The Best Kind of Different: Our Family's Journey With Asperger's Syndrome (3 page)

In a short time, Grant rocked himself to sleep.

T
HIS WAS NOT THE
first time I’d had a problem with Grant in the stands at a ball game. It had been a long time—years—since I’d tried to take him. I figured he’d be mature enough at seven to behave differently, and maybe even enjoy himself. That’s what I thought it was then: a maturity issue.

Since the time Grant was little, I’d known it was better to leave him at the hotel with my mom during away games, or, if it was a home game, put him
into our players’ kids’ room in the stadium. There was a great one in Phoenix that we used when Curt played for the Arizona Diamondbacks from 2000 to 2003. It was staffed with five or six adults who would lead the kids through arts and crafts, video games, and building things with blocks. Grant could get lost in there, playing all day with the other players’ kids. It was great for me, too. I needed to have a place where I could put Grant so I could get three hours to myself to enjoy a game.

My experience had been so different with Gehrig and Gabby, and later, with Garrison. Even when they were toddlers, I was able to keep them content at games. I could teach them how to do things like take peanuts out of their shells (that alone would keep them occupied for several innings). But those activities were never enough for Grant. He was never happy at games, and I didn’t know why.

If it were just Major League Baseball he had an issue with, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad—even though it would have broken his father’s heart, not to mention my own. But the truth is, I couldn’t control Grant in most situations. He was noisy, willful, defiant, incapable of sitting still—and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Later that fateful summer of 2007, it finally clicked for me: Grant was different. Really different. And I realized I needed to do something to help him—to get some kind of professional help, although what that would be, I wasn’t yet sure.

I wouldn’t come to that realization until I first hit a wall. With a cordless phone, to be very specific. One morning as I tried to get the kids ready and out the door to day camp, I couldn’t get Grant going. He wouldn’t get up, then he wouldn’t brush his teeth, and then he wouldn’t get dressed. Everything I asked him to do was met with a resounding
“No!”
Something in me snapped.

I went into his room and yelled at him. He was completely unfazed. I tried grabbing him to put the clothes on his body myself, but he pulled away and ignored me. Here I had just told his little brother, who wasn’t even five
yet, to get dressed, and he hopped right to it. Why was this sevenyearold so unaffected by what I was asking, so uninterested in listening to an adult? Why couldn’t he look me in the eye? I didn’t get it, and I wanted to kill him. I knew that if I put my hands on him again, I’d hurt him.

I stormed downstairs loudly, all the while screaming up to Grant,
“You’d better get dressed, young man!”
My kids have rarely seen me flip out—maybe once or twice in their lives. That morning Gehrig, Gabby, and Garrison were shaking in their boots. Grant just stayed in his room, in his pajamas, playing with his Legos as if this conversation never happened. He was obsessed with Legos.

In the kitchen, I grabbed the phone to call Curt, who was on the road. “I want to hurt him!” I sobbed, when Curt answered.

“You’re just upset,” Curt said.

“No, I mean it. I
really
want to hurt him,” I said.

“You just have to show him who’s boss, Shonda,” Curt suggested. “He needs to respect you.”

Curt wasn’t getting it. He did not understand that there was something going on here that was not about discipline and respect. I felt so frustrated, I threw the phone against the wall. Then I sat down where the phone had fallen and curled up in the corner, bawling.

I have always believed that being a mother was what I was meant to do, but in that moment I wasn’t so sure.

As predicted, it wasn’t long before we were both on meds.

two

Motherhood on Baseball Time

T
O SOME EXTENT
, I
ALWAYS KNEW THAT BEING A MOTHER WAS
a tough job, even though my mother handled it with incredible grace. What I didn’t know was how extra hard motherhood could be when you’re married to a professional athlete who is away eight or nine months of the year. I didn’t realize that my husband’s job would have the power to drastically alter my idyllic vision of being a parent—not to mention confuse things with Grant.

My mother set a great example for me. She relished making childhood fun for my younger brother and me, and always made sure we were well cared for. Even in the hardest of times, there were always three square meals, and you could be sure you were not getting up from that dinner table until you ate all three things on your plate: protein, vegetable, and starch. As I used to tease her, all the colors of the rainbow were represented on our plate.

We had the utmost respect for her, and growing up I always wanted to be just like her. I knew I would get married and have kids of my own, and I
imagined that my kids would look up to me and have the same kind of respect for me that I have for my mom. I’d have a fun family, and since I’d been an athlete my whole life, I was certain that sports would play a big part. I just didn’t know how
big
a role sports would play. Then I met Curt.

It was 1990, and I was just out of college at Towson State University, where I finished my bachelor’s degree after getting an associate’s degree at Essex Community College. My first job out of college was as an associate producer at Home Team Sports, which covered all the Baltimore and Washington area sports teams. My love of sports helped me get the job, and it was a perfect fit. I’d grown up going to games and listening to them on the radio. I was a serious fan, but this job gave me a chance to learn more about baseball than I’d ever imagined.

At the time, Curt was playing for the Orioles. He had started his career in 1986, having been drafted by the Boston Red Sox, but in September of 1988 he was traded to the Orioles. At Home Team Sports, I worked the entire baseball season with the Orioles, but only when the team was at home. To compensate for the gaps and make ends meet, I also had a parttime job at a Foot Locker in a nearby mall, where I’d worked throughout college.

While I was there one day in the offseason, Curt walked into the store. We recognized each other from the ballpark and we talked for a few minutes.

“Some friends and I are going out for a drink tomorrow night,” he said. “Maybe you and some of your friends would like to meet us?”

I hesitated for a moment. I’d never gone out with a ballplayer, and the close overlap between my work life and my personal life gave me pause. I told him I’d talk to my friends and see if they’d be interested. I ended up going to meet him at the pub, and barely an hour into the evening, everyone else disappeared, leaving Curt and me alone for most of the night. It was the perfect opportunity to get to know each other. We talked all night, and ended up playing PopAShot, and I beat him. (He claims he let me win, but we all know no true athlete ever lets anyone win.)

At the end of the night, he asked me for my number. I was a little apprehensive, though, because I didn’t think it would be a good idea to date him. I had been working only a few months at this exciting job that I’d landed right out of college, and I was afraid that dating him would cost me that job.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “My last name is also the name of a Major League Baseball team. If you really want to find me, look it up.” (My maiden name was Brewer.) Sure enough, the next day Curt called my house. He got my cousin, who was also my roommate, on the phone. He knew from our conversation the night before that she loved animals, so he talked her into bringing me to his house to meet his Rottweilers.

“Can I take you to dinner tomorrow night?” he asked, after we’d been at his house awhile.

I said yes, and then called my mom. “A ballplayer asked me out,” I casually told her, without offering details.

The next night, October 7, 1990, we had our first date. He took me to an Italian restaurant. I wound up embarrassing myself, ordering food I couldn’t recognize. At just twentytwo, having grown up with very modest means, I hadn’t been to too many nice restaurants. Curt handled it beautifully. He called the waiter over and helped me order again. He was so kind and sweet, making me feel as if he really wanted to take care of me.

The next day, as my parents were going to work, my mom told my dad, “A young baseball player asked Shonda out.”

“I bet it’s Curt Schilling,” he said. To this day, we still don’t know how he knew. His explanation: Curt just seemed like a great person, and a great match for me, personalitywise.

Curt and I quickly became inseparable. The only problem was that I was notified that I was one class short of completing my degree, and since it was the offseason, Curt didn’t have anything to do. He kept talking me into playing hooky—taking days off, or just missing a class here and there. We’d spend the time hanging out, eating, watching movies. When Christmas
rolled around, we didn’t want to be apart. Instead of going to see his family in Colorado, Curt stayed with me and mine.

My dad’s instincts about Curt and me were right on. Curt and I were both very much in the same place emotionally—both in our early twenties but done with going out to bars and partying. We’d sown our wild oats and were ready for the next stage in our lives, if it was meant to be. Curt’s father had recently passed away, and he was the rock Curt’s family was built on, as well as his best friend. As a result, Curt was ready to settle down, and I was beginning to think that perhaps I was, too.

But then a bomb dropped: Just after New Year’s in early 1991, Roland Hemond, general manager of the Orioles, called Curt to tell him that the Orioles had made a trade. Specifically, Curt was being traded. To the Houston Astros.

As Curt said the words, I burst into tears. Just when I’d felt comfortable enough to let my guard down and enjoy our relationship, he’d been traded, and to a team halfway across the country. It was my first taste of just how difficult it is to be in love with a baseball player.

Curt saw how upset I was. He looked at me and he said, “You have to go with me.” But I couldn’t just up and leave everything, including my job, like that. Curt, however, had a plan. “I’ll leave for spring training,” he said, “and you’ll come visit me there. Then we’ll move to Houston when the season starts.”

The more I thought about it, the more his plan made sense. It didn’t take me long to agree to meet him in Houston in April. I spent the next five weeks—while Curt was at spring training—packing, cleaning out the house he’d been renting in Baltimore, hiring a moving truck, and making living arrangements for us. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was my first taste of what being a baseball wife would entail, my first taste of my “job” for the next twenty years or so, always packing and moving and arranging. (At last count, Curt and I had moved over fifty times during his twenty-plus years in the major leagues. For what it’s worth, we count moving as any time the house gets packed and the dogs come along for more than a month.)

My mom and I flew out to Houston just a couple of days before the team arrived for its first home series. The first night we had to sleep on the floor—our furniture wouldn’t be delivered until the next morning. This was all new to me. Even though I’d had my own apartment, which I shared with my cousin, and I’d done things like arrange to have my utilities hooked up, setting up a house in one weekend was a whole different ball game. I wanted to get it all done for Curt before he came home from that first road trip. I didn’t want him to worry about anything but the season.

Opening day was fun, but the home stand wasn’t long. Before I knew it, Curt was on the road again. My mom had to go, too. She needed to get back to work. I dropped her off at the airport and then stopped at a Target. That’s when it all hit me. At that moment it dawned on me that I had never been farther west than Tennessee in my life. And now here I was in Texas, with no family, no friends, and a whole week before I would see Curt again.

What I didn’t realize back then was that as arduous as this move was, it was training for what I’d face later on. In the future, kids would be added to the slew of things that needed to be transitioned from one location to the next—finding new schools, sorting through doctors, saying good-bye to friends. This would be the rhythm of our life together, and it all would occur with varying levels of support from Curt. Sometimes he’d be there to help, but frequently he wouldn’t.

J
UST A COUPLE OF MONTHS
into the season, Curt was not doing well as a closer. April had started well, but in May things began to unravel. Before we knew it, he’d been sent down to the minor leagues, and of all places, Tucson, Arizona, even
farther
from my home back east. Once more I found myself in a place I knew nothing about, but after one long month in the minors, Curt went back up to the big leagues.

We were just getting back into the swing of things when my dad came to
visit. Little did I know that Curt had asked him for my hand in marriage. It was a hot, humid day (as is every day in Houston) and I was cleaning the house up while Curt kept bothering me to come and see the mail. I would like to say that I was kind and gracious in response to his requests, but I was tired and cranky, and unfortunately we have it all on videotape. When I got to where the pile of mail was on the kitchen table, I sat down and Curt dropped to one knee.

And so, with the season winding down, we got engaged. Curt finished up in middle relief and closing (coming in after the starting pitcher left the game), and my first off-season came as a huge relief. Unfortunately, time moves pretty quickly, and not long after Christmas we packed our dogs and clothes and headed to Orlando for spring training. The six weeks of spring training go fast, too, and before I knew it I was driving the dogs back to Houston with two other wives on the team. Wives usually pack the cars and drive them back from spring training, and this first year I was in a caravan with Patty Biggio and Nancy Caminiti on what would be a two-day drive.