On Quest for a Cure, Healing Happened

Among the many surprising things we discover in “Now I See the Moon: A Mother, a Son, a Miracle” by Elaine Hall with Elizabeth Kaye (HarperStudio, $19.99) is that its author once played the role of Oscar the Grouch for a touring company of “Sesame Street.” It’s a surprise because the last word that we might think to use to describe her is “grouch.”

Rather, Elaine Hall is a profoundly gifted woman who was forced to reinvent herself after she adopted a toddler from a Russian orphanage. Her son, Neal, turned out to be severely autistic, and Hall drew on unsuspected resources of courage and creativity to cope with the challenge. From a lively job as an A-list acting coach and a marriage “that seemed like an extended Saturday-night date,” she suddenly found herself struggling with the dire problems that confront every parent of an autistic child.

Today, she is the director of The Miracle Project, a theater and film program for children with autism that was the subject an award-winning HBO documentary titled “Autism: The Musical,” and she leads a bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah program for children with special needs. Thanks to her celebrity, she is an international role model for parents who struggle with the same tough circumstances that she has confronted over the last decade or so. And yet she makes a startling disclosure in her newly published memoir: “Neal has been my greatest teacher,” she declares. “From him, and because of him, I have learned patience, understanding and compassion in ways that I never imagined.”

Hall does not pretty up the picture of what it’s like to be the parent of an autistic child. “[H]ad I known Neal had autism, I might have been too afraid to adopt him,” she confesses. “Thank God I didn’t know.” But she also reveals what may be her real secret of success: “When I make a decision, I become unstoppable,” she writes. “That, for as long as I remember, has been my chief asset … and principal liability.”

Willpower drove her to adopt an orphaned Tatar child when she discovered that she could not bear a baby of her own. She traveled all the way to Siberia to pick up her adopted son, “a whirlwind of taxis, paperwork and borscht.” She handed out souvenirs from Venice Beach and baseball caps from movies and TV shows as “incentives” to speed up the paperwork. “Suddenly, I am the 40-something mother of a 2-year-old child.” And, promptly upon her return to California, she insisted on a circumcision and a visit to the mikvah to complete his formal conversion to Judaism: “Neal has been clipped and dipped,” she jokes.

But soon the danger signs began to appear. She lavished love and care on her son, but he did not seem to make eye contact or respond to his name, and he had the disconcerting habit of hoarding food. “ ‘He’s been living in an orphanage,’ I tell myself and others. ‘What do you expect?’ ” When the diagnosis of autism was confirmed, she began to weep: “[W]ill that rushed mikvah ceremony be the last bit of normalcy we share?”

We should not be surprised to witness how Hall reacts to the ominous news. With the same zeal she applied to becoming a parent, she now sought out medical treatment for her son, special education resources and the companionship of parents of other autistic children.  Yet even the simplest pleasures of parenthood seemed like unattainable goals:“I wonder if Neal will ever say the word ‘Mama,’ ” she recalls. “Neal takes three steps forward and four steps back.”

Nor is autism her only challenge — Hall’s marriage falls apart and her mother falls gravely ill. But she ultimately succeeds in redefining herself through her struggle to address her son’s needs.

Drawing on her background in theater, she sets up a playroom at home where “we rehearse for life.” The effort turns out to be therapeutic for both of them: “I am not only learning how to heal Neal,” she insists. “I am beginning to heal myself.”

But “heal” does not mean “cure,” as Hall makes clear. “Instead of trying to ‘cure’ Neal of his autism, the time has come for me to accept the autism that is in Neal,” she writes. “Instead, I see my mission as helping him to live the happiest, most fulfilled, and independent life that he can.” The crowning moment comes when Neal is called to the Torah with several other boys after completing his preparations in a class at Vista Del Mar. “We call the class ‘Nes Gadol,’ which means a ‘great miracle,’ ” explains Hall — and her words brought tears to my eyes.

“Now I See the Moon” is intended to inspire and assist parents whose children are autistic. “I offer this journey to you in hope that it will, perhaps, help guide you with yours,” she writes. But it is more than a self-help manual. Rather, her book is a heartfelt memoir that has something important to say to every reader, a tale of redemption that is thoroughly modern in its setting but nearly biblical in its resonances.

Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is the book editor of The Jewish Journal. He blogs at