The Best Kind of Different: Our Family's Journey With Asperger's Syndrome (7 page)

Parking lots were a particular source of anxiety for me. Grant was a wanderer with virtually no fear of anything. He was easily distracted, and if we were walking somewhere, he’d head off to whatever had caught his attention. If we walked in a parking lot and I asked him to hold my hand, he would say no. Then when I reached for his hand, he would move away just far enough so I couldn’t get him. If I did get hold of his hand or his shoulder, he would wriggle, trying to get loose. And sometimes he’d run away from me with no regard for or awareness of the cars everywhere, causing me to have mini–heart attacks as I fought off visions of him being run over.

I screamed at him so many times. Looking back, I don’t know how I might have handled it differently. When it came to his safety, I saw no other choice than to protect him as best I could, and so I would dig my heels in—which meant yelling. In the meantime, with Grant commanding so much of my attention, I was left to rely on my older kids—Gehrig was then nine, and Gabby was seven—to supervise Garrison in his stroller and make sure he was safe. That in itself should have told me that something was not right with this setup.

At some point after the arrival in Boston, I made a conscious decision to avoid situations where Grant and I would be walking around in public. In addition to his safety, I was also concerned about making a scene. If I yelled at him, I called attention to myself and to him, and with the increased scrutiny of our family that came along with Curt’s playing in Boston, there was nothing I dreaded more than calling attention to ourselves. I’d always been too preoccupied with what people thought about me, and never was that truer than when we first arrived in Boston. My selfconsciousness had reached new highs. I was constantly worried about whether people were silently judging me—not just as a parent, but as a wife of a star pitcher on their beloved Red Sox.

While Grant’s inability to stay focused was dangerous in public, the flip side was that when he zeroed in on something, he’d get hyperfocused, and there was no way of breaking his concentration. If we were in a store, and there was something that appealed to him, I couldn’t get him out of that store until I parted with my money and got him what he wanted. If we were in an airport that had one of those play areas for kids, it could be a mixed blessing for me. On the one hand, I could occupy Grant there the whole time we were waiting for a plane to take off. On the other hand, if we didn’t have time for him to play, and we needed to hustle to get onto our plane, I was in big trouble.

This happened that first year with the Red Sox, when Grant was four. We were on our way to visit Curt at spring training, and we were in a hurry. I had Grant and Garrison in strollers, and Gehrig and Gabby were walking alongside me. We were racing to the gate, but then Grant caught sight of the play area. That was it.

He tore off, out of his stroller, and ran to play. I ran after him, all the other kids in tow. “Grant, we have to go now,” I said. “We have to go catch the plane.”

No kid wants to leave that play area filled with toys and airplanes and a makebelieve control tower. Grant simply refused.
“No!”
he shouted at me.

“Grant,” I repeated, kneeling down and trying to get him to look me in
the eye. That never seemed to work. “We’ll play another time. We have to catch the plane now.”

“No! No! No!”

Of course, now all the other parents have turned their heads and are staring at us. For the life of me, I can’t get Grant out of the play area and back into the stroller. He’s just quick enough at that age that I can’t easily grab him—not to mention that I’ve got three other kids to keep my eye on and usher to the gate.

With everyone watching, I grabbed his hand and tried to discreetly get him out of there. But he wasn’t going to make it easy.

“You’re hurting me!”
he yelled.
“You’re hurting me! Stop hurting me!”

So now all the parents and other flyers stood there staring, clearly under the impression that they were witnessing child abuse, and quietly inching their hands toward their cell phones to call the authorities. I didn’t know what to do, because we couldn’t miss our plane. I was so uncomfortable with the glares I was receiving as I dragged Grant to the gate.

In the past, when people would witness him misbehaving or freaking out in public, and then hear us scolding him loudly, I would cringe, suspecting they thought he was uncontrollable and that we had no discipline in our home. I would have assumed the same thing at one time. I recall being a very young mother—maybe only Gehrig had been born so far—and watching as someone’s kid pitched a fit in the supermarket cereal aisle because he wasn’t allowed to have the cereal he wanted. His mother got into a screaming match with him, and then he just lay down on the floor, sobbing and wailing. All I could think was
Why can’t she get control of her kid? He clearly has no respect for her.
I didn’t know who I thought was more of a problem, the child or the mother. That was then.

Standing there in the airport with my hand on Grant’s shoulder, the only word for what I felt was
failure
. I didn’t know how to reach my kid. But also, I apparently hadn’t earned his respect. When I was a kid, if my mother grabbed
me under the back of my hair, that was it. I knew I had to fall in line. Heck, she could just look at me a certain way and I’d know I had to behave better.

The other kids got it. If I said to them, “We don’t have time today to play before the flight,” they understood. Maybe one of them would whine a little, but that was the extent of it. They knew I was in charge, and they could figure out the reasoning behind what I was saying: We’re trying not to be late.

Once we got to wherever we were going—visiting Curt, or taking a vacation—a whole new set of challenges awaited us. The one good thing about traveling was that Grant liked hotel rooms. Before we’d leave home, he’d put up a fight about going, but once we got to the hotel room, he was a happy camper. He’d watch TV, play video games, order the foods he knew he loved from room service. Of course the downside was that getting him out of the room was always difficult, even if we were going to the pool, which he loved—a little too much.

Eventually I’d get him there, though, and he’d immediately make his presence known. Everyone at every pool we’ve ever gone to has gotten to know Grant’s name. That’s because I always have to say things like,
“Stop jumping in, Grant!”
and
“Grant, stop running around the pool!”
and
“Grant, stop splashing people!”
Soon all the other adults in the vicinity are chanting
“Grant!”
every five minutes, trying to get him to stop doing something or other.

He was always big on slides. We took the kids to Disney World in Florida once, and he got superfocused on the slide at the pool. He loved shooting down it and into the water. Every time he came out of the pool, he went right up to the top—cutting in front of everyone else in line. Naturally, no one was happy about that. But Grant didn’t seem to notice. He was oblivious to the fact that everyone was mad at him. He just kept going up the slide until he got kicked off, and then came crying to me.

A few months later we took the kids to Puerto Rico, and again Grant wasn’t sharing the slide with others. (Come to think of it, he has probably gotten kicked off every pool slide he’s ever gotten on.) I kept watching, but
after a while I stopped seeing him go down the slide. I thought to myself,
Where the heck is Grant?
And then I got up and looked for him. He was sitting in the chair at the top of the slide.

“What’s he doing up there?” I asked the lifeguard, a young woman in her twenties.

“I gave him a timeout,” she casually informed me. “He wasn’t sharing.”

I went berserk. Who was this lifeguard to punish my son? I told her, “I will correct my own child,” although she clearly thought I wasn’t doing a very good job of that. I was completely humiliated. I went to the head of the resort and complained. “She will never take it upon herself to correct my child again,” I said.

But deep down, I understood the lifeguard’s frustration. I felt embarrassed that Grant had brought her to that point. I had no idea why he was so difficult to control, why he didn’t listen. To me, it was some sort of weakness on my part as a parent, or the effect of the chaotic baseballfamily lifestyle. The idea that it was something more fundamental, more ingrained, and more serious never even crossed my mind.

W
E HAD BEEN IN
Massachusetts just two weeks when the 2004 season started. Life always becomes even more hectic during the season, and this year did not fail to deliver. The season started out with a bang. I had never been to a stadium that had so much energy, every day. The Red Sox fans had such incredible enthusiasm it was infectious.

The kids were in school and making friends. I started coaching Gabby in softball, and Gehrig played baseball. When it got to be summer, we would go to the games every night, and usually I’d put the kids in the family room, which Grant in particular enjoyed. I was one of the older wives on the team, so I had older kids than most. This meant that there were plenty of babies and toddlers around in the family room. Most kids on the cusp of five are too busy
with other kids their age, or with their own toys, to notice kids littler than themselves. Not Grant, though. He loved little kids, and he only wanted to take care of them. This was what made the family room so much fun for him. With the adult supervision provided there, he was able to be involved with the babies, and no one had to worry about him hurting them in any way. Grant would stay there through an entire game, and I could watch Curt pitch without feeling as if I had to go though a wrestling match in order to do it.

Shortly after we arrived in Boston, I put Grant into a preschool there, and when I heard he had a new best friend I was thrilled. What got complicated were the playdates. I knew that both Gehrig and Gabby could do playdates; they’d been doing them for years. But with Grant I wasn’t so sure how it would go. Needless to say, I had my reservations, and I was not all that eager to introduce playdates to Grant. But once he’d known that little boy for a couple of months and since they played together so well every day at school, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try a playdate for ninety minutes or so. I called the little boy’s mom and made arrangements.

Grant was overwhelmed with anticipation. He couldn’t stop talking about how he was going to have a playdate, what he was going to do on the playdate, how much fun the playdate was going to be. I must have heard the word
playdate
about fifty times within a threeday span.

The day arrived, and the little boy came over. He and Grant immediately took off to play. After fifteen minutes, though, I looked over to the family room and saw Grant by himself on the couch, watching TV alone.

“Grant!” I scolded him. “You have a friend over! When a friend comes over, you have to play with him.” Grant barely reacted. He acted as if the little boy was not even there.

“Go back upstairs and play with him!” I said. And he went. After a while I went upstairs to check on them. Sure enough, Grant was in his room reading.

Now the way I understood it, when your child has a playdate, it’s supposed to keep him busy and occupied. It’s supposed to be easy for the mom.
But here I was, having to work harder than if I’d been home with Grant alone.

After a little more time of being ignored, the little boy asked if he could go home. Grant just wouldn’t play with him, no matter how many times I asked Grant to come in the room and play. He kept saying, “No!”

I felt caught. I didn’t know what to do. Was I really going to call this little boy’s mother and tell her, “Your son wants to go home because my son doesn’t know how to have friends over”?

I couldn’t imagine what Grant was thinking. I never had to go over what a playdate was with Gabby and Gehrig. I was already keeping Grant from going over to other friends’ houses because I feared he wouldn’t listen. After this playdate, I was certain he wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long time.

A
S WE ALL SETTLED
into our new routines in Boston, I became increasingly aware of something I’d suspected for a long time: Curt’s relationship with Grant was incredibly tense. In truth, I’d seen this building and developing for a while, but it was not until our lives were disrupted by the move that I began to see just how strained things had become.

Not surprisingly, it hadn’t been like this with either of Grant’s older siblings. With Gehrig, Curt had always had a very good, natural bond, bordering on a friendship. Gehrig was Curt’s link back to his own father. Curt had been the only boy in his family, and his father had been his best friend—the voice of reason that helped Curt figure things out after he’d made a bad choice or felt like he just needed to talk. There were many passions that Curt shared with his dad, but most importantly, he had tremendous respect for him. Curt’s father held him accountable for his actions, and as a result, when he was growing up, the thought of disappointing his father was more upsetting to him than any punishment he could have been given.

I often think that Curt was misunderstood in baseball, from the time he
started out. It had a lot to do with losing his dad just as he was getting going in the game. Curt missed that voice that would help him navigate life’s big decisions. He was twentyone and had just made it to the big leagues. He was making money and acting like an immature twentyoneyearold. He was getting a taste of stardom and money, and he was labeled “wild” and “out of control.” I think he was just lost, and longing for his dad. Imagine the pressure of moving into the big leagues without your beacon of light, in this case, Curt’s dad, to talk to.

There are certain people who are hard to replace. His father was larger than life, and nothing had been able to replace that one vital relationship. But when Gehrig came along, he helped fill the hole left by Curt’s father. It was perfect. Gehrig loved his daddy, he loved baseball, and he was willing to play whatever game Curt wanted to play. He went to the ballpark with him. He went on road trips. In fact, in those days Gehrig often spent more time with Curt than I was able to.