The Elevator Activity

Finding meaningful things for my daughter to do to entertain her has been difficult in her most recent fully blind state.   She needs a lot of supervision, especially in surroundings she’s unfamiliar with but for the most part, continues to be positive and upbeat.

Today she discovered something that occupied her for hours—an elevator.   Our friend’s house has the living areas (kitchen, living room, dining room, deck etc.) on the second floor, overlooking the Chesapeake Bay and the owners decided to add in an elevator when they did an expansion some years ago.

My daughter learned how to find the call button, open the outside door, inside door and then find the floor she wanted to travel to when she got inside.  She would close the outer door, inner door and then  press the floor button—all in the dark because she didn’t care if the light was turned on.

She found out there was a front door for the second floor (marked floor three) and the same front door was used for the main floor (marked floor two) and then there was a back door for floor one, which was about two feet below the first floor providing ground level ramp access under the deck for anyone needing wheelchair access.  Floor one was particularly exciting because it opened out to the outside.

She would go up and down on the elevator and then take the stairs to let us know she’d travelled down and had walked back up again.  After a while she came out and told us she’d found braille in the elevator.

Here’s the thing, no one knew there was braille in the elevator, but she was correct.   My husband went in and she showed it to him and he told her it said ‘phone’.   She took me in later and I asked her if she’d opened up the door where it said ‘phone’ and she said she hadn’t and was surprised to find a phone with a dial tone inside.  

Just now before bedtime she wanted me to ride in the elevator with her.   She deftly found the call button, opened the doors, shut the doors and in complete dark found the button for the third floor immediately and knew exactly what to listen for to indicate when we’d arrived and she could open the doors to exit.

Being blind has got to be hard on her, but she learns some things so quickly it still amazes me.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son likes spending time on his iPad when it’s the weekend and he’s allowed.   This weekend the house we’re staying at is in a very small town and the owners, our good friends, don’t have wifi as this is a vacation home.  This morning my son came in and told me resolutely, “they don’t have wifi here, I don’t like this house.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We went to dinner tonight at a restaurant across the Chesapeake Bay.  We were in the boat about twenty minutes each way and my daughter wanted to drive.   Richard, our captain, gave my daughter instructions on when to turn left or right and how much to turn each tine (a little bit, a lot, etc.).  My daughter loved it and was dedicated to the job the entire trip.    She got the title of First Mate for her diligent work.