By Allison Whitney, Day Program Coordinator
Cedar Lake Enrichment Center
- Love is the first time you hear your name said, after teaching someone to say it for two years.
- Love is being able to recite every word to the movie “The Sound of Music” after you have watched it 375 times.
- Love is broken pipes and wading in water past your shins in a brand new $60 pair of shoes.
- Love is girl talk and coffee hour on the suites.
- Love is on payday, splitting four Frosty’s between eight men.
- Love is two hours of answering “what’s this?”
- Love is when you are greeted at the door each day with “Allison My Love.’’
- Love is hearing your name broke down to every syllable possible AL-LES-SSSSON.
- Love is bedtime “SA PRAY PRAY PRAY.”
- Love is when the pastor is out and you wing every Wednesday’s devotional services.
- Love is doing the Pledge of Allegiance and singing God Bless America 10 times a day.
- Love is Michael Myers AKA “Jason Squires” waiting for you in your office.
- Love is working on evaluations for hours in the office and you get a compassionate phone call from the nurses’ station. “We have coffee would you like some?”
- Love is answering a call in the middle of the night, then asked can you come into work after you hearing there was a tragedy in your coworkers family.
- Love is 20 + inches of snow and 3 days of rotating from a mat, to a couch, to bed, and peanut butter sandwiches.
- Love is sitting in the storm shelter for 2 ½ hours during meal time sneaking in crackers and Kool-Aid.
- Love is laughing when the expected emotion is to cry.
- Love is listening vicariously to the weekend stories of those 21 and under.
- Love is finding out what snacks staff like then randomly passing them out, just to say I appreciate you.
- Love is when you have a car accident and someone is there to help you figure out a bedpan.
- Love is an adventure in the University Hospital. Thinking you can get away with every visitor “10 at a time” as a “family member.”
- Love is when an individual seeks you out when something is bothering them.
- Love is meeting with/observing the likes and desires of each individual at the day program for 4 months and then asking what do you want this program to be about.
- Love is the last conversation you shared with a Cedar Lake mother as you walked her to her car. “Take care of my baby.”
- Love is dances on Tuesday nights, Proms, Special Olympics (rain or shine), water balloon/snowball fights, sleigh rides, walks through the woods and putting on plays.
- Love is encouraging self-reliance and teaching self-determination, and humbling yourself as it takes place.
- Love is being honest and doing the right thing, regardless of the outcome.
- Love is stopping everything that you are doing to look out the window with an individual.
- Love is forgiveness.
- Love is 1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
