The Giving Quilt (26 page)

She had observed enough meetings through the years to know how Noah ran things, and she saw no reason to fix what wasn't broken. For the first few weeks, she guided the seven students through a series of team-building exercises that gave them opportunities to solve puzzles together—and to learn to speak up as well as to listen to their teammates, and to resolve the disputes that inevitably arose. The more experienced team members quickly remembered the skills they had learned in years past, and the newer, younger members followed their lead. Other parents pitched in to help when and how they could, and by early November, Jocelyn thought they were ready to choose one of the five official challenges.

After careful consideration and debate, the students chose a challenge entitled Direct Delivery, a whimsical name that belied its difficulty. Teams were instructed to design and build equipment to deliver objects by mechanical means from a start zone; over an opaque barrier ten feet long, two feet wide, and six feet high; to a set of targets located on a grid in a “landing zone” on the other side. The team would make their own targets, which could be either one foot square or two feet square; larger targets would be easier to hit, but smaller targets were worth more points. The team would also need to develop a “targeting system,” a method to aim the delivery equipment at the targets on the other side of the barrier. The team would also supply the objects, which were required to be “items with a pliable cover that contain some type of loose fill material.” The description took the team quite some time to decipher until a soccer player, with a sudden burst of insight, said, “Oh, I know. Something like a hacky sack.” The teammates eventually decided that any sort of beanbag would do, even something they made themselves.

At the tournament, one member of the team would be responsible for placing the targets in the “landing zone” behind the barrier according to a grid-based diagram provided by the judges at the start of the presentation. After arranging the targets, that teammate would have to stand aside, forbidden to help aim the delivery system or to tell the other members where the targets were. Last of all, while attempting to deliver as many objects as possible to the targets, the team had to perform an original skit tying all the elements together and explaining their solution to the problem—all within eight minutes.

In Jocelyn's opinion, they had chosen the most interesting and the most difficult of the five challenges offered that year.

Some of the kids wanted to jump right in and begin designing their targets, but Jocelyn encouraged them to think of possible delivery systems first. The following week, she arranged for the team to meet after school in the gym, where she and another parent stacked folded gymnastic mats in a rough approximation of the barrier they would face in the tournament. She also taped pieces of paper together to show the size of both the large and small targets. Standing on the start-zone side of the barrier, she said, “You have to get your objects from here”—she strode to the barrier and held her hand up, measuring its height—“over this”—next she walked behind the barrier and pointed to the two paper targets on the floor—“so that they land directly on top of the targets, somewhere around here.”

The size of the barrier and the distance their objects had to travel gave the students pause, and Jocelyn could almost see the wheels turning in their minds as they studied the course.

“Can't we just throw the beanbags over the wall?” asked one sixth-grade boy.

Tashia, an eighth-grade veteran of two previous tournaments and Anisa's best friend, shook her head. “It says in the rules that the delivery has to be by mechanical means.”

“We could make a robot arm to throw them. That would be mechanical,” an eighth-grade boy named Niko ventured, and the conversation took off from there. A slingshot, a beanbag-hurling cannon, a magnet on the end of a fishing line, a trampoline—the ideas came fast and furious. Rahma scrambled to write them all down, and when the barrage of suggestions slowed, she wondered aloud how they could aim at targets they couldn't see.

“We could make one of those things like on a submarine,” another boy said. “Or maybe even two or three of them.”

“A periscope?” said Anisa.

“Yeah, that's it. A periscope.”

As the team began to discuss how to build a periscope, Jocelyn exchanged proud, amused glances with the other parents. It was always a joy to see the children coming up with solutions on their own, however implausible or outlandish, rather than looking to adults for ideas they could simply parrot back.

By the end of that meeting, the teammates had settled upon a combination of periscopes and mirrors placed on the floor for their targeting system, but a delivery method and a theme for their skit eluded them—not only that day but the next meeting and the one after that, which they devoted to discussions and building periscopes out of cardboard boxes and inexpensive mirrors from the dollar store. Jocelyn resisted the urge to suggest options. The whole point was for the students to use their imaginations to solve the problem, and if she stepped in with her own solutions, she would defeat the entire purpose of the program. That principle was enough to restrain her, but even if it hadn't, her word would have. She and all the other parents had been required to sign a pledge that they would not interfere and that the work would be entirely the students' own. The students had signed a similar pledge attesting to the team's independence.

One evening nearly three weeks after they had chosen their challenge, Jocelyn was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher after supper when Anisa came running in carrying a heavy book. “Mom,” she exclaimed, setting the book open on the counter and tapping a page. “I've got it! I know what we should do!”

“What is it, baby girl?” Jocelyn recognized the book as the world history text used in the eighth grade—battered and badly in need of replacement. The department chair had assured the history faculty that they were next in line for updated editions, just as soon as the school district could fit new books into the budget.

“We could build a catapult,” Anisa said. “Just like the siege engines used in medieval times.”

Jocelyn drew closer, studying the illustration. “That could work.”

The commotion brought Rahma running downstairs, and after Anisa described her idea, the two sisters ran off to the computer in the family room to look up catapults on the Internet. They found illustrations and plans on a variety of websites, including a Cub Scouts activities page and something from the Society for Creative Anachronism. When Anisa presented her solution at the next team meeting, it was chosen by an enthusiastic and unanimous show of hands.

“But that's what I said the day we chose our challenge and you all laughed,” Niko protested, grinning. “Remember? I said we should build a mechanical robot arm to throw things.”

Everyone laughed, but in a way, he was right.

The father of another team member was a carpenter, and he allowed the team to use his basement workshop—with adult supervision—to begin designing and building their catapult. “Sometimes I just want to pick up the screwdriver and say, ‘No, do it this way,' you know?” Isaiah confided to Jocelyn when the children were too busy to overhear. “It's hard to keep from stepping in and solving the problem for them.”

Jocelyn knew exactly what he meant. The team still hadn't come up with a theme for their skit, whereas Jocelyn thought of a new idea every other day without even trying. On more than one occasion, she forced herself to leave the room during their brainstorming sessions rather than blurt out her own ideas. She had never appreciated how difficult it had been for Noah not to do the children's work for them. “It's not about winning,” Noah had said once, a remarkable admission from a born competitor. “It's about the process. It's about proving I trust them by letting them make their own mistakes—and their own successes.”

Jocelyn had come to truly understand what he had meant.

A week later, she was delighted that she had not given in to the temptation to influence the skit, because the students came up with a brilliant idea on their own.

Niko wanted to attend the Air Force Academy and become an astronaut when he grew up, and whenever an article about NASA or astronomy appeared in the newspaper, his mother would circle it in pencil and leave it by his cereal bowl at breakfast. One evening, he came to the meeting at the Ames residence triumphantly clutching a rolled-up newspaper, just as Jocelyn had seen many a newly minted graduate hold a hard-won diploma. “I've got it,” he declared, shrugging off his coat inside the Ames's front door and tugging off his shoes. “This is our skit. Right here. It's genius.”

Anisa, who had something of a love-hate relationship with her closest academic rival, folded her arms over her chest and regarded him skeptically. “Genius, huh?”

Niko grinned back. As far as he was concerned, hate hadn't figured in the equation regarding Anisa since the fifth grade. “Pure genius. You'll wish you'd thought of it first.”

Jocelyn was as curious as her daughters to hear Niko's idea, but he refused to show them the newspaper until the rest of the team arrived. Only then did he read aloud an article about NASA's plans to launch a new rover to search for water on Mars. Astrogeologists had determined that craters in certain regions offered the greatest likelihood of finding ice on the planet's surface, so mission specialists were hoping to land the rover safely near one of those promising craters.

“Our catapult can be the rocket launching the rovers into space,” Niko said.

“But they're sending only one rover,” said Rahma. “We want to launch as many beanbags as we can so we can get more points.”

“That's in real life. Our skit can be fiction.” Niko turned to Jocelyn. “Can't it?”

Fortunately, team managers were permitted to answer technical questions of this sort. “They don't specify that it has to be fiction or nonfiction. And you know the rule—if the requirements don't expressly forbid something, it's allowed.”

“Our targets can be craters,” Tashia said. “We can make them out of paper bags, you know, like grocery bags. We can crumple them up to make them look like rocky ground and roll down the tops and kind of mold them into a circle.”

The rest of the team chimed in their agreement.

“What about the barrier?” asked another member. “If the catapult's supposed to be a rocket on Earth, and the landing zone is the surface of Mars, what's the barrier going to be?”

Niko hesitated. “I guess . . . it could be a mountain range on Mars.”

“We don't have to be so literal,” Anisa said. “The barrier can represent . . . the depths of space. That's a real challenge the NASA scientists have to deal with, right? They can't really look directly at their targets when they launch that rocket. They have to use their computers and stuff to figure out where things are.”

“Maybe we could use a computer to find
our
targets,” burst out one of the sixth graders.

“I'm afraid that would be well over your budget,” said Jocelyn.

“Besides, we already made the periscopes,” Rahma pointed out.

“Niko, I hate to admit this,” said Anisa, her smile indicating otherwise, “but you're right. Your idea is genius.”

Niko puffed out his chest. “And
I'm
a genius.”

“I wouldn't go that far.”

Everyone laughed, and then everyone began talking at once, throwing out ideas for characters and costumes and punch lines and plot twists. Jocelyn stood back and watched them proudly, her gaze lingering on her daughters—especially Rahma, who had waited impatiently for years to join Imagination Quest and was clearly enjoying every moment, especially moments like this one, when everyone in the room felt their ideas and plans snapping into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, each new addition revealing more of the whole and leading to even better discoveries.

Her heart ached with longing for Noah to be there to watch it unfold.

Over the next few weeks, the team split up into three groups to concentrate on the most important elements of their solution: building the catapult and making the targets, writing the skit, and organizing props and costumes. Several members belonged to more than one group, which helped the team complete the work more quickly and communicate more efficiently. They were obliged to take two weeks off for the holidays and winter break, but as soon as school resumed in January, they threw themselves into their work even more diligently. March had seemed so far away when they had held their first meeting in September, but the start of the New Year brought with it a greater sense of urgency.

The students finished their skit, assigned roles, learned their lines, rehearsed, critiqued, and rewrote. They completed the catapult, tested it, and tinkered with the design to improve its accuracy. They practiced with the homemade periscopes and the pile of folded gym mats and figured out where to place the mirrors on the floor and how to prop them up so they would reveal as much of the landing zone as possible. All this the students did in addition to their usual class work, homework, sports, music, and responsibilities at home and in church and within the neighborhood.

January sped by, with February following swiftly after. Two weeks before the tournament, Jocelyn received their official team T-shirts from the Imagination Quest national headquarters, the cost of which was included in their registration fees. Although every team's shirt bore the Imagination Quest logo and the year, teams were allowed to choose their own colors. As Jocelyn distributed the blue shirts with orange lettering to the team—and to those parents, including herself, who had purchased adult sizes for themselves—she thought of the tribute quilt Noah's coaching staff had made from team uniforms and track meet T-shirts. Perhaps, if she continued to coach the WMS Imagination Quest team, someday she would accumulate enough T-shirts to make a quilt—if she ever found time to learn how.