music (including opera) began to grow. How could it not?
Anyway, that lasted for six months. The scheduled adventure after that was that in December we were going to be heading to Jerusalem, Israel for my mom to lead the BYU Study Abroad there. That was the plan, anyway. We would not be going home to Utah in the meantime.

One August day, I was walking through the streets of London with my brother (who was 15) and we stumbled upon a rally. A “Free Kuwait” rally. Apparently, some crazy madman from Iraq named Saddam Hussein had invaded the tiny but oil-rich nation of Kuwait in an attempt to steal their resources.

This was the first I’d ever heard any of these names. Saddam Hussein? Kuwait?

I didn’t know that this would effect my whole existence within a matter of months.

But! Even at that tender age, I was all about Human Rights, and ALL about being involved in protests and rallies. I jumped right in, wore a “Free Kuwait” pin, and helped hand out literature.

Anyway, as December approached, it was clear that the unrest in the Middle East was becoming even crazier than usual. George Bush Sr. had announced that if Hussein didn’t leave Kuwait by Jan. 15, the US, backed by the UN, would declare war on Iraq. Hussein responded that if the US declared war on Iraq, Iraq would retaliate by launching missiles at Israel.

Israel. We were on our way to Israel!

And it started to look like it was just possible that a war would actually be declared. And so, BYU called off that Study Abroad. 140 students were told that what they’d planned to do for the next six months was suddenly canceled and they would need to make other plans.

But what about us? We still had all the arrangements in place to live in Jerusalem. Our home in Utah was already rented out, with a contract, until June of the next year. Going home didn’t appear to be an option. So… maybe we should take our chances and go to Jerusalem anyway? Besides, what an adventure it would be!

I mean, surely this Saddam Hussein person wasn’t really crazy enough to go to war with the United States of America, right?

(And what does ANY of this have to do with opera? You’ll see…)