It was a beautiful, heartfelt memorial, more tender and precious to her than the renamed stadium. Jocelyn wished she could have created such a tribute to him herself.
One day after school at the end of September, Jocelyn was chatting with the mother of one of Anisa’s classmates about an upcoming eighth-grade field trip when the friend’s mother said, “I suppose we won’t be doing Imagination Quest this year. It’s really too bad. The team did so well in the state finals last spring that we all hoped they might place at nationals this time, or maybe even win.”
Jocelyn took a deep, shaky breath. “I hadn’t even thought about it.” As the faculty adviser, Noah had always taken on the responsibility of registering the school’s team. All Jocelyn had been obliged to do was make sure she kept the family calendar clear for their weekly meetings and charged up the video camera battery before the tournament. “Maybe one of the other parents would be willing to take over.”
The other mother shook her head wryly. “Maybe, but Noah is a hard act to follow. I can’t think of many people brave enough to try.”
You’re talking to one, Jocelyn almost said as a hot surge of desperate anger rose up within her. Noah had left voids all over the place that she struggled every day to fill—for her daughters, for his students, for herself. But some of the roles he had abandoned she simply could not take on—she could not teach science, she could not coach track, and she could not manage the Imagination Quest team.
Ironically, it was Jocelyn who had first learned about Imagination Quest at a teachers’ convention, she who had been intrigued enough to collect pages and pages of information, she who had returned home and eagerly made a case to Noah for organizing a team at their school. Imagination Quest was a national, nonprofit educational organization dedicated to promoting creativity, problem solving, and teamwork beyond the classroom. Teams of five to eight students would work together over the course of several months to choose one of five challenges, solve it, and present their solution at a regional competition. Depending upon the challenge the team selected, the students might be required to build a device that could perform specific tasks within a certain time frame, write and perform a skit, or—most often—a combination of the two. Although each team had a parent or teacher acting as adviser, the work was explicitly required to be the students’ own. Parents could teach their children how to hammer a nail and join two boards together, for example, but they could not build any part of any device used in the competition. They could drive the team to the hardware store and pay for supplies within the team’s $150 budget, but they could not tell the students what to purchase. They could schedule a meeting with an English teacher to discuss how to write a skit, but the English teacher could not tell them how to write that particular skit, nor could the parents contribute a single scene or line of dialogue.
Noah embraced the idea with as much enthusiasm as Jocelyn had known he would. The very next day, he successfully persuaded the principal to let him form a team, although the cash-strapped PTA could not provide any funding and the students had to hold a car wash and bake sale to raise money for their entrance fee and supplies. In that first year, six students signed up, all seventh-grade boys, and after a few weeks of icebreakers and team-building exercises, they chose a challenge titled Construction Junction. They were required to design and build two identical structures capable of holding up to twenty golf balls, as well as some sort of transportation system for transferring the golf balls one at a time from one of the structures, around a course of traffic cones arranged at random by the judges, and into the other structure ten feet away. They also had to incorporate their creations into an original skit that addressed a real-world transportation problem. The boys attached a small aquarium net to a remote-controlled toy car and made up a story about transporting food and water to victims of Hurricane Katrina through a hazardous landscape of broken levees and washed-out roads. At the tournament, they managed to transport only four of the twenty golf balls and came in second to last. They were disappointed, but Noah insisted that it was a fine showing for their first venture. He was proud of them and declared that they should be proud of themselves.
The following year, all but one of the now eighth-grade boys signed up again, a seventh-grade girl joined the team, and they finished tenth out of fourteen in a challenge involving solar energy. A year later, they filled the roster with eight boys and girls from all three middle school grades and took third place in a challenge that required them to spend the preparation months studying the history, culture, and mythical creatures of six different civilizations; at the tournament, they were required to perform an improv skit about one of the civilizations that was drawn from a hat as well as an “unexpected problem” assigned by the judges ten minutes before their performance. That was the first time the WMS team made it to the state finals, where they were one of the few teams comprised almost entirely of minorities. They finished third from last, but Noah refused to let his heartbroken students wallow in disappointment. He praised their achievements and reminded them that their first trip to the state competition had been a valuable learning experience. “Someday,” he promised, “the WMS Wildcats are going to win state and go on to nationals. And someday, we’re going to win nationals. Maybe none of us here today will be on that team, but we’re breaking ground for those who come after us. They’re going to benefit from what we learn, from the traditions we establish, and on the day they bring that trophy home to our school, we can all say we did our part.”
But that would never happen without Noah to lead them. The team would stall, and Jocelyn couldn’t imagine anyone starting it back up again once the momentum Noah had worked so hard to sustain ran down. And Imagination Quest truly had been a marvelous learning experience, giving the students invaluable practice brainstorming and working with a team and solving problems. In an era when teachers were pressured to teach to a standardized test, Imagination Quest celebrated creativity and innovation. Jocelyn’s only criticism was that due to the lack of parent volunteers to lead teams, it offered those lessons to far too few of their bright, deserving pupils.
And if no one took over Noah’s team, even fewer WMS students would benefit from the program. Anisa had learned so much from her two years in Imagination Quest, but Rahma—Rahma would never have the opportunity at all.
She wouldn’t, unless someone took over the team. And as the days passed, it looked more and more like that someone would be Jocelyn.
First she asked her daughters if they even wanted to participate in Imagination Quest that year. If they didn’t, she would not lead the team, because she couldn’t take on anything that would oblige her to spend more time away from them. As much as Anisa had enjoyed her previous two years in the program, and as much as Rahma had looked forward to joining the team as soon as she was old enough, it was possible that Imagination Quest, like so many other things they had once reveled in, would have become unbearable without their father. To her surprise and relief, when she broached the subject, the girls shrieked with delight and flung their arms around her, jumping up and down in their eagerness. “Thank you, Mama,” Rahma said. “I thought we couldn’t, without Daddy.”
Jocelyn’s throat constricted with grief when she thought of the great many things they would have no choice but to do without him in the years to come. “We can do anything we put our minds to,” she reminded them firmly. “Sometimes it all comes down to deciding to begin.”
Tears filled Jocelyn’s eyes and she sensed, somehow, that they were moving forward, that they were at last choosing to brave a future without the man they all adored so much. They had no choice. They had to move on. The only way to do it, the only right way, the only way that would have made him proud, was with courage.
Three members of the previous year’s team had graduated in June, but when Jocelyn contacted the parents of the remaining members, their outpouring of enthusiasm and support overwhelmed her. Rahma a
nd two other sixth graders filled the empty places on the roster, and after taking a deep breath and murmuring a prayer, Jocelyn officially registered the team and scheduled the first meeting.
She had observed enough meetings through the years to know how Noah ran things, and she saw no reason to fix what wasn’t broken. For the first few weeks, she guided the seven students through a series of team-building exercises that gave them opportunities to solve puzzles together—and to learn to speak up as well as to listen to their teammates, and to resolve the disputes that inevitably arose. The more experienced team members quickly remembered the skills they had learned in years past, and the newer, younger members followed their lead. Other parents pitched in to help when and how they could, and by early November, Jocelyn thought they were ready to choose one of the five official challenges.
After careful consideration and debate, the students chose a challenge entitled Direct Delivery, a whimsical name that belied its difficulty. Teams were instructed to design and build equipment to deliver objects by mechanical means from a start zone; over an opaque barrier ten feet long, two feet wide, and six feet high; to a set of targets located on a grid in a “landing zone” on the other side. The team would make their own targets, which could be either one foot square or two feet square; larger targets would be easier to hit, but smaller targets were worth more points. The team would also need to develop a “targeting system,” a method to aim the delivery equipment at the targets on the other side of the barrier. The team would also supply the objects, which were required to be “items with a pliable cover that contain some type of loose fill material.” The description took the team quite some time to decipher until a soccer player, with a sudden burst of insight, said, “Oh, I know. Something like a hacky sack.” The teammates eventually decided that any sort of beanbag would do, even something they made themselves.
At the tournament, one member of the team would be responsible for placing the targets in the “landing zone” behind the barrier according to a grid-based diagram provided by the judges at the start of the presentation. After arranging the targets, that teammate would have to stand aside, forbidden to help aim the delivery system or to tell the other members where the targets were. Last of all, while attempting to deliver as many objects as possible to the targets, the team had to perform an original skit tying all the elements together and explaining their solution to the problem—all within eight minutes.
In Jocelyn’s opinion, they had chosen the most interesting and the most difficult of the five challenges offered that year.
Some of the kids wanted to jump right in and begin designing their targets, but Jocelyn encouraged them to think of possible delivery systems first. The following week, she arranged for the team to meet after school in the gym, where she and another parent stacked folded gymnastic mats in a rough approximation of the barrier they would face in the tournament. She also taped pieces of paper together to show the size of both the large and small targets. Standing on the start-zone side of the barrier, she said, “You have to get your objects from here”—she strode to the barrier and held her hand up, measuring its height—“over this”—next she walked behind the barrier and pointed to the two paper targets on the floor—“so that they land directly on top of the targets, somewhere around here.”
The size of the barrier and the distance their objects had to travel gave the students pause, and Jocelyn could almost see the wheels turning in their minds as they studied the course.
“Can’t we just throw the beanbags over the wall?” asked one sixth-grade boy.
Tashia, an eighth-grade veteran of two previous tournaments and Anisa’s best friend, shook her head. “It says in the rules that the delivery has to be by mechanical means.”
“We could make a robot arm to throw them. That would be mechanical,” an eighth-grade boy named Niko ventured, and the conversation took off from there. A slingshot, a beanbag-hurling cannon, a magnet on the end of a fishing line, a trampoline—the ideas came fast and furious. Rahma scrambled to write them all down, and when the barrage of suggestions slowed, she wondered aloud how they could aim at targets they couldn’t see.
“We could make one of those things like on a submarine,” another boy said. “Or maybe even two or three of them.”
“A periscope?” said Anisa.
“Yeah, that’s it. A periscope.”
As the team began to discuss how to build a periscope, Jocelyn exchanged proud, amused glances with the other parents. It was always a joy to see the children coming up with solutions on their own, however implausible or outlandish, rather than looking to adults for ideas they could simply parrot back.
By the end of that meeting, the teammates had settled upon a combination of periscopes and mirrors placed on the floor for their targeting system, but a delivery method and a theme for their skit eluded them—not only that day but the next meeting and the one after that, which they devoted to discussions and building periscopes out of cardboard boxes and inexpensive mirrors from the dollar store. Jocelyn resisted the urge to suggest options. The whole point was for the students to use their imaginations to solve the problem, and if she stepped in with her own solutions, she would defeat the entire purpose of the program. That principle was enough to restrain her, but even if it hadn’t, her word would have. She and all the other parents had been required to sign a pledge that they would not interfere and that the work would be entirely the students’ own. The students had signed a similar pledge attesting to the team’s independence.
One evening nearly three weeks after they had chosen their challenge, Jocelyn was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher after supper when Anisa came running in carrying a heavy book. “Mom,” she exclaimed, setting the book open on the counter and tapping a page. “I’ve got it! I know what we should do!”
“What is it, baby girl?” Jocelyn recognized the book as the world history text used in the eighth grade—battered and badly in need of replacement. The department chair had assured the history faculty that they were next in line for updated editions, just as soon as the school district could fit new books into the budget.
“We could build a catapult,” Anisa said. “Just like the siege engines used in medieval times.”
Jocelyn drew closer, studying the illustration. “That could work.”
The commotion brought Rahma running downstairs, and after Anisa described her idea, the two sisters ran off to the computer in the family room to look up catapults on the Internet. They found illustrations and plans on a variety of websites, including a Cub Scouts activities page and something from the Society for Creative Anachronism. When Anisa presented her solution at the next team meeting, it was chosen by an enthusiastic and unanimous show of hands.
“But that’s what I said the day we chose our challenge and you all laughed,” Niko protested, grinning. “Remember? I said we should build a mechanical robot arm to throw things.”
Everyone laughed, but in a way, he was right.
The father of another team member was a carpenter, and he allowed the team to use his basement workshop—with adult supervision—to begin designing and building their catapult. “Sometimes I just want to pick up the screwdriver and say, ‘No, do it this way,’ you know?” Isaiah confided to Jocelyn when the children were too busy to overhear. “It’s hard to keep from stepping in and solving the problem for them.”
Jocelyn knew exactly what he meant. The team still hadn’t come up with a theme for their skit, whereas Jocelyn thought of a new idea every other day without even trying. On more than one occasion, she forced herself to leave the room during their brainstorming sessions rather than blurt out her own ideas. She had never appreciated how difficult it had been for Noah not to do the children’s work for them. “It’s not about winning,” Noah had said once, a remarkable admission from a born competitor. “It’s about the process. It’s about proving I trust them by letting t
hem make their own mistakes—and their own successes.”
Jocelyn had come to truly understand what he had meant.
A week later, she was delighted that she had not given in to the temptation to influence the skit, because the students came up with a brilliant idea on their own.
Niko wanted to attend the Air Force Academy and become an astronaut when he grew up, and whenever an article about NASA or astronomy appeared in the newspaper, his mother would circle it in pencil and leave it by his cereal bowl at breakfast. One evening, he came to the meeting at the Ames residence triumphantly clutching a rolled-up newspaper, just as Jocelyn had seen many a newly minted graduate hold a hard-won diploma. “I’ve got it,” he declared, shrugging off his coat inside the Ames’s front door and tugging off his shoes. “This is our skit. Right here. It’s genius.”
Anisa, who had something of a love-hate relationship with her closest academic rival, folded her arms over her chest and regarded him skeptically. “Genius, huh?”
Niko grinned back. As far as he was concerned, hate hadn’t figured in the equation regarding Anisa since the fifth grade. “Pure genius. You’ll wish you’d thought of it first.”
Jocelyn was as curious as her daughters to hear Niko’s idea, but he refused to show them the newspaper until the rest of the team arrived. Only then did he read aloud an article about NASA’s plans to launch a new rover to search for water on Mars. Astrogeologists had determined that craters in certain regions offered the greatest likelihood of finding ice on the planet’s surface, so mission specialists were hoping to land the rover safely near one of those promising craters.
The Giving Quilt Page 22
