We have been at my parents' home in Southern California for 2 weeks now and it has taken me this long to come to terms with what happened here the first morning we arrived:
We arrived late on a Sunday night after driving all day long from Utah. We put the kids to bed, and John (after driving many hours) fell exhausted to bed, too, about midnight.
At precisely 6:20 the next morning, I awoke to repeated, panicked, unrecognizable screams. John and I slept in a room facing the study where we put the twins to sleep. Their door was shut. The screams were not coming from that direction. The girls were fast asleep upstairs. The screams did not seem to be coming from that end of the house, either.
The neighbors have two girls, and I chalked it up to being them...but the screams were panicked, and continued.
This is what got me out of bed. The pitch and panic of these screams for help.
I wandered into the kitchen where I met my mother, who was also awakened by the terrifying, continued screams. She reported to me that the girls were sound asleep upstairs, I indicated to her that the screams were not coming from the twin's room, either.
Puzzled, we discussed the possibility of it being the neighbors.. still unsettled, unsatisfied.
Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye through the dining room window...
It was a child, floating in the pool.
Not only was it a child, but it was MY child, my Parker, screaming, thank God, face up, floating on his back in the pool.
Parker screamed for probably 3-5 minutes by the time it woke me, I got out of bed, traversed the length of the house to the kitchen, wondered what was going on with my mom before we finally found him.
My mother and I, screaming, unable to move quickly enough, ran to rescue him.
What we saw was Parker floating on his back. His limbs were not flailing or thrashing, he was not bobbing in & out of the water. His body was perfectly calm & nearly still, but he was screaming. A panicked, unrecognizable, repeated call for help.
My boy does not know how to swim. He does not know how to float. Not many 2 year olds do. But what I had noticed the week previous was that with Parker's balance issues, he actually tended to end up on his face while in the water much more frequently than other children. The life jackets designed to force children onto their backs actually forced Parker to his front. This means that not only does Parker require constant supervision in the water, it means that we are physically holding part of him every time he is in the water.
My two year old, unwalking son, who somehow got out of his crib, went through the garage, exited a second door from the garage, headed down the side yard and discovered the pool, and decided to get in. At 6 in the morning. We haven't been to this house for a year's time. There is no way Parker remembered there was an uncovered pool back there, not to mention how to navigate his way there, through a dark garage and into dark waters.
He was cold, fatigued, lied in my arms, then John's for an hour before he warmed and livened up.
Had he not screamed (this deaf boy who without his cochlear implant is mute), we would not have found him for at least an hour when the girls woke up, asking if they could swim, or two, when Penelope woke up and we would have seen that Parker's crib was empty...
The night before, I knelt to pray. It was 2 am. I prayed earnestly for more inspiration regarding Parker and his care. I prayed that something significant would happen the next day, to signify to me that the Lord was still mindful of me. Me, his aching daughter, and my baby. His baby. Our sick, growing baby.
I don't know what to think beyond the fact that He heard and answered my prayers a little too quickly & literally for me. That there are clearly angels watching over us, over this boy, and I am so infinitely indebted to them. That miracles happen every day. That we have already seen miracles with this boy, and that I fully expect to see more. That a loving Father not only hears prayers, aching prayers of a mother with a growing boy, but that He answers them, too.
If he has nine lives, he's already used up two of them.
