“No” was Charlie’s not unsurprising response—-with his eyebrows (no other word describes it) furrowed—-when I told him we’d have to drive the bluish Mercury Milan parked across the condo parking lot. Jim had rented it late Thursday night at Newark airport and I’m sure Charlie had paid it no attention when he got on the bus Friday morning. Now he was standing beside the black car, whose right rear tire was a small spare with a yellow sticker and looking forlorn. I tried to find words to explain: “It has a flat tire—the tire’s broken” (what in the world was I saying? “broken tire” sounds like those ragged black strips from a semi’s recap tires strewn on the shoulder of the Interstate). “Remember how we got stuck in the mall parking lot yesterday and the man came and pumped the back of the car up?” “We actually need to get ALL new tires…..”

I tried to avoid saying that the car itself was “broken” as that word has difficult associations for Charlie. There was a time when he ripped, or tried to rip, his favorite photos and then any photo in half, and then cried. I spent a lot of time taping the photos back up and he’d be happy for awhile, and then tear them up again. I certainly didn’t want him to think we’d never use the black car again and tried to offer cheerful reasons for why the rental car would be fun. (For one thing, it’s smaller than our black car, not a bad thing in these times of big ol’ dream cars being put out to pasture, so more driving to more places is theoretically possible.)

I figured that Charlie would be hesitant about the rental car. Since we said good bye to the green car last January, it’s been black car full time and we spend a good amount of time in the car (which often feels like an extension of our condo). The black car is another station wagon and I suspect that Charlie’s used to being able to see the contents of the trunk all the way out the back window, vs. what a mid-sized sedan offers. Throw in that rental car smell and you’ve got something very unfamiliar, for a boy who needs a goodly amount of routine and repetition (yes, his teacher was back—didn’t get jury duty—and yes, he had a better day).

Charlie did eventually get into the blue rental car. Despite the heat, he pulled on his blue hooded sweatshirt and clamped his hands over his head as we drove into Jersey City. We were moving smartly until we went up the on ramp to the Pulaski Skyway. Charlie always looks around with interest as we drive it, as (to his right and left) are spectacular views of lots filled with cars just shipped in, containers stacked into pyramid-like structures, power plant smoke stacks, the Passaic and then the Hackensack Rivers, a correctional facility. If you’re driving east, straight ahead is the Manhattan skyline with the Empire State Building at the center. If you’re driving west, this is what it’s like.

Late afternoon on Friday we got a good long look at that view. The Skyway has no shoulder and two lanes going each way, separated by a concrete divider, and it’s 3 1/2 miles long. So if you can get into an accident, you just have to stay where you are because, aside from thin air, there’s no place to go. As drove up, the westbound lanes were suddenly empty with a lone police car and one black sedan. We went further—Charlie leaning on the windowsill, groggy (he’d had a fabulous swim, with the pool all to himself and me)—and saw cars with more than dents, a tow truck, more police, a firetruck. And then, endless lines of cars stopped and people standing around and talking on their cell phones, talking to each other, and leaning on the Skyway’s steel sides and taking in the view from a place where one normally only drives at 70 mph. There was a certain festive air to the whole scene.

We drove very carefully down our exit ramp at Broadway to Routes 1 & 9 in Jersey City. Carefully, because, once a driver on the on-ramp realized that traffic was at a standstill on the skyway, he or she tried to turn around on the narrow 2-lane ramp and (consequently) narrowly missing us cars going down.

Beneath his hood, Charlie’s eyes were wide open at such strange sights: People standing on the Skyway and going down the up-ramp (if you can’t drive, might as well get out and admire the Meadowlands below and Manhattan to the east).

The rest of the evening was pleasant, weather-wise and otherwise. We took the PATH train and subway in; met Jim; ate a lot of dinner; had dessert and left crumbs all over the carpet in Jim’s office. We took the subway and PATH home, and then drove over the Skyway fast, all traces of the accident, and the lines of onlookers, gone.

I was talking to two of my students yesterday about classes for next year, their majors, scholarships and fellowships. Both had looked at websites for scholarships, and read the biographies of the winners, of college students who, while maintaining the highest GPAs, playing varsity sports, and conducting research in molecular biology, create medical clinics in foreign countries, develop plans for peace between various warring nations, play first violin in the orchestra, write poetry, serve as the editor for the campus newspaper and win the prize for best thesis……

“How does anyone do all that, Dr. Chew?” my students asked me, pointing out that they could hardly go for a year to an “underdeveloped nation” and teach English in an orphanage: Most of my students have to work—to pay for college, to help out their families. They set up their schedules so they are able take care of younger relatives, or elderly grandparents, while their parents work the graveyard shift. If they go abroad, they have to work more to pay for it. Those who have gone to various places around the globe have deeply benefited from the experience. And yet, when I think of college students doing work to make a difference, it’s the many young women (mostly) and young men who have chosen to spend time with Charlie and autistic kids who I think about first.

There’s Charlie’s teacher. She had come over for a home visit on Wednesday and we talked about setting up an afterschool schedule for Charlie incorporating the use of his Language Master to prompt his speech. Charlie was running up and down the hallway—-thumping all over the wooden floor—out of excitement at his teacher’s visit and, in part to calm him, I had him practice cello, and his teacher offered suggestions and encouragement.

There’s Charlie’s speech therapist whom we’ve known for five years and who is among the very (very few) people who I feel completely at ease for him to be with for long periods of time. After meeting Charlie’s bus, I had to go back to work to hear honors students defend their senior theses. I drove off with Charlie watching from the sidewalk beside the speech therapist, whom he matches now in height. “Take your time, don’t rush,” she assured me.

My drive back to Jersey City was slowed by a bad accident—-part of a tractor-trailer had fallen across three lanes of traffic in the local lane side of highway 78 and cars, yellow schoolbuses, and tractor trailers were crossing the concrete median and driving on the shoulder thisclose to my car in the express lane—-and by another big rig carrying an OVERSIZED LOAD that had, very mistakenly, gone up the entrance ramp of the no-trucks-allowed Pulaski Skyway. Nonetheless, I was just in time to hear the third student speak about the change to a market economy in Bulgaria and the resulting economic crisis. He was eloquent and passionate: This student is from Bulgaria on a full scholarship and, while far from home, it was clear that his research was motivated by something deeply personal.

The roads were clear as I drove west towards home. Charlie was smiling and called out “get socks!” and “bye, see you next time” to his therapist. He had gone for a ride on his scooter, did speech exercises, worked puzzles on the floor and clicked through more on his computer, played some board games; whatever the therapist had requested, Charlie had done, and happily.While Charlie packed his backpack and put a Capri Sun in his lunchbox, I graded a stack of quizzes. I was pulling on my coat so we could stop by the pharmacy when the thought hit me: I had forgotten to ask the therapist to return the housekey I had given her.

I quickly called her cell. “Oh, I left it right by the door, along with the garage door opener,” she said. And there indeed was the key.

What would I do without her, or Charlie’s teacher, or Jackie who works in my office and can decipher my handwritten notes to her……… What would I do without their help, and Charlie’s?

As I drove up the hill towards the pharmacy with Charlie singing in the backseat , I thought about how the work that we do for those close by us—for those who are part of our daily lives, close to heart if not to home—how that’s the work, the service, the achievements that makes a real difference to the world, and how it’s work that lasts and grows.

Jonathan Anderson is 9 years old and has Asperger Syndrome—-when his mother, Marion Anderson, blacked out while driving on the highway, he avoided a crash by grabbing the steering wheel, pulling on the handbrake, and driving the car across three lanes of rush-hour traffic at Plympton, Devon, the January 31st Daily Mail reports. Jonathan and his mother were both uninjured: “‘It was scary because I’ve never driven a car before,’” he was quoted as saying. Sounds like he knew what to do, and at the right time—bravo.