We went to the pool today. There were a decent number of people there including some children that were friends of my son and daughter. I was going back to the car to get the second of two new floats we’d gotten at Target when I came in to hear a commotion going on, surrounding my daughter.
She was very much wanting to be on the new watermelon float we’d gotten but there was competition from some of the boys. My son was yelling, “That’s Reese’s float. She needs it to be SAFE!” Then one of the other boys admonished two other children saying both loudly and repeatedly with emphasis, “yeah, she’s BLIND!”
I hate hearing this. We never, ever try to make my daughter feel anything less than capable. We don’t point out how she’s different in a, “she can’t do something” kind of way. And yet here were these children, clearly standing up for her, but doing so in a demeaning way. There were two other parents from my son’s school and we all exchanged frustrating words about how the exchange went down.
The boys didn’t mean anything by it. They were trying to help, especially since my daughter is still not sure she wants to get her eye wet after surgery. What I was worried about wasn’t her eye, I was worried about her self-esteem.
My friends and I sat back and watched to see what happened next. It wasn’t what we expected. I looked over to see my daughter with a twelve-year-old girl, floating on her super max-sized unicorn float. They were talking together. They seemed to be calmly having a good time.
This continued. They were together in the pool, on and off the float, for the next hour. When they got out they came over to our seats, my daughter being skillfully led by the girl. My daughter introduced her as Gadden—the only one—and could she have a towel.
What she meant was that Gadden was the only one with her name. She’d searched the Internet and the only reference to her was, well, her. Her name was unique. And that’s saying a lot these days. We shared snacks and got to know each other. Gadden was interested in my daughter’s vision and asked questions. Her questions were direct and specific. They were the kind of questions my daughter feels uncomfortable about because her blindness isn’t a positive feature to her. It’s not fun. It’s not something she’s proud about.
But she didn’t mind like she normally did, talking about Cane Quest, sighted guide dogs and what she could and couldn’t see. Gadden stood up to get something and saw my daughter’s cane and was excited because she’d been wanting to see if she could use one. She followed two people on YouTube, one who was blind and one who wasn’t. The blind person had taught the sighted person a lot about sighted guide, how to use a cane and had had him try to navigate using a cane.
Gadden wanted to try it herself. And here’s the interesting thing: she knew more about my daughter’s cane than I did. She knew the name for specifics of Sighted Guide that I hadn’t even heard of. It’s tricky using a cane and having your eyes closed, trusting only on the information you glean from the cane to keep you safe.
Gadden’s step-father told me as the children were playing that she loved to marshal smaller children. She had that special quality that made young children gravitate towards her, wanting her to spend time with them. My daughter and son told me before we left the pool (as Gadden helped us get our two new floats wedged into the car) that they wanted to have her over for a sleepover this coming weekend.
Gadden and I exchanged phone numbers. I messaged her later, telling her my daughter told me something I’ve never heard her say before: “I don’t even mind when she asks me about being blind.” And that, folks, is a first. I told Gadden we’d love to have her over any time.
The Big Boy Update: My son finished dinner while he and his sister were listening to short stories on Amazon Story Time. He put up his dishes, went to the freezer and got a small caramel ice cream cone. He finished it a few minutes later. Not three minutes after that he turned to us and said, “can I have dessert?” We told him he’d just finished dessert. “Oh yeah,” he said. Five minutes after that I was getting some ice cream out of the freezer for myself and my son asked again, “can I have dessert?” We told him he’d already had dessert. He was confused. I held up the box of cones and he said, “Oh yeah.” He was so focused on the stories he really had no recollection of eating dessert. He is so his father’s son when it comes to singleminded focusing.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter made a Father’s Day card in braille and filled up a small wooden box with all sorts of fun little things that small children like but aren’t overly exciting to an adult. She and her friend, Aditi, had fun decorating the boxes and deciding what to put in them. Both fathers liked their presents, I hear.
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