Blind California 4-year-old is youngest accepted to Academy of Music for the Blind
HACIENDA HEIGHTS, California -- A young girl from California is beating the odds and excelling in a way that is even surprising her loving and supportive parents.
Anabelle Adamson, of Hacienda Heights, was born blind with special needs, and her parents never imagined that her other senses would make her an exceptional musician.
"When God closes one door he opens another one," mom Monica Adamson said. "God gave her this amazing talent."
Anabelle is, at age 4, the youngest student ever accepted at the Academy of Music for the Blind in Whittier.
She was born with a condition called coloboma, meaning her eyes have no retina.
"When she turned 8 months old, they actually told us that she was blind, permanently and irreversibly blind," dad Scott Adamson said. "And that's when we went outside the hospital and just broke down."
She discovers her world through sensations in her hands and ears from tapping a cane to striking a keyboard, and her journey is chronicled on her Facebook page and on Instagram.
Her parents were delighted when she could plink out nursery rhymes, but then came Beethoven and Brahms.
"She was starting to put little keys together, and I looked at my wife and I'm like, 'Did she just do that? Did she put some notes together?'" Scott Adamson said.
In Anabelle's debut performance, she was placed on the drums. The song was John Lennon's "Imagine."
Today, it's her parents who can imagine a new future.
"I know she is very blessed, she going somewhere," Monica Adamson said. "She is going places with her talent."
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