The Spark

by Kristine Barnett

  Jake stepped forward and took a leadership role. He developed a formula on his scratch pad and led the way. At his direction, the Mensans marked off the area with string and ruled on the boundary dispute. The couple had been right, and the fallen tree was the conservancy’s responsibility. It was interesting to see that the conservancy accepted the opinion of a group led by a ten-year-old and his eight-year-old brother as gospel.

  Later that week, as I was driving Wesley and a friend of his to get some ice cream, I overheard Wesley describing how he’d spent his weekend: “There’s this group that needs my brother and me to help out sometimes.” I turned away so they wouldn’t see me smile. When the Mensa chapter asked me to contribute a piece to its newsletter, the Mensans were quite surprised to see that I’d written an essay about how important it is to play.

  Dr. Tremaine got back in touch. He had taken a look at Jake’s equation, and he sent Jake an email with a list of books to get and things to think about, all of which were completely over my head. But he also wrote me an email. In it, he confirmed that Jake was indeed working on an original theory, and he made it clear that if Jake’s theory held, it would put him in line for a Nobel Prize. He closed his letter by encouraging me to support Jake in whatever way I could, because he believed the work Jake was doing would be important for science.

  One of the most illustrious astrophysicists in the world had not only reviewed my son’s theory but had validated it. That, I can tell you, was a chicken soup moment in a class all its own.

  Soon after our correspondence with Dr. Tremaine, we got another piece of good news. Jake had been formally accepted as a freshman at IUPUI. In addition, he was the recipient of a Chancellor’s Scholarship, which would cover his tuition.

  Jake was going to college, this time for real.

  A Home Away from Home

  “This isn’t going to work.”

  Jake was standing in the living room next to the backpack we’d bought that morning. It was filled with all the math and science textbooks he’d need for his first day of college. I’d been a little worried that they wouldn’t all fit, especially when I saw his physics textbook, the size of two telephone books put together, but Jake had gotten everything in there. Now all he needed was someone to carry it for him.

  Jake, being Jake, was trying to calculate what kind of fulcrum he’d need to actually get the thing on his back, but dragging it around by the straps seemed to be the best he could do without assistance. I wasn’t much help, so we called Mike to lift the bag onto Jake’s back. Mike and I stood and watched as poor Jake—all eighty pounds of him—staggered briefly under the load before losing the fight and his equilibrium, toppling sideways over onto the couch.

  Mike and I looked at our son, his head buried in the cushions as he struggled ineffectually to right himself. (Jake, it should be noted, isn’t above hamming it up a little.)

  “I think he’s right. We may need to do something different here,” Mike said thoughtfully, as the exaggerated flailing and muffled hollering from the couch became ever more dramatic. Wesley, never one to ignore a clear advantage, took the corner at top speed and executed a flying leap to land on top of the backpack already squishing his older brother.

  Ethan, reading nearby, ignored both of them. I decided to do the same and planted a kiss on my husband’s face. “Something different?” I said. “Here we go again.”

  That was how Jake became the only kid on campus to use a rolling suitcase to transport his books from one class to another. Eventually, he’ll be big enough to manage a backpack. Unfortunately, we’re pretty sure it won’t happen before he graduates.

  Solving a little problem like finding the right luggage for Jake’s books seemed like child’s play, considering I’d spent the summer worrying about the reality of an eleven-year-old wandering around a downtown campus alone.

  Jake likes to say that he didn’t come with common sense, but the truth is that his autism can still get in the way of his ability to take care of himself. (It’s a gray, sleeting, snowy day in Indiana as I write this. This morning I had to send Jake back upstairs to change out of shorts and flip-flops before going outside.) As book-smart as he might be, he isn’t yet street-smart. Out where we live, he’s never had to be. But even back then, before there was any media coverage of him, he attracted more than his fair share of curious looks and impromptu conversations, and I knew the scrutiny would be even more intense when he was alone. As a result, I had real concerns for his safety.

  We’d thrown technology at the problem with some success. Jake would have his own phone, so he’d be able to call me when he left class, meaning we could “walk” together, even as he crossed the campus alone. We got into the habit of using iChat, so I could actually see him and feel connected to him (and remind him to stop for a sandwich). But from my perspective, the real problem was that there would be nowhere for him to go when he had time between classes.

  When Jake was taking only a single class, Mike or I could easily drive him down to campus, walk him to class, and hang around answering emails or reading until he was done. But we knew that wouldn’t be realistic if he was attending the university full-time. He’d have hours between classes and study sessions, with nowhere to go. As hard as I tried to banish them from my mind, those homeless men fighting on the street corner kept surfacing again and again, and as I lay awake at night, I came up with much worse scenarios as well. “College is not PG,” I kept telling Mike, over and over.

  When Jake is nineteen, I’m sure that he will get into all sorts of high jinks. I’m not naïve; I know Girls Gone Wild will be in his life at some point, whether I like it or not. But Jake was only eleven, and I didn’t want him exposed to anything he wasn’t emotionally ready for. My worst fear was that someone would haze him or play a prank on him. What if someone thought it was funny to see what would happen if they gave the little kid in the library a six-pack of beer?

  Wandering through the house one night, anxiety gnawing at my stomach, I realized that this safety issue could actually be the deal breaker. If I couldn’t find a place for Jake to hang out, he might just have to learn at home.

  So I tried to find someplace on campus—a comfy corner, a little lounge, a common area—where Jake could go and be safe, somewhere he could work and study or chill out. That safe haven eluded me, though, and by the end of the summer, I began to feel really unsettled. I was about to give up when, on my final recon mission, one of the women who worked in the library struck up a conversation with me.

  “I’ve seen you down here a few times,” she said. “What is it that you’re looking for?”

  I explained, and she told me about the Honors College, a brand-new college at the university that prioritized independent research and real-world field experience for the brightest students. Not only did the program sound as though it would be a perfect fit for Jake, but it also had a home, a suite of offices deep in the basement of the library, accessible only to honor students with a special key card.

  It sounded too good to be true, but the reality of the Honors College completely blew me away. Students can see into the offices lining the corridors, and the administrators and educators can see out. There are places for the kids to work and study and laugh together, as well as places for them to retreat and curl up by themselves. There are state-of-the-art touch screen Smart Boards in the lounges and unlimited hot chocolate in the kitchen. It’s a think tank, a student union, and a home away from home, all rolled into one. At the center of this amazing place is Dr. Jane Luzar, the founding dean of the Honors College and its resident guru and angel, who spends her days making the program the best it can be. The kids don’t call her Dean Luzar, but Jane—and often, Mama Jane.

  Finding Jane and the miraculous space she’s created for these kids was such a huge relief to me as a mom, we never seriously thought about Jake going to school anywhere else. I knew we’d made the right decision the very first day Jake was down there. My phone rang, and it was Jane. “He’s on the
move,” she reported. Jake had left the Honors College.

  Jane told me that she would watch out for Jake, and she has. It’s not because he’s so young either. I’ve seen her scold a twenty-year-old for skipping lunch.

  Jane also looks out for Jake academically. He has to satisfy a number of requirements in order to graduate, which can be boring for him. He was not thrilled about the algebra-based honors physics requirements he had to take that first year, for instance. Rather than doing the problems using the classic, easier, and less precise Newtonian physics, Jake used the quantum approach, which requires several pages of equations and delivers a much more accurate result—at least until the professor asked him, for the purposes of the class, to stick with the simpler way. Jane knows that he’s restless in those classes, so she stays on him, asking what he might do outside the classroom with the material they’re covering

  Jane also understands that Jake isn’t on a normal trajectory. There’s no rule book here, no guidelines for how to proceed. We’re all making it up as we go along. So when Jake expressed an interest in taking master’s-level classes in physics, Jane made it possible for him to sit in on a 600-level class. Yes, it was unusual for a freshman, but she believes in him, like she believes in all the kids.

  Other universities, including some very prestigious ones, have come forward to court Jake. But we haven’t been able to find an environment that would work as well for us and for our family. Administrators at one East Coast Ivy League school told me they’d love to have him, and the offer was tempting. The financial aid they offered was outstanding, and of course the facilities and the professors he’d have access to would be unparalleled. It’s one of the best schools in the world. But there was a sticking point, and for me it was enough to put the whole conversation to bed. To attend, Jake would have to live in a dorm.

  That was so absurd to me, I couldn’t even process it. Maybe it’s my background: Traditionally, Amish people don’t even have old-age homes. You raise your kids, and then you help to raise your kids’ kids, and then when you’re old, your children and their children take care of you. I don’t live with my mother and sister, but I do talk to them a couple of times a day. So the idea that I would send my eleven-year-old off to the East Coast to live in a dormitory by himself wasn’t one I was comfortable with.

  “He’s part of a family,” I protested. The admissions officer was unmoved. Our family would be welcome to find an apartment close to campus, he told me, but Jake would have to live in a dorm with all the other incoming freshmen. I looked over at Jake, who was stealing a big chunk of brownie out of Ethan’s sundae, and I thanked the admissions officer for his time. It was a lovely offer, but it wasn’t for us.

  Eventually, we may have to go elsewhere. But for now, we’re at home.

  Dr. Pehl always used to say that the other kids in his class were there to do their work, but Jake was there to learn. He’s like a sponge, soaking it all up, always hungry for more math, more astrophysics, more concepts. We often have to put the brakes on him: “Hold up, dude. Let’s eat some dinner.” But I don’t ever question that he’s doing the right thing, or that we did the right thing for him.

  I still have some anxiety about Jake being alone on campus. But by now, so many people know him that I don’t feel as if he’s ever completely alone. I’m down there a lot, in part because Ethan and Wesley have been accepted to SPAN, too. Jake has to take chemistry to graduate, Ethan has to take it as a prerequisite for the microbiology he wants to do, and it’s required for the meteorology that has captivated Wes. So all three of them may take a chemistry class together, which will be funny to see. When I’m not there with his brothers, Jake calls me when he’s walking around the campus.

  The rest of the time, he lives a normal student life. Normal for Jake, that is. Last year, he went to get a chicken sandwich from the student union, where he stumbled upon a contest in honor of Pi Day (March 14—get it? 3/14?). The student who could recite the most digits of pi would win a pi T-shirt.

  He called me. “I’m going to try,” he said. “I know pi out to forty digits.”

  “You do?” Yet another surprise. “Well, okay. Good luck, and don’t forget about lunch.”

  Another call when he was done. “How did it go?” I asked. “Did you get a sandwich?”

  “I did it forward and backward, so they counted it as eighty digits.”

  Then he had to hang up. He’d been reciting pi when he should have been eating his lunch, so he was going to eat his sandwich (no pickles, thank you very much) on the way back to class.

  That night, Narnie stopped by for a cup of tea. She sat at the counter with Jake, and I told her he’d won a T-shirt for knowing pi out to forty digits and back again.

  “I know it out to two hundred now,” Jake interrupted.

  I was startled. “What? When did that happen?”

  Apparently, the organizers of the Pi Day contest had given everyone who participated in the contest a little business card with two hundred digits of pi printed on it in a tiny font. Worried that eighty digits wouldn’t be enough to secure the T-shirt, Jake had memorized the rest on his way back to class. Four hundred digits—backward and forward—would do it, he was sure.

  Narnie and I both laughed at the image of Jake heading across campus, memorizing four hundred digits of pi, while dragging a rolling suitcase with one hand and eating a chicken sandwich with the other.

  The next day, we ran into Narnie in the driveway. “Hey, Jake, how’s the pi?” she asked.

  “Good. I haven’t memorized any more, though. Mom says it’s a waste of time.”

  I had, because it was. Jake could keep going and going until the end of time—but why? The synesthetic autistic savant Daniel Tammet memorized pi out to fifty thousand digits and recited it to raise money for an autism charity, which was a wonderful thing. (Ultimately, the recitation took him more than five hours. He used chocolate to get through it. That, at least, I could relate to.) But even Daniel Tammet talked more in his book about the challenges of managing his social anxiety and the physical difficulties of the recitation than any particular intellectual challenge.

  Narnie came right back at Jake, with the world’s most innocent look. “What?” she said. “No, silly. I was talking about cherry pie.”

  Jake cracked up, shaking his head as he got into the car. There’s no chance of him getting a fat head as long as Narnie’s around.

  I laughed, too, but something was nagging at me. Halfway down to the university, I looked at Jake in the backseat in my rearview mirror. He was playing Angry Birds on his iPad.

  “Hey, Jake,” I said. “Why did you stop memorizing pi at forty digits?”

  “I didn’t stop at forty. I stopped at two hundred.”

  “But before. Why did you stop at forty?”

  “It was forty including the three. Thirty-nine decimal digits, actually.”

  “Okay, but why did you stop there?”

  “Because with thirty-nine decimal places, you can estimate the circumference of the observable universe down to a hydrogen atom. I figured that was all I’d ever really need.”

  Lucky Penny

  One of the first things I noticed about the Honors College was Jane’s expectation that her students become meaningful citizens of the world. They are actively expected to devote time and service to helping others.

  Jake’s own form of service began with tutoring in the math lab, which he began doing as soon as he got to campus. The kids he tutors usually make one joke about his age and then get down to the nitty-gritty of whatever it is they don’t understand. That talent for teaching I first saw in our living room has blossomed, something you can see every time he helps someone understand a new concept and the light of comprehension dawns.

  When I see Jake, I can’t help thinking about Grandpa John. Math and science are so electrically charged for him, so vibrant and beautiful, that he wants everyone to be as passionate about them as he is. When one of his most labor-intensive tutorin
g students (a fairly desperate case, by her own admission) passed Calculus II, she and Jake both cried with relief. He also seems to have inherited my grandfather’s patience. “You’ll get it; take your time,” he encourages the kids he tutors. And then he just sits back and watches, munching away on some Crunchy Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, while they work their way through a new problem. He also runs study groups, some of which are standing room only. Again like my grandfather, he has a unique gift for creating communities of people who can support one another. Nobody knows better than he does that you can’t do it alone.

  Jane has pointed out that Jake’s facility at tutoring gives the rest of us a window onto how he sees math. If one approach to solving a problem doesn’t seem to be working for the student he’s tutoring, he’ll come up with another way, and another, and another, until one finally clicks. His dexterity is evident. Whereas even someone quite gifted in math can usually only grind out one or two ways at most to arrive at the right solution to a problem, for Jake all the many different roads one might take to get there pop up instantly. Watching him teach, you can see that he’s having fun. In return, the students he tutors have taught him things such as eating peanut butter with a spoon straight from the jar. (Thanks, guys.)

  I’ll confess that when we were thinking about college, it didn’t occur to us that Jake would make real friends with the kids there. But Jane expects all the kids in the Honors College to form a community and to nurture one another both academically and emotionally, and Jake has become an important part of that. The age difference isn’t as pronounced as we expected. There’s a “little brother” quality about the way the other kids treat him that I find very endearing, and he enjoys it, too. As the eldest in our family, it’s a new experience for him. Jane told me recently about walking into the kitchen and overhearing a group of kids talking about Jake. They’d figured out that he wouldn’t have his driver’s license before graduation and were squabbling over who’d get to drive him to the ceremony.