You never know what you are going to find until you dip yourself into the magic waters.
Sanctuary, peace, quiet, fun, cold, warmth, struggle, resistance, fortitude.
You might even find something deeper, sweeter. Home.
It might mean something even more to you if it is not the first time you’ve found it.
•••
Benjamin, Abby and Liberty Freeman came from Russia, tiny Siberian bundles of joy. They were blagosloveniyas, blessings.
Parents Pam and Brian Freeman felt called to it by God, compelled to act. Pam felt the calling since the age of 12, when she saw a “20/20” TV episode that detailed adoption from China.
That planted the idea. Decades later, Pam — a children’s pastor at a local preschool — told her husband that she felt like God was leading them clear across the world. There was some hesitation; they are a faithful couple, he is a faithful man, and he needed to pray.
“You always think you’re not going to be good enough to do it all,” Pam said. “I haven’t met a parent yet, biological or adopting, who has thought, ‘Oh yeah, I got this.’ It doesn’t exist.”
Three days later, March 18, 2004, Brian told Pam that he didn’t know why, but something was making it clear that they needed to do this.
Their journey took two years. They were going to meet 2-year-old Benjamin, their new son. They were told his story, which began … March 18, 2004, when he was found by an officer, abandoned as a newborn.
“When we heard that date, we just thought, ‘this is such a God thing,’ ” Pam said.
When they picked up little Benjamin from the orphanage, they saw off to the side a fenced play area, where there stood a little boy or girl, staring at their car as they drove away, “with just this sad, longing look.”
“And it was like, ‘OK, we have to come back,’ ” Pam said.
They did, two years later. This time, they checked off a box on the application, acknowledging their intention to adopt a child with special needs.
They returned from Russia with Abby, 20 months old, and Liberty, 18 months older. Liberty was born without part of her left leg.
•••
Liberty Freeman. What a beautiful name. Says a lot, doesn’t it?
Pam remembers when she first saw Liberty, now 10, run with reckless abandon.
When they got her, she was in that Russian orphanage. You can picture it.
There was not ideal care at this orphanage, and the little girl could only sit or lunge or be carried. She was 3, and never given a prosthetic limb.
When Pam and Bryan brought her to a surgeon in America, they learned more about the diagnosis: Liberty was born without a tibia, left with a floating fibula with a foot attached.
Six months after they brought her home, she had surgery to prepare a stump for a prosthetic leg, which she received soon after. She was 4.
“There are adults who take months to get used to it,” Pam said. “She literally took off running. She was so excited to be able to move, and run, and walk.”
Right from the start, Brian says, she was a climber. Even wearing a prosthesis, she’d be on top of the monkey bars.
“She’s got some good upper body strength,” said Brian, an electrician and artist. “She’s a fighter.”
Benjamin nods.
“She beat me up the last time,” Benjamin said with a sigh. “Every time I steal her stuff, she beats me up.”
“You better watch out, she’ll take you on,” Brian said. “It’s the Russian blood.”
There are challenges, of course. As Liberty grew, she adapted to her prosthetic leg, learned to walk better, to run. She played tee-ball, then softball, but she found that despite natural ability and athleticism, her leg was an impediment.
“There are days it will annoy her,” Pam said. “She’ll say, ‘I wish I had a regular leg.’ And I get it. But at the same time, she’s very confident, and we laugh because she’s a fighter. She was born incredibly premature, and it was the fight in her that kept her alive. She hasn’t stopped yet … good and bad, as a parent.”
Pam tells a story.
“(Once) this boy kept on going, ‘Oh, I feel so sorry for you, I just can’t imagine, you poor thing,’” Pam said. “She looks at him and says, ‘I can do anything you can do. Bring it on.’”
“I don’t want people to look at it at all,” Liberty said. “I want people to think it’s a real leg, because it practically is, and I can do everything anyone else can.”
Later, after she sidles up to her mother on a park bench on a cool night in Tucson, Liberty won’t remember the incident with the boy. She lets these moments slide off her. Water off a duck’s back.
That’s the thing about ducks: When they swim, you never see their legs under water. You just see them go.
•••
Liberty glides through the pool, a warm knife through butter. Effortless.
A woman once saw her emerge from the water after raving about her skill to her mother, then was completely taken aback.
It is no small fact that her favorite movie is “Dolphin Tale.” Second-favorite movie? “Dolphin Tale 2.”
As of Friday, Liberty — a member of the Marana Marlins swim club — ranked in the top eight in Pima County for her age group in three events: individual medley, butterfly and freestyle. The championships are next weekend, July 18, at Wade McLean Pool in Marana. She could medal in all three events.
“My dad teases that we put a little shark fin on my leg,” Liberty said.
And to think, she almost never got in the water.
Liberty is pretty new to competitive swimming, only got started last year, and only after some prodding. It took a half hour of negotiating in the bathroom with her mom.
The Exxon-Mobil merger had less back and forth. Finally, the bribe: If she swam, Pam would talk to Brian about letting Liberty get her ears pierced. The bribe was in vain; Brian still hasn’t agreed.
But you can understand the hesitation.
“I was scared because I was the only one on the swim team that has, um, one leg, and everyone looked at me and then the next few days I got used to it,” Liberty says. “This coach named Ryan, he … helped me get through my fears, by talking to me, and telling me that it’s OK.”
She tested out the water. It felt good. Natural. She went back. Isn’t that how it always works?
“I felt … not different … in the water,” she said.
Pam knows it might not always be so easy to blend in. She’s blunt about it.
“I fear dating. That’s going to be a bigger issue,” she said. “But in our house, we don’t treat her any different. We make jokes about it, we tease her about it. If she leaves her prosthetic in the living room, I don’t care if she has one leg, pick it up and take it in your bedroom. We don’t baby her about it, and I hope that’s helped build some callous to what’s going to be thrown at her.”
Swimming, of course, has been a salve. Trophies become fuel. Success breeds motivation.
“I am excited to see her have a place where she can excel,” Pam said. “She talked about doing soccer, and it was like, ‘well, you can’t kick.’ We pushed her into swimming, and to see her love it was exciting.
“We’re not sports people, but we try to look at our kids, listen to them, know what’s best for them.”
Benjamin started drum lessons, that’s his thing, and he’ll prove it when he climbs onto the table and taps away. Abby started theater, that’s her thing, and she’ll prove it when she drops in on an interview and delivers an exaggerated sigh into the microphone after the siren song of a nearby ice cream truck proves fruitless.
The Freemans’ two biological children — 5-year-old Gideon and 3-year-old Ellie — are too young to have “things” yet.
“We’ve tried to let them find their niche, and we saw immediately that Libby is athletic,” Pam said. “I laugh, she’s the only little kid I know who’ll choose water over pop any day. She’s fit, athletic, healthy — it’s just her personality. I’m excited that it’s sports because it could’ve been something sedentary and nobody would’ve cared about the leg, but her personality is that, ‘I want to do this, I want to get out and move.’”
Brian is excited for another reason.
“I try to talk about her difference as an opportunity,” he said. “It kind of opens up a door. Everyone at school knows her. She’s the girl with the prosthetic, the only one. It immediately makes her famous or infamous among her peers.”
Liberty is a straight-A student, her mom says, and even after starting a new school in August, she was quickly asked to be on the student council. Her success in the pool and her bold ambitions do not surprise her parents.
“She’s a leader,” Pam said. “It’s almost just … that’s just her.”
Recently a little girl came up to her and told her she was an inspiration.
“She said ‘Thank you,’” Pam said, “and walked away and asked, ‘What’s an inspiration?’ ”
•••
Liberty has become an inspiration, even if she doesn’t know what it means.
When told the definition, she understands a little. If she only looked up to her own wall. She has posters of Gabby Douglas, the 2012 Olympic gymnastics gold medalist, and of Amy Purdy and Jessica Long, a pair of Paralympic superstars in snowboarding and swimming, respectively.
Long’s story, in particular, is a connection to Liberty. Long, too, was adopted as a child from Russia, and both her legs were amputated as a toddler because of fibular hemimelia.
Recently Liberty did a report on Purdy, a Las Vegas-raised snowboarder who lost both of her legs after contracting meningitis.
Liberty has a dream of one day making it to the Paralympics, but her mom is trying to convey the hard work and determination it will take.
She is going to stick with it, though. See where it leads. The deep end is pretty inviting.
In April, Liberty was awarded a grant from the Challenged Athletes Foundation that will pay for a year of swimming. To apply, they had to fill out a grant application, and Liberty filled out her own section.
“Do you remember your motto?” her mom asks.
“Wait, what’s a motto?” Liberty asks.
“It’s your saying, what you tell yourself when you’re in the pool.”
“Oh yeah,” she beams. “I’m gonna beat you.”
