After modeling, Mom found other opportunities for me where height was less important. At eighteen, she entered me in the Ohio Junior Miss pageant as Miss Lorain County, and I won—not the crown, but the title of Miss Breck of Ohio, a side competition. But I was most proud of my first place victory in another side competition—a photo-essay contest sponsored by Eastman-Kodak.

I also competed in the Miss Teenage pageant, and the night before the pageant, Mom spotted country singer Glen Campbell at a restaurant where we were eating. She snapped my picture with his arm around me and mailed it to the Journal, Lorain’s local newspaper, where it appeared the following week under the headline, Teenager’s Dream.

My parents polished my life until it was without jagged edges and made few demands on me, letting me spend hours in the yard perfecting cartwheels and back handsprings, or just doing nothing. I had to eat my peas, but not much beyond that except art, ballet and piano lessons. I was a good artist in large part because Dad, who loved the outdoors, taught me to observe details in nature.

On our trips to Florida, I learned that the scrubby, frail-leafed pines of the South were actually an exotic weed, called Australian pines, and the bushier green-gold pines to the north were true pines and called Scotch. Hemlocks, he’d point out, were the majestic ones, with short, flat needles that tapered to a point, making them soft to the touch. When we fished in the ocean, Dad explained the difference between squirrelfish and snapper. Both were red-scaled, but a squirrel fish had oversized, saucer-shaped eyes. Learning the importance of details helped me notice the subtle differences that made Leo stand apart from his peers.

Dad was also a perfectionist, a trait I acquired from him. He built shelves for my doll collections. He’d cut them out of pine and router the edges with a decorative groove and then sand and glaze them. After the last coat of varnish dried, he’d hold one up to the light, tilt it, and run his hand over its satin finish. “See that Jaynie,” he’d say. Not a speck of dust was caught in the glaze, and I admired his handiwork.

Like Dad’s shelves, my projects had to be just perfect. Mom said I was an “easy baby” who slept all the time. As a toddler, I favored order and routine. Mom said I’d pick up nails lying on the floor during a remodeling job and line them up. I straightened my dolls’ clothes and brushed their hair smooth. I was so concerned about matching the side seams of a plaid blazer that I once overlooked a dart and made the jacket too big. If I misspelled a word, I’d throw away the paper and start all over rather than erase.

This legacy of perfection made Leo’s diagnosis even harder to take—it would be impossible to achieve that goal with him. Instead, I suppose I found that same kind of perfection in how I helped him, immersing myself in his therapy until his progress matched my ideal.

At first, Leo’s disorder made me feel ashamed; I felt that (he and) I would be rejected by others if he weren’t normal. I hoped for the day when there wouldn’t be any more therapy, and he’d be fairly similar to Lucas but with a few quirks that wouldn’t make him stand out. The one thing I never anticipated was that he would be cured. I thought there would be lingering issues; I just didn’t know what they might be.