Dani's Story: A Journey From Neglect to Love (20 page)

I stared at our “Certificate of License” issued on May 29, 2007, although it hadn’t been mailed out until June 21. I had been so worried that something would happen; that without the official certificate, Danielle could have been taken from us. Bernie kept telling me not to worry, but I could tell he was anxious about it as well. Every step of the way with Danielle had been such a nail biter. I knew we wouldn’t feel totally secure until the adoption was finalized. But this was helpful in making us feel legitimate.

The license had to be posted in a prominent location, although I couldn’t imagine why. It wasn’t as if birth parents had to post their children’s birth certificates in a prominent place.

I wanted to surprise Bernie, so I tacked the certificate on the outside of the door that he always used when he came home from work. I put it exactly at his eye level so he couldn’t miss it. And he didn’t. Two minutes after I heard his truck pull into the drive and him clumping up the exterior staircase in his clunky work boots, I heard, “Woo hoo!” and I knew he had found it. He flew in the door with the license clutched in his hands. “Diane! We got our license! Did you see it?”

A hug from Dad.

 

I looked sideways at him. “Who do you think put it up there, Bernie?” He grabbed me in a big hug, then Willie, and finally Danielle, whom he picked up and twirled around and around in circles. She had no idea what we were so happy about, but she loved when Daddy spun her around in his arms, just as if she was flying.

We went out to dinner to celebrate, and to make things simple, we ordered chicken fingers and French fries for Danielle. No lessons tonight. As the waitress picked up our menus, she remarked what beautiful children we had. I couldn’t agree with her more.

Chapter 19

Pedal, Pedal, Pedal!

Willie, Danielle, and I had our summer routine down pat. In the mornings after breakfast and walking the dogs and before it got too hot, we went to the beach. It was close enough to walk—just across the road from the entrance to Laguna Shores—but with all of the buckets, the shovels, Danielle’s life jacket, the ball, the towels, a chair for me, sunscreen, and a cooler with drinks and fruit, it was easier to drive.

All along the main road on Estero Island, there were pockets of beach access parking. Then it was only a short walk across a boardwalk to the beach. Danielle could carry her towel or a small bag, Willie and I hauled the rest. She wasn’t interested in anything except getting in the water, and we took frequent breaks to gather seashells in baggies I brought. I pointed out Danielle’s footprints to her when she used her flat feet, which we were encouraging her to do on a consistent basis. Dorothy wanted to know why we just didn’t get her a pair of toe shoes and turn her into a ballerina. “She has the shape for it,” Dorothy said. “Long and lean. She’s not clumsy. She likes to spin and jump. And she already has
en pointe
mastered. She could be a prodigy, for all you know!”

Willie tried to teach Danielle to dig with a shovel but without success. She did like it when I helped her fill a bucket with water, then pour it into the hole Willie had excavated in the sand. She had come a long way since the first day we brought her to the beach, when she had cried at the feel of the sand on her feet. Now she rolled in it, and getting the sand out of her hair and every orifice was a challenge.

Around eleven we’d pack everything up, rinse off with the hose at the edge of the parking lot, and go back to the house for lunch and to get out of Florida’s brutal midday sun.

Danielle was getting better with the cup. She graduated from a straw to picking her cup up as Willie did and drinking the small amounts I put in for her, then banging the cup on the table when she wanted more. If I told her to use words, she responded by banging the cup again. At least she knew what she wanted, but I was torn between rewarding her for something I felt that she could improve on and expecting too much too soon. Spoons and forks were still a stumbling block, although we practiced every day. I got her a little toy kitchen set with plastic plates, bowls, cups, and utensils, and Willie often staged “pretend” meals on the deck or the floor of Danielle’s room.

Willie loved art and could amuse himself for hours with the big box full of art supplies I collected for him: paints, brushes, crayons, markers, glue, tape, wallpaper, tile and carpet samples, clay, pipe cleaners, construction paper, cardboard, felt scraps, and glitter. Art projects took place on the deck as well, so I could watch the kids outside the kitchen window. Danielle liked to “help,” and Willie was very patient, putting paint on a brush for her and guiding her hand to whatever surface she used. She put everything in her mouth, so he kept her away from the clay and the glue. Finger paints were her favorite—the nontoxic kind—and she managed to get as much on the paper as she did on the table. I studied her Rorschach creations carefully to see if I could glean any hidden meanings or subconscious messages from her, but as Bernie pointed out, “Sometimes a smear is just a smear, Diane.”

Danielle loved the pool. We told her when she first came to live with us that she must never go into the pool without one of us with her, and she never did. She waited until Bernie or I asked, “Danielle, do you want to swim in the pool?” and her entire body would react the way a dog does when you hold up a leash.

One Sunday afternoon while I was in the kitchen making brownies to take to the church supper that night, Bernie spoke the magic words. I got Danielle into her suit and sent her downstairs. Bernie and Willie were already in the pool. Five minutes later, I heard them shouting, “Diane! Mom!” and I dashed down the stairs and out the door. Both of them were in the water, but where was Danielle? Her life jacket was on a lounge chair. They seemed awfully calm to be witnessing a drowning. In fact, Bernie was positively beaming.

Suddenly, Danielle’s head popped up. She blinked her eyes, took a breath, and went under again. I could see her lithe body traverse the bottom of the pool until she got to the ladder, climbed up and out, walked to the edge, and jumped back in. She was remarkably graceful. She was as comfortable in the water as an Olympic swimmer.

I gave Bernie the fish eye. “Did you let her jump in the pool without her life jacket?” He laughed. “There was no time to ‘let’ her do anything, Diane. She came out the door, walked straight to the edge of the pool, and jumped in. She was on a mission.” “He’s right, Mom! There wasn’t anything we could do!”

Danielle was so happy, plunging underwater to the bottom, then back up to the surface, where she would roll and splash, then skim across the surface to the other side. She didn’t so much swim as glide, like a seal or a mermaid. Our own Ariel. No wonder she became so engrossed in
The Little Mermaid
when I played it for her.

I knew darn well Danielle had never had a swimming lesson. Until she left her mother’s home, she had rarely been in a bathtub, much less a pool. She had never been to the beach, despite living in Florida most of her life. The foster parents had put her in that ridiculous contraption that prevented her from putting her head underwater, which is what she seemed to like the most. How had she learned to hold her breath? To open her eyes underwater? To move so effortlessly? To plunge into the unknown so fearlessly?

Dorothy came by one afternoon to drop off some clothes that her granddaughters had long ago out grown. I had told her that Danielle was no longer using the life jacket, and I could tell she was a little concerned. Dorothy was probably delivering the clothes as an excuse to see for herself. Willie and Danielle were in the pool. After Dorothy spent a few moments watching Danielle, she turned to me. “It’s unbelievable. It’s like the water is the one place she is totally free.” Dorothy was right. In the water, it didn’t matter that Danielle couldn’t read or speak or use a fork. Her entire body was embraced by the water, and no one could harm her. Instinctively, she went back to the womb, the last place she had been safe before she was delivered to her mother. What a cruel trick that had been! I vowed to myself that no matter what, no matter where we lived, we would always have a pool for Danielle.

She also loved jumping. She jumped on the sofa, she jumped on the chairs, she jumped on the beds. This was not an approved activity in our house, and Danielle understood that pretty quickly. If she did slip and her jumping needs got the best of her, the minute she saw Bernie or me, she stopped. She knew what she was allowed to do and what she wasn’t, which was very encouraging to us.

Dorothy allowed Danielle to jump on one bed in her house, and that was Amber’s bed. It didn’t have much spring left, but it suited an old fat dog and an eight-year-old girl with a jumping obsession just fine. The first thing Danielle did when we dropped by Dorothy and Paul’s was run to the bed, climb up, and start springing up and down like a pogo stick. She was the only human Dorothy spoiled worse than she did her dog. I told Dorothy that if we ever moved, she would have to sell me that bed.

Instead, Bernie came home one evening with a mini-trampoline, less than a foot off the ground and about four feet across. It was just big enough for one person, and that one person knew it was for her right away. Willie demonstrated and then just got out of Danielle’s way. I was afraid she was going to go right through the ceiling, but the closest she got—even with her most invigorated attempts—left a good foot of clearance. Eventually, as those long legs of hers continued to grow, the trampoline would have to be moved outside. For now, she enjoyed sitting on it as much as jumping on it, and that became her perch for the hour each afternoon when I let her and Willie watch television. Danielle is incredibly limber and flexible and can practically turn herself inside out. She also has excellent posture, which was surprising to us, considering that she spent so much of her life curled up on a mattress in a fetal position. Maybe Dorothy was right. Danielle did have the form of a ballerina, though it was hard to imagine a ballerina in pull-up diapers saying woo-woo-woo.

The mini-trampoline the Lierows bought Danielle so that she would stop jumping on furniture.

 

When Bernie came home from work, he liked to play with the kids in the yard, throwing and kicking a ball, playing chase and hide and seek. He staged races and tried to teach Danielle how to do a somersault.

What he and Willie really wanted, though, was for Danielle to learn to ride a bike. Willie often rode his two-wheeler while we walked the dogs in the evening, and he would have loved for Danielle to ride with him.

So, we all went to Wal-Mart to peruse its bikes and see what Danielle took to before we invested in anything. At first, she took to nothing. She cried and yelled and did her best to make other shoppers think we were torturing her.

Bernie got a tricycle and put it at the end of the aisle, away from the other bikes, and got Danielle to sit on it by distracting her with her Slinky. He slowly pushed her back and forth on it, only a couple inches in each direction because her feet were planted firmly on the floor as if to say, “I’m not going anywhere!” She seemed fine with that, so while I took her over to look at talking toys, Bernie found the biggest tricycle in the store, bought it, and put it in the rear cargo container of the truck.

The official riding lessons began in our driveway, with Danielle on her tricycle and Willie on his big boy bike, demonstrating the concept of pedaling. “See, Danielle, you put a foot on each pedal, and when you push down with one, the other one comes up and then it moves the bike. Then you push down again on the pedal. You can do it!”

Bernie sat Danielle on the tricycle and put one foot on each pedal. She looked like one of those Shriner Circus clowns who rides the tricycles and the Big Wheels in parades and makes you laugh just because he looks so ridiculous on a tricycle. Danielle’s legs were so long that when Bernie guided her foot to push down on one pedal, the knee coming up banged into the handlebars. If he got her knee past the handlebars, then it hit her in the chin.

After a week or so, she was able to go forward and backward in the driveway with encouragement from Willie, but that was not exactly what he had in mind as a riding partner.

Bill and Doris and some friends of theirs from the street over were watching one evening, and the man mentioned that they had a small two-wheeler with training wheels in their garage that they kept for their granddaughters. The girls had moved away, and we were welcome to try it. A few minutes later he came back with an adorable pink bike with plastic streamers from the handlebars. Danielle must have been tired of being attacked by her own knees because when she saw it, she hoisted herself up onto the seat while Bernie held the bike so that she didn’t topple over.

They went out into the street, and while Willie reviewed the fundamentals, Bernie placed Danielle’s feet on the pedals. Then, just as I had done for Paul and Steven, as Bernie had done for Shawn and Ryan, as we had both done for Willie, as parents have done for their children probably since the invention of the wheel, Bernie set off down the road with his little girl on her first bike. His hand on her back giving her the slightest push, he trotted along beside her, urging, “Pedal, pedal, pedal!” as Willie coasted behind them. I ran to catch up as they went down the street, passing neighbors in their yards who cheered Danielle on as if she were wearing the yellow shirt in the Tour de France.

At the corner, we all turned around to go back to our driveway, and as we passed our neighbors again, they all shouted out to her, “Pedal, Danielle, pedal!” With her father at her side and her brother with her back, she seemed to float. The only motion was her feet pushing the pedals up and down, round and round.