This Reminds Me

When we met Guanna-to-be-Julia in February, 2006, she told us she liked dolphins – amazing, since she’d never seen a real one, and also since Lois has always been fascinated by them.   When we returned to her in May, 2006, we brought a dolphin necklace for her and each of her friends.  Shelley and John picked us up at the airport, bringing her a stuffed dolphin to clutch on the eye-popping 20-minute drive to her new “dom,” where her sisters anxiously waited to meet her.

It didn’t take Julia long to realize the billboards, tray liners, TV commercials, etc. were  telling her there were dolphins in San Antonio.  After a local author read his book about Sea World to her school last year – she was hooked.  “Mom, we need to go there.”  She’s asked at least once a week for more than a year to visit Sea World.

Monday, I finally took Hannah and Julia to Sea World.  Seeing her face there reminded me of taking two-year-old Rachel to see Barney at the Natural History Museum in Houston.  The looks were of joy and wonder – I couldn’t help but be happy, too, even with all the “whale spit” on my clothes.

Open mouth.  Clasp hands.  Wait a moment and point excitedly crying, “Look!  Look!”  Shamu is the big draw at the park but the dolphins absolutely captivated her.


We feed the Sea Lions enough fish to make me glad I’d visited the ATM.  Julia and Hannah barked to each other for awhile afterward.  Me?  They’ll tell you I bark all the time.

Afternoons routinely break 100 degrees here.  Yeah for the wave pool!

New dolphin googles, anyone?  “Mom, these are cool.”


The child is fearless.  In addition to all the water stuff, she and I went on Journey to Atlantis, and she did the 15-story drop, 65 mph Steel Eel roller coaster by herself.  As in alone.  As in neither of us wiith her.  I promised God in 1998 that if he would let me off the roller coaster I was on at Fiesta Texas, that I would never ride another.  Promise intact to date.

So this is how an eight-year-old former resident of Children’s Home #47 in St. Pete, Russia, came 6,000 miles to splash the day away with dophins and whales native to seas from the four corners of the globe.

See, world?  You’re getting smaller all the time.

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