LOST
BOY
her Max can sit through a cartoon. Maybe one day, Max could
talk, instead of uttering a limited range of sounds like “swee”
(swing) and “Maaaah” (Max).
Maybe he’ll be able to show
people what he wants, instead of
running around a room, shrieking, his desires anyone’s guess.
When Maya really lets her imagination run wild, she pictures Max
as an independent adult. Employed
as a grocery bagger. Or a mail sorter. “The best scenario is that he
learns how to learn,” Maya says.
She struggles to reconcile her
love for her son with her dismay for his situation. “I love my
son so much,” she says. But, she
adds, “I didn’t sign up to be a
parent of a child who will remain
a child until I die.”
On a sunny Thursday in February, Max’s parents sat on their
couch in D.C.’s Capitol Hill neighborhood to tell Max’s story. Their
living room is a flurry of toys —
dolls, a mini-stroller and equipment one might expect to see at
the Cirque du Soleil. Hanging
down from the ceiling is a spinning red-and-white fabric enclosure that looks like a cocoon;
a monkey bar with two yellow
rings to hold; and a long piece of
HUFFINGTON
01.12.14
purple fabric, a swing. Max, a balletic child, is calmed by spinning,
swinging and jumping, so these
things are everywhere: a swing
in the parents’ bedroom, a small
trampoline in Max’s room. Every
small movement in the house is
picked up by an extensive intercom system. “If it’s too quiet,”
Greg says, “we worry.”
When Maya really lets
her imagination run wild,
she pictures Max as
an independent adult.
Employed as a grocery
bagger. Or a mail sorter.
Greg, a 51-year-old realtor,
and Maya, a 35-year-old photographer, met in Denver in the
fall of 2004 and married about
two years later. She gave birth to
Max, their first child, in November 2007, under normal circumstances. Max was late to a few
milestones, like walking. So at
18 months, he was examined by
a doctor from Early Stages, D.C.
Public Schools’ diagnostic center.
After that, the city sent thirdparty contractors — speech, physical and occupational therapists
— to visit Greg and Maya’s yellow
townhouse to work with Max on