An Uncomplicated Life (29 page)

“She doesn’t understand me,” Jillian said of the professor later, at home. She seemed a little overwhelmed. “I don’t know anyone,” she said.

“It was your first day, sweets,” I said. “Everybody feels a little weird their first day of college.” I meant what I said. I wasn’t sure I believed it in Jillian’s case. Her college experience would be as new to me as it was to her.

Jillian spent a few hours after that writing manically in her journal. It was a written version of the Jillian Daugherty Show. There were names of people she met, what her professors said, how she navigated successfully from classroom to Student Union, back to classroom. And this, the last sentence of the entry: “My parents are proud of their college girl.”

We were just getting warmed up.

Calling what was happening to Jillian a “college experience” explains everything and nothing. No two are quite alike. When someone says he had a good experience in college, I picture fraternity debauchery and Southern Comfort at football games. Kerry laments that part of my existence. “I wouldn’t have liked you when you were in college,” she says.

Where I went to school, it was not an expellable offense to set ablaze a rival frat’s grand piano and roll it down the center of the street. I attended an all-male college surrounded by five women’s colleges, each conveniently located within an hour’s
drive. We misbehaved at our leisure on weekdays. On weekends, we took it seriously.

Kerry went to school to get her degree. She was on the dance team. She was a straight-arrow student. I wouldn’t have liked her either when she was in college.

We convened on the back deck after Jillian’s first day to share our impressions. I asked Kerry what she wanted Jillian to take from NKU. She said “a typical college experience.”

I said if she got anywhere near a fraternity house, I would lock her in her room for four years straight.

“I want her to take academic classes,” Kerry corrected. “I want her walking the campus, being part of a community.”

We could have driven Jillian to class and killed time until she finished, then picked her up. Instead, we dropped her off in time for her 10:00 a.m. class and picked her up late in the afternoon. We encouraged her to discover the campus. To fill the in-between hours, Jillian had to be engaged and resourceful.

She ate lunch in the Student Union, often going through the buffet line. She found a place with wireless and used her laptop to surf the Net. She took gym clothes and worked out in the Health Center. She needed to mind the time, to be where she needed to be. This is what Kerry meant by a “college experience.” Jillian was getting her wings. We wanted her to fly as far as she could.

Some parents were incredulous that we would set Jillian free that way. They said we were setting her up to fail. They missed the point. We did want Jillian to fail.

Not entirely, of course. Every day of that first year I worried that Jillian would become lost and confused and scared.
I worried that someone on campus would take advantage of her kindness and innocence. Jillian believes everyone is good. That’s nice, in a conceptual kind of way, but scary on a wide-open campus of 13,000 students.

But everyday, small-scale failure was okay.

“That’s how we learn,” Kerry said that first day. “I hope Jillian gets lost. I want her to get lost. I want things to go wrong. Then I want her to figure them out and make them right.”

We weren’t raising Jillian to stay with us. We were raising her to leave. Same as her brother. This was the next step.

It turns out she did get lost. Missy Jones would e-mail Kerry occasionally to say that Jillian was in the wrong building. Missy offered to appoint a student to walk Jillian to class, but we said no. Jillian had a cell phone and a campus full of peers. She had her index cards. She could call someone or ask for help. She can cope. That’s part of why she’s there.

And so she did. Soon enough, Jillian stopped getting lost. She never called Kerry or me for help. She had no escorts. She started enjoying her time on campus and away from us. She had her favorite places. She ate lunch with Ryan, she ran on the treadmill at the Health Center. She asked to be picked up later in the day. “I love my school,” she said daily.

It changed her in other ways too. Jillian became more independent, which meant she needed us less. Her developmental delays had extended to her attitude. The Parents Are Gross era that most kids experience in intermediate school and high school came on for Jillian as a college student. “How was your day?” would be answered with “Good.”

“What did you do? Tell me everything,” I might say. To
which Jillian would respond, “Dad, I’m a college student now. I do lots of things.”

Well, okay. We were put off by her responses but pleased at the independence they described.

Jillian knows she isn’t like everyone else. But at school, she feels she is. She’s part of the universal to-and-from, the easy here-and-there that defines college life. She has a backpack, an iPod and a Mac. She has a purse and an All-Card for student activities and a key card that gets her into the gym. She uses the same books everyone else does. She’s a manager on the basketball team, too, a duty that occupies two hours a day, five days a week, not including games.

There was another piece to the independence puzzle though. Jillian needed to learn to get from A to B without us. NKU was essentially a commuter school. Its typical students drove or took the bus to campus. Jillian had to learn to use public transportation.

Transportation is freedom. Freedom is independence. Independence is what we’re working toward here. If Jillian and Ryan could manage public transportation, they could get places on their own. It would let them get to the grocery store, the mall, the movies—and eventually from their own apartment to the essentials and the pleasures of the day to day.

We started this next grand experiment the second semester of Jillian’s second year at NKU. Initially, the plan was for Jillian to take the bus to NKU only. We’d pick her up after school. In the mornings, I would drive Jillian to the Metro stop closest to our house, getting her there in time to catch an
8:05 a.m. bus to downtown Cincinnati. From there, she would transfer to another bus that would get her to school.

Step two involved the reverse: NKU to home.

First, we made a dry run. I met Jillian and Ryan on campus on a blustery day in January.

The Number 11 TANK (Transportation Authority of Northern Kentucky) bus leaves the NKU campus at 2:01 p.m. “Not 2:00,” I tell Ryan and Jillian. “Not 2:02.” The inference was, Be on time. Not as freighted with worldly concerns as the rest of us, Ryan and Jillian tend to float. They don’t take straight lines to places. They prefer the winding road. The scenery’s better.

“If you’re late, the bus leaves without you.”

“Yes, sir,” Ryan says.

This was a big day in their lives. It was heavy with symbolism. Get up in the morning, get on the bus. Go to work. Produce. Enter the land of the meaningful. Feel you belong and act on the feeling. Get on the bus.

I tell Jillian and Ryan to be at the bus stop at 1:50 p.m. They get there at 1:50 p.m., fresh from class, holding hands, smiling, ready. They want to know everything. Will it stop right here? Do I need money? How do I know when I’m finished? That’s what Jillian asked: “How do I know when I’m finished?”

“Listen to me,” I say.

“Yes, sir,” Ryan says.

Jillian has a fistful of bus schedules and her student ID that will allow her to ride for free on the first leg of the journey, the eight miles from NKU to downtown Cincinnati. For the second leg, which will cost $2.65, she has packed a Zip-Loc sandwich bag full of quarters. The bag must hold 40 quarters.

I tell Ryan the first bus is free with his ID card. “I have this,” he says, fishing through his wallet. He pulls out a card that is good for a free bowl of soup. “Keep looking,” I say.

I will ride with them. I will tell them when to get off the first bus and where to get on and off the second bus. I’ll tell them what it costs. I’ll help them to slide the dollar bills into the money box: “Flat. President Washington’s head pointing this way, like the diagram.”

“See?”

“Yes, sir.”

I will show them the marquee attached to the ceiling at the front of the bus. It runs continuously, a stream of information, like a sports crawl across the bottom of an ESPN channel: Bus name, bus destination, time of day. I will tell them when the bus is scheduled to arrive at its destination. “Look at the time up there,” I say to them. “When that time gets close to the time you’re supposed to get off, start paying attention.”

They nod.

I show Ryan the cord above his head. “You pull that when you want to get off,” I say.

“Got it,” he says.

The first bus arrives precisely at 2:01 p.m. “See?” I say. “Right on time. You guys need to be prompt when you take the bus. Do you know what prompt means?”

“I think so,” Jillian says. “What?”

“It means be here exactly when you’re supposed to be,” I say.

“Exactly,” says Jillian.

Ryan says, “Yes, sir.”

The inside of a city bus isn’t the likeliest place to discover
wonder or contentment. It’s all about poker faces and gum beneath the seats. Unless you are Jillian and Ryan, who find wonder in just about everything. The bus moves slowly, circuitously and with frequent stops. Ryan and Jillian can relate. Ryan reads aloud the sign that hangs above the seats closest to the doors: “Please allow seniors and persons with disabilities to use these seats when requested.”

“You guys wanna move up there?” I ask.

“I’m comfy here,” Jillian says.

They’ve been together a lifetime, or so it seems. They are people who enjoy each other’s company and have for more than five years. I know adults married five years who can’t stand the sight of each other. We all do. Jillian and Ryan are an old married couple. I’m comfy here, she says.

The bus passes a dance studio. Jillian notices the sign above the studio door. “I think we should do ballroom dancing again,” she announces. They’d taken a class together a few years earlier, a Christmas present to each other.

“I do not want to do ballroom dancing,” Ryan says. It’s midday. The bus is not crowded: A couple of students, a day laborer in gray overalls, released from his morning shift. Jillian, Ryan and me.

“I love your daughter, and I will always take care of her,” Ryan says, just because the thought occurred.

“I’m happy about that,” I say.

The bus chugs haltingly, stop to stop. It’s not the most efficient method of traveling, but it does give Ryan time to be social. Passengers come and go. Ryan makes them feel important. “Have a good day, sir,” he says to the guy in the overalls. The man looks up, a little wide-eyed. Maybe no one ever
wished him well on the bus before. “Bless you,” Ryan says.

The rocking and swaying is making him drowsy. “You can’t fall asleep,” I tell Ryan.

“We can’t?”

“Nope. You could sleep right through your stop.”

I suggest that one person could sleep, so long as the other is awake. Jillian and Ryan think that’s a good idea. Especially Ryan. “Wake me up, honey,” he says.

Everything is new. When he’s awake, Ryan reads every word on the inside of the bus. He hears the computerized voice announce upcoming stops. “Who’s talking?” he wonders. Jillian checks out the storefronts. The pizza joints, the dance studio, the restaurants and the sports bars, especially the sports bars, with their neon signs in the windows.

“Ryan, you can get a beer there,” Jillian says.

“Cool,” says Ryan.

The TANK bus crosses the Ohio River and moves on into downtown Cincinnati. The nest of streets thickens, there are more people, and the pace speeds exponentially. Jillian and Ryan’s eyes get a little bigger. They’re suburban kids.

“This is downtown Cincinnati?” Jillian asks.

“Yes.”

“Where your office is?”

“Yes.” Well, sort of. I work at home or at the ballpark or arena. My newspaper building is downtown.

Ryan knows we’re getting close. He reaches his arm toward the stop cord. “You don’t want to pull that yet,” I say.

“When?”

“I’ll tell you.”

“Yes, sir.”

The bus nears Fourth and Main, their stop. I tell Ryan to pull the cord. We get out, but not where I think we’re supposed to. I had assumed the bus would stop at the large downtown terminal. Instead, it stops a block south. We have 12 minutes to find the stop for the Number 3X bus, the one to Kenwood.

I’m confused. The schedule says the 3X picks up at Fourth and Main, right where the 11 bus left us off. But the sign there makes no mention of the 3X bus. We walk up the block, to the left, toward the terminal.

This is where I should mention that I am the one who’s lost. The leader of the pack, the adult, the guide: Lost. Jillian and Ryan are following me, and I have no idea what I’m doing.

“Hang on a minute,” I say.

Oh. It also might be worth noting that when we boarded the bus at NKU, I had to borrow money from my daughter. I had only a $10 bill; the fare was $1.75. Exact change only, please.

When we boarded the second bus, I had to borrow more. I guess I needed my own Zip-Loc bag of quarters. Also, in the midst of note taking about this trip, my pen ran out of ink. What is it we say about people who have Down syndrome and people who don’t? We’re more alike than different?

“Jills, you got a pen I can borrow?” I ask.

She does. We’re only as good as the way we treat each other. I wouldn’t have been able to ride the bus or write what I saw. Not without my responsible, prepared and forward-thinking kid. The one with Down syndrome.

We trudge on, toward the terminal on Fifth Street. It is January. A light rain falls in the 40-degree bluster. We get to
the big terminal, three lanes across, several shelters. There are signs for seemingly every bus route in and around Cincinnati. I read every one of them. I ask Jillian and Ryan to do the same. There is no 3X bus to Kenwood. There is a kiosk at one end of the terminal. I ask the man inside about the 3X bus.

“Sixth Street, a block up,” he says.