Lynda's Life Long Love of Water

The first day that Lynda came to live with us,  I was trying out different things around the house to see if there was something that she would like to do.  I needed something to  give me a couple of minutes to catch my breath.  When I turned on the water in the bathtub, she started smiling and laughing and coming out of her clothes.  Ah, water!  That was something that she loved and because she loved it, it was my favorite, too.  I kept warming up the water and left her in until she looked much like one of the California raisins.  She was fearless.  She put her head under water and came up laughing so washing her hair was not problem.

We took her to the University Mall in Pensacola a few days after we'd become her foster parents. We needed to get her some more clothes since we knew her size and just wanted to take her to toy stores and things to see what she might like to play with.  Then in the middle of the mall Lynda saw it.  A giant fountain with cascading water coming from many directions and emptying into a large pool at the bottom.  Before we novel parents had idea what was going on...Lynda was taking her clothes off to get into the BIG BATHTUB.  Of course, it made sense.  How does a child with special needs  know when water is to bath in, play in, or toss pennies in.  Oh the education Larry and I were getting.  We were both only children so we had no siblings to gain experience from.  Going from having no children to having a three and a half year old with special needs and skipping the part from birth to three to kind of acclimate us to parenthood.  I think God knew exactly what He was doing.  We couldn't have handled knowing what all lay ahead for us so he used our faith and my being "young and idealistic" as Lynda's doctors called me when I mentioned that we wanted to adopt her.

So many things have changed since raising a special needs child back in 1975 and the years to follow.  I could fill books about Lynda's love for water and how she learned to dog paddle with a life vest and how standing at the sink at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, TN. was how we did her multiple hours, multiple blood draws to diagnose her lactose intolerance when she was nine years old.  As long as she had the water to play in they could draw blood with no problems.  Before they were willing to try the mother's suggestion, it took three or four nurses to retrain her on the bed and they never got the first drop of blood.  It wasn't the pain of the needles.  It was being restrained.

Oh, and as an ending for this post about water let me just clarify one thing.  Lynda felt water was great for playing in but DID NOT think it was anything that should pass through her lips to drink.  That never changed over the years.