That was important.
But it hadn’t made him present for school events, difficult appointments, college decisions, or the countless ordinary conversations that formed our relationship.
I never asked Jonah whether Marcus sent another message.
If he wanted to discuss it, I trusted him to tell me.
Winter continued.
Clear Path hired its fifteenth employee in January and reached twenty employees by March.
Jonah was increasingly occupied with staffing, financing, and hospital partnerships.
Sometimes he complained that running a technology company left him less time to actually develop technology.
I reminded him that growing businesses came with responsibilities.
He reminded me that he was allowed to complain.
Life continued on its familiar terms.
Then Jonah invited me to an open house at his West Loop office.
A group of medical students would be visiting.
I accepted immediately.
I didn’t know that afternoon would bring me back to the most important lesson I’d learned while raising him.
CHAPTER 4
The Clear Path office was busy when I arrived.
Employees were preparing demonstrations, checking equipment, and discussing projects around desks covered with diagrams.
I remembered the first prototype Jonah and his friends had built in a university maker space.
Now they had an entire team working toward the same goal.
Jonah greeted me, introduced me to several employees, and returned to preparing for the tour.
I stood near the back as medical students gathered around him.
He explained how Clear Path’s technology could accommodate different movement patterns and individual needs.
The students asked thoughtful questions.
Then a young woman raised her hand.
She was a second-year medical student.
“What would you tell parents whose children have just received difficult diagnoses?” she asked. “Parents who feel overwhelmed and don’t know what the future will look like?”
Jonah thought for a moment.
Then he said he’d encourage them to give their children more credit than they initially thought they should.
He acknowledged that raising a child with complex needs wasn’t always easy.
There were real challenges, difficult decisions, and practical limitations.
But children were also discovering what they could do.
When adults intervened too quickly, they sometimes decided a child’s capabilities before that child had an opportunity to explore them.
“And you might be wrong,” Jonah said.
Several students wrote down his answer.
I didn’t need to.
I’d heard that lesson years earlier from his physical therapist.
Back then, I’d been exhausted and frightened, trying to anticipate every obstacle before Jonah encountered it.
Learning to wait, listen, and trust him had changed both our lives.
After the tour, we went into Jonah’s office.
There was a standing desk, a whiteboard covered with diagrams, and a window overlooking Chicago.
We ordered pizza and talked about a new grant application, a possible documentary project, and an upcoming meeting with a Boston hospital system.