I talked to my mother and she mentioned how we had gone, “sight seeing” at the zoo. That’s the problem though with a non-sighted child. You have to “see” to take in the “sights” and she can’t do any of that.
She has to have her hand held to move around anywhere because she can’t navigate well enough to know what is an obstacle and what’s a pathway—something that’s gotten worse over time. She can see colors, but not much other than to identify them. She can feel things, like the large bench seating surrounding the massive tree, but she can’t see any animal, even close to the edge of an enclosure because they’re similar in color to the environment in which they’ve been placed.
My daughter can lose you when you’re only five feet away and she’ll bump into random people and not know if they’re one of the people in her party or not until she greets them and hears their voice. It’s hard to go to places with her knowing she can’t experience most of the reasons everyone else goes to that particular place.
But she enjoys the world in her own way. We talk about what she hears. She tells us about things she does see and she feels lots of things along the way and experiences the world that way. She held on to a leaf, a seed pod and an acorn for most of the trip to the zoo and brought them home, happy to have them in her lap in the car.
It’s different than I would have ever expected her and our lives to be at this point, but she’s happy and she keeps us happy as a result.
The Big Boy Update: My son was unhappy at me because I said a bad word tonight. She said, “dad, throw mommy in the trash!” I told him, “I’m too big for the trash can.” I think he was a little disappointed because he said, “oh, okay, never mind.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter was walking along a ledge at the zoo and having fun when some other young girls decided to do the same thing. When she realized they were in front of her she said, “traffic jam!”
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