The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius (24 page)

Keeping my game face on, I tried the door to the side entrance. “That door’s not so good, actually,” Michael said.

Once I got it open, I could see what he meant. There was nothing behind it but a gaping black pit. One more step would have sent me plummeting fifteen feet into the debris-filled basement. (I had nightmares for months about falling into that hole.) It got worse. The entire second floor in the back of the building had sunk and collapsed, so that it hung like a suspended bowl over the first floor. There was no way you could step in there without the threat of the whole second floor collapsing on you. Peering into the darkness with our flashlights from the safety of the doorway, we could see a bunch of creepy antique medical equipment and furniture left over from the building’s time as the town doctor’s office.

The place was filthy, it was in the middle of nowhere, and it was obviously unsafe. But there was a lot of history there, and more to be made. When I closed my eyes, I could see it filled with the families we had come to know and love so much through Little Light and Youth Sports for Autism. In my mind’s eye, I could see the moms hugging one another, relieved to have a place to relax and share their worries
after a long week. I could see groups of kids in beanbag chairs watching movies, and others paired off over chessboards and card tables. And where that bowed second story hung so precariously in the back, I could see Jake and Christopher alternating free throws from the half-court line of a big, beautiful, newly painted basketball court.

I looked at Michael and smiled. “This is it,” I said. “This is the rec center.”

Jake and Christopher were inseparable by then. I had also become close friends with Chris’s grandmother Phyllis, who was raising him. That summer, the two of us would hang out by their swimming pool and talk while the boys swam. Those were rare moments of relaxation for me, and I treasured them. Their family owned a car dealership and lived in a huge home, complete with outdoor and indoor basketball courts, a pool, and an elevator. Of course, Jake loved to go there. But Christopher loved to come over to our little house, too, to roast hot dogs and make s’mores in our backyard. He was incredibly fun to be with, the type of person who can turn even a disappointing situation like a rained-out picnic into a grand adventure.

Christopher and Jake had bonded over the fact that they didn’t always fit in. It can be difficult for an autistic kid to distinguish between kids laughing
with
him and those laughing
at
him. When Christopher told a joke and the boys at school laughed, he couldn’t always tell what it meant. Had the joke gone over well, or was the laughter unkind? Jake’s years in elementary school and all our efforts to bring friends into his life had helped him. By the time he met Christopher, he felt more comfortable socially and could help his younger friend navigate his way through the awkwardness of that age, the uncertainty of never quite knowing what other kids thought or felt. There were no walls between them.

Jake’s mentoring came to be a big part of their friendship. Jake was always saying, “Here, learn this. You need to know this weird little skill, or it’s going to be hard for you to get along.” On the very first day they met, Jake taught Christopher to hula-hoop. It seems like such a small thing—people don’t need to know how to hula-hoop. But there was an element of urgency to it, because every skill that a kid like
Christopher has is one less thing he can be teased about, one less thing that sets him apart.

Christopher also helped Jake. He was much bigger than Jake and had more natural skill at basketball. Jake’s skills got a lot better under his tutelage, and he came to understand the pleasure of practicing a sport.

Christopher was also obsessed with magic. Jake loved to write letters to Christopher in code that he would have to decipher, and Christopher delighted in learning obscure tricks and demonstrating them for Jake, who would then have to figure out how they worked. Christopher’s dexterity and mastery of the principles of magic improved, and the tricks he did got harder and harder. The harder they got, the happier Jake became: It was rare for someone his own age to present him with a puzzle that truly challenged him. Sometimes the two of them would collaborate on an illusion together. For example, Jake helped Christopher design an elaborate trick that required a number of mirrors to be set at precisely the right angles, an activity that was right up Jake’s alley.

They went to different schools, but they saw each other every Saturday at sports and again the next day at church, and they called each other on the phone every night to talk about sports. I’m strict about everyone sitting down for dinner together, but I was so glad to see Jake have such a good friend that I’d often make him a turkey sandwich and cut up some veggies for him so that he could eat while he and Christopher talked on the phone.

Michael and I quickly realized that we’d bitten off more than we could chew as far as the rec center was concerned. The $5,000 we had left over to pay for repairs to the building was all we had in the world. I remember Michael looking at our bank statement, shaking his head, and saying, “If our furnace blows at home, we’re in for a cold winter.” Mike’s father is a carpenter, and he was genuinely alarmed by the scope of the work. The first time he walked into the building, he said,
“You cannot afford to get involved in this. Seriously, don’t walk away from this—
run
.”

We didn’t listen. Like a lot of people in America at the time, we’d taken advantage of the credit bubble. Michael had been promoted a number of times, and the daycare was booming. I had visions of expanding it, maybe even creating a little school out of it. With Ethan’s arrival, we’d also badly outgrown our little house. At one point, I realized that the whole family couldn’t actually fit in the living room together unless one of the kids was perched on the arm of the couch or sitting on the floor at our feet. If we couldn’t comfortably watch a movie together, we needed more space.

The original plan had been that we’d live in the rec center and fix it up at the same time, but the town wouldn’t run electricity or water into the building until it was up to code. I don’t mind roughing it, but raising three young boys in a tent inside an uninhabitable building seemed a little extreme, even for me.

So we took out a mortgage and put money down on a house being built in a new subdivision in Westfield, a middle-class suburb carved out of the farmland north of Indianapolis. Without exaggeration, the new house was my dream home, a place I never in a million years could have imagined living in, let alone owning. There was enough space for all of us—even more than we needed. In the plans, the kitchen, dining room, and living room were open to one another, so we could all be together in the same space. Nobody would need to be banished from the kitchen so that I could get dinner on the table. Ethan was very interested in cooking and baking, and at four he could even make some basic meals by himself. When I looked at the plans, I smiled to imagine the feasts he’d soon be able to produce.

The new house would also have a huge garage, which could easily accommodate more daycare children and an assistant. Michael and I agreed that even though it would cost us a little money, we’d hold on to the old house until we moved into the new one. I wanted there to be minimal disruption for the daycare kids as a result of the move.

As we watched the house being built over the spring and summer,
we came to know our new neighbors. We’d stop by to see what progress the builders had made and then have a picnic in the little playground on the banks of the pond situated right across the street from our lot. While the kids swung and climbed, Michael and I talked to the other people who’d come by to see the progress on their own homes.

The day we moved in, I honestly felt like a burglar. I’d grown up in a poor neighborhood on the east side of Indianapolis, and I kept waiting for someone to come along and tell me I didn’t get to live in this gorgeous house after all. Parts of my house still make me smile every day. The fact that Mike and I each have our own sink in our bathroom makes me feel like the queen of England.

It became clear within the first day or two that the open kitchen–dining room–living room area was where we were going to spend most of our time. Friends who stopped by with housewarming presents would walk in, plop down on a couch, and end up staying for dinner.

We’d been right about the community, too. I didn’t have any choice but to meet our next-door neighbor, Narnie, and neither does anyone else who crosses her path. (While out shopping with her recently, I overheard her introduce herself to someone while I was in the changing room. In the time it took me to try on two dresses, Narnie had found out everything about this woman’s upcoming wedding, her fiancé, and which of her emotional needs he did or didn’t meet.
There she goes again
, I thought.)

As soon as our moving truck pulled up to the house that first day, out bounded Narnie from the house next door. And would you believe that she started unpacking the truck? Completely unself-conscious, with a wide-open face and a deep, full belly laugh, she had my closet in order by the time I’d introduced myself, and I hadn’t known her an hour before she was doing my dishes. There’s no such thing as privacy around this NRA-card-carrying, yoga-practicing grandmother, and that’s a good thing, because when she comes into your life, she will be there for you when you really need her, every single time.

Having a neighbor who would come over for a cup of tea every
afternoon (cocoa on Wednesdays) made it official: I had everything I’d ever wanted. Our new home was filled with the people I loved, and slowly but surely we were building the rec center we’d talked about for so long. I told Michael, “Okay, I’m done. This is it for me. I have every single thing I’ve ever hoped for.”

Then the recession hit, and suddenly the rec center was the very least of our concerns.

T
he entire state of Indiana was hit hard by the recession, and fast.

Michael was an early casualty. One night while I was in the kitchen making dinner, I heard something on the local news about a Circuit City closing. I was halfway across the room, still drying my hands, when I heard Wesley ask, “Hey, is that Dad’s store?”

It was. The two of us stood there and watched Michael lose his job on TV.

That store was more than a job for Mike. He’d come into a difficult situation there. It was located in a very run-down neighborhood and was notorious within the company for having lost more merchandise to theft one year than it sold. But Mike saw a lot of potential in the staff. He promoted the hardest workers, got rid of the bad apples, reorganized the store, and provided incentives. Most notably, he promised to do a backflip in front of the registers whenever anyone exceeded his or her sales quota.

Within six months of his arrival, it looked and felt like a completely different place. The next year, everybody who worked there celebrated Thanksgiving together. Mike had been so successful at turning the store around and had created such a dynamic sales force that Circuit City had begun to talk to him about developing a staff training program that he could take to other stores.

And then it was gone. People who are worried about losing their jobs don’t buy television sets. So the store was shut down. The community Mike had fostered, so close it felt more like a family, was disbanded. For a few weeks, Michael worked for the liquidator,
systematically dismantling the store he’d built and selling it off piece by piece, a sickening experience. When that work was over, there was nothing more for him to do.

I’d gotten a little money from my grandfather that we’d used for the down payment on our house. Because of that, we were able to stay there. But not everyone in the neighborhood was so lucky. One by one, the houses around us went up for sale. Every time I left the house, I’d see a new For Sale sign flapping in the breeze, telling me that another one of the wonderful families I’d met that summer was losing its dream.

Michael and I were in financial trouble, too. Between the rec center and the new house, we’d spent every single penny we had. Nobody could get a loan, so any idea we’d had about selling our old house went out the window. That meant we had to carry on with two mortgages on one income. Then we had to support two mortgages on
no
income, because as more and more families in our area were affected by the economic downturn, the numbers in the daycare shrank, too. It seemed like every day, another parent, face white and tense, would come in to break the news that he or she had lost his or her job.

Daycare had always been steady work. Since I’d opened my doors, there had always been more kids who wanted to come to the daycare than I could take, and that was never more true than after the success of Little Light. But during the recession, neither my reputation nor the success we’d had with the kids was relevant. If you don’t have a job, you don’t need someone to watch your children. And in working-class Indiana in 2008, it seemed as if nobody had a job anymore. I hung on with one or two kids for a while, and then those kids were gone, too. When I closed the door behind the last one, I was, for the first time, truly afraid.