The Best Kind of Different: Our Family's Journey With Asperger's Syndrome Read Online Free PDF Page B

and at twentyseven I was suddenly one of the older wives. Curt and I were incredibly happy with where we were in our lives, and despite the hectic paceof everything, we both felt very ready for parenthood. Curt wanted it more than anything, especially since he was the last living male Schilling after his father died. He wanted an heir, and I would finally get the chance to be a great mother, just like my mom had been.
    And that was how it happened that one minute we were a young baseball player and his wife, constantly on the go, and the next we were a family—constantly on the go.
    I went into labor for the first time on the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend in 1995. After a few polite attempts to get Curt to come downstairs, I finally went to the loft where he was on the computer and shouted at him, “I’m in #$@&ing labor!” He went from the chair to the bottom of the stairs, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t touch even one step on the way down.
    Here was a guy who could confidently pitch in front of a hundred million people in fifty different countries without losing his nerve. But childbirth rattled him something fierce. He had to have my dad drive us to the hospital.
    The next day, we gave birth to our first son. Inspired by the ALS patients we had come to know and care so much about, we named our son Gehrig Clifford Schilling. It was our way of honoring them for their courage and the life lessons they’d taught us. Lou Gehrig had an untimely death. Our little boy would bring life to the name Gehrig.
    From the start, Gehrig was relatively easygoing as a baby and slept well, which made it convenient to tote him around from spring training to home to anywhere else we needed to go. He was adaptable, which was a good thing, because our life in baseball was always in flux and I felt totally discombobulated all the time. I found it difficult to keep track of where we were supposed to be and when, with everything I needed for my little baby. It took me four months just to get to the point where I was able to take a shower, feed him, and get to the ballpark in a reasonable amount of time.
    Naturally we had Gehrig playing baseball from the time he could stand relatively steadily. He always enjoyed it, and also loved watching his dad play.From a very early age, Gehrig was comfortable in our unusual world, I suppose partly because he was always so outgoing, and also because he knew how to act years beyond his age. He could easily converse with both kids and adults. If we took him into the clubhouse or to an ALS event, he’d behave himself remarkably and seem very mature, talking graciously to grownups when they stopped to ask him questions. He acted like he was made for this life. In my mind, he became the standard of how kids were supposed to behave in these situations. It was a standard that would complicate things later as I tried to understand Grant.
    When I became pregnant with Gabby, Gehrig loved the idea of becoming a big brother. He was excited from the minute we told him I was pregnant. My water broke while Curt was on the road playing in Chicago, and eight hours later, on May 22, 1997, I gave birth to a little girl. Curt arrived just in time.
    He couldn’t hang around the hospital long, though. He was pitching that day. He had a few hours to go home, check on Gehrig, and grab a couple of hours’ sleep before heading to the ballpark. It didn’t go so well for him that day; he couldn’t make it out of the second inning. All the papers had headlines such as, “Oh Baby. Schilling Can’t Deliver. “
    We named the baby Gabriella Patricia. She was our second—ultimately of four—to have a name beginning with G . No, it wasn’t our favorite letter of the alphabet. We named her that because, at the time, Gabriella Sabatini was a successful tennis player, and we thought she was just the embodiment of what we wanted our daughter to be—athletic, smart, attractive, kind, and selfassured. Every teacher Gabriella