Chapter 1

My son was kicked out of preschool because he kicked a visiting clown in the balls. His teacher called me at work and suggested we find another school that would better suit his needs. It would have been really funny except for the fact that this wasn’t the first time we’d been asked to find a more suitable place for our son.

“He’s non-compliant,” his teacher said over the phone after sharing all the gory details about my child taking down a clown with one swift kick. “Andrew won’t sit in circle-time with the other students, and he’s always wandering around the room. He covers his ears when I try to talk to him and…well, I just can’t have that.”

“What do you expect a three-year-old boy to do? Maybe he doesn’t like clowns?” I asked. I was secretly impressed with Andrew—I hated clowns, too.

I heard an exaggerated exhale on the other end of the line. “You need to get him right now. And by the way, I think he might be coming down with something.”

At the time, I was working as an art director in a rapidly exploding dot.com company in downtown Seattle. It was fast-paced and I loved it, although I was putting in long hours each week. Without asking to leave, I waved my keys at my boss and skipped down the stairs, hoping to beat the rush hour traffic across Lake Washington. When I arrived at the school, Andrew stood rigid in the foyer with his coat zipped and his backpack at his feet. He clutched his plastic dinosaur, T-Rex, to his chest like he expected someone to wrestle him for it.

His teacher waited for me to be within earshot before saying, “Here’s your balloon, Andrew. It’s a puppy.”

She handed him a pale blue twisty balloon of a wiener dog. Andrew dropped it on the floor and tore across the parking lot to our van. I said a curt goodbye and followed him, wanting to get out of there just as badly as he did. When I strapped him in the car seat, I noticed his lip had a tiny blister on it that wasn’t there in the morning.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

He shook his head.

During the twenty-minute drive home, I studied Andrew in the rearview mirror. He was staring out the window, wide-eyed and unblinking, while rubbing a thumb across the bumpy hide of the plastic dinosaur. I noticed his usual shimmery red hair was stuck in sweaty points around the edge of his face and that his cheeks had taken on a deep shade of pink. Maybe he was getting sick? Was that why he was so upset by the clown? I couldn’t figure him out. He was so different from his baby sister Hannah, who at three months was already cooing and babbling with us like she had too many things to say and not enough time to say them. Andrew wasn’t talking yet. But Jon and I had become so adept at reading his body language and gestures that it didn’t seem to be a problem.

“Sorry about the clown, buddy,” I said into the rearview mirror. “We don’t have to go back.”

Andrew raised T-Rex up to his face and pecked its oversized head at the back of my seat. I smiled back, knowing both he and T-Rex agreed.

We drove the rest of the way in silence while I thought about the difference between my job as a designer and my job as a mother. Mothering required just as much creative energy as my art director position, but ten times as much emotional energy. Being a mom meant that nothing was ever perfect, nothing was ever complete. There were no rewards for a job well done, no kudos wrapped up in a fat paycheck from a happy client. No, this new job of mine was most positively imperfect.

So I tried to be the perfect parent, enrolling Andrew in the Mommy & Me socialization classes that were popular in the mid-nineties: Baby Gymboree, KinderMusic, and special readings at the library. Unfortunately for me, the giant colorful parachute in the gym terrified him, the music hurt his ears, and although he loved stories, the library was too crowded. Jon and I were living in the era of Beanie Babies, Playmobil, Pokemon, and Barney the Dinosaur. A time when our home was a rubble of Legos and Little Tykes construction equipment, yet all Andrew wanted was a velveteen bear named Ben, and a green plastic T-Rex dinosaur.

During this time I made frequent trips to the pediatrician, where my growing list of questions was never quite answered. Questions like: Is it normal for babies to get sick all the time? Shouldn’t he be walking by now? Why doesn’t he talk yet? He won’t look at me. Am I doing something wrong? Through all this, I became a germophobe, one of those psycho overprotective mothers who never let their children out of their sight without a packet of antibacterial wipes. I had become the kind of parent I loathed. I wondered, was that person still me?

Turning up the hill towards our home on the east side of Seattle, more memories with Andrew passed through my mind. There were sweet memories of lazy summer afternoons at Puget Sound, dragging long ropes of kelp across the sand, shrieks of laughter and gap-toothed smiles from a three-year-old scrambling down the beach after gulls, and Sunday drives to the mountains just to stomp our feet in the snow.

I also remembered Andrew in the pediatrician’s office—fevered, frustrated, and angry. I pictured the doctor moving his stiff limbs one by one, like a doll. I listened as he chattered, cooed, and tickled Andrew. I watched as Andrew stared, unblinking at a fixed object across the room. Through all this, a seed of doubt was planted in the back of my mind. I wondered if I had done something wrong.

“Did you know we were asked to find another preschool?” I told the pediatrician one afternoon during a well-baby check.

“I’m really sorry,” he said with a genuine look of concern.

Tears pricked at the back of my eyes. He was a kind man and had always been honest when answering my questions, even when he was just as puzzled as I was.

“You’re doing a great job, you know. But I think it’s clear we both have some questions.”

His comment made me uneasy. After three years of questioning, I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers anymore. It’s absurd, I know, but I’d found something comforting, something reassuring even, in remaining naive.

In the end, the pediatrician scribbled a name and phone number on a slip of paper. “I’d like Andrew to visit this neurologist. I think he can provide some answers.”

That night, I asked Jon what he thought of the doctor’s observations—his concerns about Andrew’s lack of responsiveness, stiff joints, and delayed speech. He shrugged and reached out to draw me in an embrace while reminding me that Andrew was only three.

“And don’t forget,” he said. “Andrew does smile and laugh, and he does talk to us—just not with words yet.”

Two months later, I walked into the neurologist’s office, took one look at him, and considered backing out the door. He was a short, rectangular man with thick, heavy-lidded eyes that made him look like he hadn’t slept in years, and his oversized ears refused to be hidden by an overgrown haircut. His mouth had forgotten how to smile, and by the expression on his face, it was clear he was painfully bored with his job.

He motioned for us to sit, so I placed Andrew on the exam table and waited. He said nothing to me, nor did he engage with Andrew, yet I noticed he was keenly aware of the way my son sat on the examination table—straight backed, with arms and legs rigidly poking out in front of him.

The neurologist paced the room while tapping on his watch face. Every so often he would stop, glance at the time, then pace again. I could only imagine what Andrew was thinking. Did he sense the doctor’s disinterest like I did?

“Aren’t you going to examine him?” I asked after we’d been sitting there for fifteen minutes.

He responded by asking me a few questions about my health history, my pregnancy, and the delivery while continuing to watch Andrew. During the hour-long appointment, he never directly touched him, and at no time did Andrew look at or acknowledge the doctor’s presence.

“Ok. We’re finished now,” he said at the end of our allotted time.

“But what do you think?” I asked, desperate for a quick and easy answer.

He was halfway out the door before he said, “I’ll have my secretary send you my notes in a few weeks.”

I was shocked, and sure he had made all sorts of wrongful assumptions about my lack of parenting skills. Without a word, I pulled T-Rex from my purse and tucked him under Andrew’s arm before snuggling him to my hip and walking through the door.

That neurologist visit was weeks ago, and now, here I was driving home in the middle of the day after my son had been kicked out of preschool—the last in a series of concerning things that I couldn’t explain or fix. I wondered if maybe I was doing a terrible job at this mothering thing.

As I pulled in the driveway, I glanced back at Andrew in his car seat. He waved T-Rex at me this time, and I smiled. “Hey Andrew! Clowns suck, don’t they?” I said.

His eyes widened and he let out a giggle before dropping T-Rex to the floor.