After the 2020 election, I took a much-needed break from the news. But only a few months later, it once again dominated my daily brain diet. From the local to the global, there’s been a lot to consider. During the school year, I can hear I Promise School students at recess from my house. It […]
Investment of time with oldest friends pays huge dividends
Life is transitory. Schedule regular calls and visits with friends in their 80s, 90s and 100s. You’ll be glad you did.
In-person event is a sign of returning normalcy
Back when street lamps were powered by gas, someone went by foot at day’s end and lit them one by one. Last week, it felt as though each of Akron’s trees had been similarly visited when leaves erupted seemingly overnight on branches long bare. It’s hard not to feel renewed by each spring, but especially […]
Generational effects of COVID coming into view
As we get to what everyone hopes and prays is the tail end of the first global pandemic in a century, history expects at least some of us to describe the experience for those who come along after all survivors have passed. Over the past two years, I have described not only my family’s experience, […]
Ah, spring, a season of flowers and litter
Today’s elders telling children how winters were far worse back in their day is perhaps truer than ever before. This winter, however, was an exception that proved that fact. Living in the north, I prefer a white winter. I find sensorial pleasure in the muffled silence, nighttime brightness and diamond-like sparkles of landscapes buried in […]
More inclusion, less ableism
Recently I saw a photo of yet another young woman with Down syndrome who has become a model, in this case for Victoria’s Secret. “Do you think she’s had cosmetic surgery on her eyes?” I asked my friend who happens to be an eye doctor. “I was wondering the same thing,” he said before asking, […]
Making masks optional in Akron schools was the right decision
Like a lot of children, my 9-year-old daughter, Lyra, relies on routine to make life predictable and easier for us both. Conversely, changes in her routines can understandably take a minute. When I tell Lyra on the first warm spring morning that she needn’t put on a hat, scarf and mittens when getting ready for […]
Global power and the Ukrainian fulcrum
Shortly after I moved to Cleveland in 2000, I became friends with Alla, a Ukrainian woman in her late 20s whose son was the same age as one of mine. In her small house, the high shine of the wood floors made the old cliche of eating off them seem reasonable. Though normally soft-spoken and […]
Banning books an exercise in fear and folly
In 1994, I purchased a copy of “The Wild Party” after hearing an interview with Art Spiegelman about his illustrated version of the Gatsby-esque poem by Joseph Moncure March. It’s a dark little book, written a year before the Great Depression, in which a gin-soaked party spins out, well, wildly and ends very badly for […]
Long friendship is rich in unexpected ways
“Your friendship may well be lifelong,” I tell students when I see them hit it off in my classes. That they might also become close with each other’s families is an added bonus I let them discover for themselves. In the winter of 1992, I met Jen Tressler in a plant pathology class on Ohio […]
Rules have changed on making a living
I am one of America’s 7 million working-poor citizens. My youngest two children and I are on Medicaid and for a few months each year we qualify for food stamps. Like many families living below the poverty level, I receive the Earned Income Tax Credit. Last year, a portion of my EITC, through the Child […]
Where will we be a year from now?
Is this what you expected life to look like a year ago? When my children were all young, the changes I noticed from year to year were often typical milestones: first steps, potty training, starting school, riding bikes. In those labor-intensive years coated with more body fluids than I care to recount, raising children felt like my […]
Try for a lighter, more meaningful Christmas
Shortly after the Thanksgiving leftovers have been polished off, holiday stress begins its annual escalation. This year the inevitable pressure to find the perfect holiday gifts seems accentuated, given the supply shortages caused by the ongoing pandemic. University of Minnesota professor Joel Waldfogel, who wrote “Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays,” claims that […]
Not today, COVID
While none of us gets out of here alive, we do have the ability to influence how we exit or, more pointedly, how we don’t. A healthy diet and exercise, for example, can prevent myriad issues from diabetes to heart disease. But without the fangs or claws of imminent demise, distant consequences seem improbable and […]
WWII soldier’s dilemma then and now
For several years, I’ve had biweekly dinners with my friend Bascom Hill Biggers III. He turned 99 this past summer, but let me correct the image you may have of a doddering old man: That same week he danced a jig outside the Bureau of Motor Vehicles after renewing his driver’s license. Raised in Atlanta, Bascom […]
My plan for life always included travel
“Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?” ~From “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver As a parent, I’ve decided many matters with an eye toward how my children will judge me not in the moment, but years later. […]
The horns give it away: My son is a Viking
My 11-year-old son, Leif, is in the midst of an extended, if not permanent, Viking phase. While I encourage his deep dive into our ancestral people, I am eager to see one thing literally fall apart: the horned helmet he’s worn night and day since January 2020. More than any of my other children, this […]
Maturity brings changes in parenting habits
My eldest son, who was born six weeks after my 28th birthday, is now as old as I was when pregnant with him. The inner workings of my body had hijacked my brain that year, compelled me to reproduce and then, once I’d given birth, evaporated. I suddenly could not recall why I’d felt such […]
One of life’s hardest moments
When she was about 75, my grandma sat for a headshot at the nearby JCPenney photo studio. She sent 5-by-8-inch prints to her four sons and me, her eldest grandchild, with notes telling us, “This is the photo I want at my funeral.” At the time, I was in my mid-20s and found Grandma’s funeral […]
Akron school mother breathes sigh of relief over COVID measures
As I listened to a voicemail from a News 5 Cleveland reporter at 7:20 p.m. July 26, my stomach dropped. She wanted to know my thoughts on Akron Public Schools’ announcement at that evening’s school board meeting — which was still ongoing. While I have written several columns critical of APS’s approach to education during the […]
Peruvians understand risks of COVID. Why don’t Americans?
The battle with COVID-19 seemed to round a corner last spring. Multiple vaccines were authorized for emergency use, which many Americans eagerly received when eligible. Then, as COVID infection rates began dropping, many restrictions were lifted. In mid-May, the CDC announced that fully vaccinated people need not wear masks in most situations. After a year […]
Music transports us through time
In 1984, I took a Greyhound bus from Arizona to the East and back. At the time, round-trip bus tickets weren’t restricted to specific dates. So along the way I stopped, visited friends and family for a few days, then hopped on another bus. I did this in Chicago, northern Michigan and Dayton before returning […]
Driving around in my new automobile
“Are you excited about your new car?” friends asked me for several days. It wasn’t that I wasn’t, it’s just that for more than a week after I’d chosen it, I’d yet to see the car I was hoping to buy. Boy, buying cars sure has changed since I last purchased one in 2003. That […]
A challenge worth the effort
It was the coolest thing I’ll never do again. “Can you go to Peru with me next month?” asked my college bestie, Jen, in mid-July. Pre-COVID, she had booked a trip to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, but then Peru closed to tourists. When it reopened this summer, Jen was ready to go, […]
Adjusting expectations for child with disability
Effective parenting requires a tailored approach for each child’s unique personality. But when children have a diagnosis that makes them irrevocably different from their parents, the best approach isn’t always readily evident. In his book “Far from the Tree,” Andrew Solomon combines research and interviews with parents and their children who have a variety of […]
Donor families find comfort in knowing lives were saved
In November 2014, Lynne Daus saved four lives when she resuscitated her daughter Jordan after an accidental overdose. Three days later, and after extensive testing, Jordan officially was declared brain dead even as the rest of her body worked as robustly as that of any healthy 18-year-old. It was then, at one of the worst […]
Organ donation is emotionally complex
(Kelly O’Brien Steverson and Holly in 1983 after high school graduation) In May 1975, when we were both 9, Kelly O’Brien and I became best friends. With only two weeks left in the school year, I was seated next to her after my family moved from Illinois to West Milton, Ohio. Years later, I recognized […]
Ohio’s abortion law has nothing to do with protecting people with Down syndrome
Ohio’s Down syndrome abortion ban will not reduce the termination rates of fetuses prenatally diagnosed with the condition. Neither will it inform sectors of society — including expectant parents, educators and heath care professionals — what it means to have Down syndrome today, something far different than when infants with Down syndrome were overwhelmingly institutionalized, […]
Value of Akron-Summit County Library is priceless
Carl Sagan once said, “Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom. But reading is still the path.” Today, libraries still provide materials and programs to encourage literacy, but they also provide many other significant services to communities, including, but […]
The only constant in life is change
This is the fifth year in which I have shared with Akron Beacon Journal readers stories about my five children and our lives. I have two batches of offspring: my now-adult sons, Claude, Hugo and Jules, from a previous marriage, and my caboose troupe, Leif and Lyra. The father of the last two, Max, has […]
Spring holds promise of positive change
The arrival of the first warm, sunny days at the end of winter feel full of pleasant promises. Friends, and even strangers in the grocery parking lots, are compelled to comment, “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” The renewal of existing gardens and plans for new plants and even new beds are, of course, investments in the […]
Talking with children about death
Today, many Americans live until their 30s or 40s before experiencing the death of a close family member or friend. The advent of antibiotics and vaccines in the early- and mid-20th century substantially decreased death rates while increasing life expectancy. And in the past 50 years, advances in medicine have grown exponentially, each development laying […]
Love for winter doesn’t melt
My first four babies wore cloth diapers, which I washed weekly and hung on a line in the backyard. The singular satisfaction of seeing stains disappear after a few hours in the bright sun is both simple and immeasurable. I feel similarly when the sun melts the residual snow on sidewalks I’ve shoveled. From the chair at […]
Loving children when it’s hard
When I was 16, my father and stepmother told my two sisters and me that as much as they loved their children — they’d die for us — they loved each other more, that their love had only grown in the dozen years they’d been together. Eight years later, my dad moved to Arizona, divorced […]
Mark important moments in history with children
“History is not was, it is.” — William Faulkner On a January day in 1973, a bulky television atop a 4-foot metal cart was wheeled into my second-grade classroom at Longfellow Elementary in Toledo. Former President Lyndon Johnson had died the day before at his ranch in Texas and we were shown a news program […]
Where, oh where, had my little dog gone?
The Thursday before Thanksgiving, I took my three dogs for their morning walk and then to my house on Akron’s near west side, where I worked. At 4 o’clock, I told the dogs we were heading home, but the eldest one, Lily, didn’t join us at the door. I checked the house to see if she was […]
Seeking a holiday refresh after a year when nothing was usual
I recently read that after nearly a year of pandemic life, many are finding a renewed sense of holiday spirit this year. I am not one of them. Perhaps it’s because for the past 10 months home has also become office and school. It’s hard enough keeping everyone’s work stations in multiple rooms organized without […]
Respect science on COVID-19 — masks are essential; remote learning is not
If ever there was a time when we needed to respect science, it is now. Minimizing the destruction of COVID-19 can be done at local and even personal levels. But it requires people to accept a few basic facts, which is proving astonishingly difficult for far too many Americans. Let’s start with the most obvious […]
Pandemic pauses family traditions, not thanks
Every August, as predictable as summer fruit ripening, my three eldest sons begin to announce, “I’m really looking forward to Thanksgiving.” For more than 20 years, we’ve made the 450-mile journey to Charlevoix, Michigan, for the November holiday. My stepmother has lived in the same 950-square-foot house near Lake Michigan since 1972. She and her […]
COVID interrupts valued friendship
“I waited on Maureen O’Hara at the MGM commissary. She was an observant Catholic and didn’t eat meat on Fridays, so we’d save a plate of chicken and she’d come by after midnight.” I’ve written before about Bascom, who became family through my relationship with Max, and my bi-weekly dates with this nonagenarian Southern gentleman. […]
Vote as though our democracy depends on it
Last weekend, I waited 2½ hours to vote at the Summit County Board of Elections (BOE). I have, with few exceptions, voted early and in person since it has been an option in Ohio. Waiting until Election Day stresses me out. What if something comes up and I can’t make it to the polls? Sure, […]
Watching grown children set off on their lives is a poignant pleasure
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself…You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and […]
Biobank dedicated to Down syndrome research a bright spot in 2020
Days after our daughter Lyra was born, my partner and I received her karyotype, or snapshot of her chromosomes. It showed she has a third 21st chromosome, which causes Down syndrome. We then spent the next few years rigorously studying the reality of a DS diagnosis — which can be fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking. Along […]
Learning new ways of teaching during COVID-19
“What did the Zen master say to the guy at the hot dog cart?” I texted to one of my students. “Mmm, I feel like it has something to do with wholeness. But I got nothin’,” she replied. “Make me one with everything!” I seldom text my students and when I do, it’s usually about […]
Wrong Answer: Akron says yes to sports, no to in-person classes for students with disabilities
The Akron Beacon Journal’s front-page headline on Tuesday read, “Why are all these parents so happy? First day of school brings joy in Summit County.” Unfortunately, that was not the case in the county’s largest district, Akron Public Schools. Initially, APS announced a blended program for the fall. Pre-school through third grade students would have […]
Launching into the first COVID fall semester
Panicky scenarios are the main fare of my brain’s nightly programming. As both a parent of elementary and college-aged students and a faculty member at the University of Akron, the screenwriter of my dreams has plenty of material with which to work. My eldest son, Claude, is now at the George H.W. Bush School of […]
Novel solutions needed to educate all kids during COVID-19 pandemic
When COVID-19 rates began soaring earlier this summer, my gut told me Akron Public Schools would not return to in-person classes this fall. The sudden shift to online learning this past spring caused many students to fall behind. I figured at the time that schools would do catch-up instruction in the fall, which is to […]
Unemployment shuffle during pandemic is lesson in patience
Shortly after the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed at the end of March, my two eldest sons and I applied for unemployment, which, under current conditions, proved an exercise in tenacity. My son Claude was an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) this past year at the Summit Food Coalition. […]
Uncertainty is post-lockdown certainty
For 12 weeks this spring, our family of seven sheltered together in two houses. I don’t know where else but Akron could I have purchased a house on land contract with a mortgage of less than $600 a month, which I did in 2014. In 2015, my partner, Max, started his solo law practice on […]
Changing racial justice starts inside you, white America
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” — From “The Fellowship of the […]