In my final column of 2021, I speculated that COVID, climate change and the continued existence of democracy were issues the world would grapple with in 2022.

While COVID has become more manageable, minimized exposure to seasonal illnesses over the past two years has made our immune systems easier targets. Flu viruses and RSV are filling hospitals this year much like COVID did the past two.

Still, we’ve come a long way. Last December, the Omicron variant was making its U.S. debut, shutting down many public places and forcing vulnerable populations to shelter at home yet again.

Baby steps continue worldwide in the effort to address climate change and protect democracy. For now, the environment and essential democratic institutions, such as free and fair elections, remain vulnerable.

Here are updates on other topics I wrote about this year:

Book Banning

Book banning continues to grow, which does little to nothing to prevent students from finding said books. What it does, as it always has, is put a spotlight on certain books, causing sales of those books to explode. I purchased several of the most banned books this year, both for myself and others. It felt great.

However, the majority of books parents have had banned from schools are about LGBTQ people and people of color. Banning these books tells children who are not white and/or heterosexual that their stories do not belong in our libraries and, by extension, our communities. Which is a cruel way to also tell these children that they themselves do not belong in our communities.

Putin’s War

Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is a horrific example of power consolidated in a supreme leader. This year also marks the 100th anniversary of Ukraine being forced into the Soviet Union. The world was not paying attention then. This time it is.

The spirit, tenacity and humanity of the Ukrainian people, so exemplified in my friend Allah, whom I wrote about soon after the war began, has done much to garner international support for this country fighting an unprovoked and illegal attack on its sovereignty.

But even with support, tens of thousands of Ukrainians and at least 100,000 Russians have died for one man’s delusions. Furthermore, cities and infrastructure that Ukrainian civilians rely upon for their existence continue to be targeted by Putin.

I pray that this time next year the story of Ukraine will be of its great postwar rebuilding.

Inclusion over ableism

I wrote multiple pieces on equal access and, therefore, equal rights for the disabled. My journey with my daughter, Lyra, a 10-year-old who has Down syndrome, has taught me much. In my lifetime, disability rights have progressed tremendously, yet much work remains.

Lyra’s father sold his house in Akron this fall and bought a new one in Copley so we can have another educational option. At the same time, Lyra was placed for the first time in SAIL (Students Achieving Independent Learning), a newer program at Akron Public Schools for some intellectually disabled students.

Lyra has been so successful in SAIL, we cannot imagine her attending school elsewhere. This is an important reminder that quality public schools are an anchor in keeping people of all socioeconomic levels from leaving cities when they have children.

Justice for all

Akron’s racial disparities and relations were on international display in 2022. As protests were occurring over the police shooting death of Jayland Walker, I wrote about three young Black men spending what ended up being two months in jail.

The three were playing basketball on June 2 in a fenced-in court that has only one usable entrance. They were attacked by four Firestone students with water pellet guns designed to look and sound like automatic rifles. A fight broke out. One of the Firestone four fell back, hit his head and died from a broken occipital bone.

After hearing the account of that night’s events from the Firestone students who’d initiated the attack, the police chief and mayor promoted a misleading narrative. When more information came to light, the three in jail had their bail amounts dramatically reduced and were quickly released.

In October, Donovan Jones, one of the three basketball players, pleaded no contest and was convicted of a first-degree misdemeanor. A trial for the other two will likely occur in February.

Why does Jones have a criminal record for defending himself when the three remaining Firestone students have not been charged for attacking Jones?

Access to museums

After I wrote about Museums for All, a program that facilitates modest fee admissions to museums for families who receive food stamps, I heard from one of my favorite librarians at Akron-Summit County Public Library.

Barb White was the head librarian at the Highland Square branch when my big boys were growing up. Today she’s a deputy director of our fabulous library system. She wrote to tell me that people who do not qualify for food stamps but still cannot afford museum fees can visit area cultural institutions without breaking the bank:

The “Akron-Summit County Library circulates museum passes as part of its Library of Things, and we anticipate increasing the number and variety of museum passes as [our] budget allows. Here’s the link to our Library of Things: https://www.akronlibrary.org/books-more/library-of-things The Museum passes can be found under ‘Recreational.’ ”

As there is a wait for the library passes, it requires planning a visit in advance.

Letters

I try to respond to all letters from readers (except those from trolls, naturally). I usually do so right away, but sometimes it takes a few days or weeks.

I was alarmed, therefore, when I accidentally discovered this fall that Gmail was sending many emails from readers to my spam folder. I presume this has been the case for the entire six-plus years I’ve been writing for the Beacon.

I now check my spam folder regularly, but if you never heard back from me and wondered why, that is probably the reason (unless, of course, you’re a troll).

Also note, if you write me an old-fashioned letter with pen and paper and send it to the Beacon’s offices, it will take several days to a few weeks to get to me, but it will get to me.

Thank you, readers. May 2023 bring peace and wisdom to us all.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on December 25, 2022.

Lying on the back seat of my mother’s car as she drove to Rike’s department store in downtown Dayton, I mused over my impending birthday. I was about to turn a double-digit age for the first time. I also considered the marathon few complete between 10 and a triple-digit age. 

This past May, I wrote about two friends in their late 90s: Barbara Campbell and Bascom Biggers. Barbara began sending me handwritten letters in 2017, a few months after I began writing this column. For three years, our relationship was strictly epistolary. Then, when she moved to New Hampshire in 2020 to be near family, we began talking regularly on the phone. 

Barbara turned 97 this past March. In June, I sent her a card with a clipping from this paper, a satirical op-ed in which the writer wondered what version of the Bible that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene reads, because her copy is clearly different than his. 

Over the years, Barbara has sent me many clippings from newspapers and magazines, most of them humorous. Sadly, she never received my last letter. After a brief illness, Barbara died on June 25. I’d never seen a photo of her until I received her obituary. She looks as infectiously delightful as she always was in her letters and our phone conversations.  

Barbara chose happiness over sadness, gratitude over bitterness. She lost her first husband and one of their sons within a matter of months. The year before she moved, she was struck by a car while walking from her own car in the parking lot of her apartment building, which left her with lingering pain.  

Rather than complain, Barbara spoke graciously about the people in her life and all she enjoyed. Her avocation was to make people laugh; even in her final days she was telling jokes during dinners at her assisted living community. When we discussed challenges, such as COVID and other unpleasant news, she always ended by saying, “It’s in God’s hands.” 

If there is a heaven, Barbara is there giggling with those whom she’s reunited. I miss her voice, her abundant encouragement and joyful commentary. Every conversation with Barbara was like receiving a bright bouquet of homegrown flowers. 

I have met centenarians, but never have I had a dear friend turn 100. That is, until last weekend. I’ve written several columns about Bascom, with whom I became friends when he was but a spry 86. 

Except when I’m in Michigan during the summer or, in recent years, when COVID rates spike in the region, I see Bascom every other week. I arrive at his home mid-afternoon and often stay until 10. 

We talk nonstop about everything from politics to pets. And, like many a senior, Bascom reminisces about what Proust called les temps perdus. His mother, Rose, born in 1901, was intelligent and capable. She led a stifled life as a stay-at-home wife and mother.  

Bascom adored Rose and by the time he was an adolescent, he was perhaps her best confidant. Knowing him, it’s easy to imagine Bascom tried to make his mother happy when her circumstances, proscribed by the times and her station, left her bored and unsatisfied. 

His father, Buck, was tenderhearted, which Bascom didn’t realize until he was a young man. Buck had steely gray eyes that could stop a child in his tracks. But when Bascom was fighting in the European theater in World War II, his father’s letters referred to Bascom as “my darling boy” and, clearly concerned he may never see his son again, expressed just how much he loved him. 

Perhaps it’s simply the function of age, but I wonder if his relationships with his parents are what made Bascom such a ruminator. He reads widely, maintains a core circle of friends and is more engaged with life than many who are decades younger. However, his ruminating often extends into overthinking, which in turn impedes his happiness. 

Last Saturday, on his 100th birthday, Bascom and I sat on his living room couch where the largest wall of the room is almost entirely glass, minimizing the separation of the indoors from the surrounding forest where his home is situated.  

After an hour, we left to have dinner with his friend Laura and her husband, Michael. (Laura does all the things, which are many, that allow Bascom to stay in his home.) Or so Bascom thought. In reality, several friends were waiting at the restaurant and we pulled off a surprise party that I was not confident the guest of honor would enjoy. 

He loved it. At times the noise made it hard for Bascom to hear, but he told the group it didn’t matter, their love was as clear as could be. Then, when we returned home, he promptly began worrying if it was OK if people loved him more than he loved them. 

In my birthday card to Bascom I wrote, “I wish I could help you fret less and laugh more.” I also included Mary Oliver’s poem “A Summer Day,” which ends, “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?”  

It is a question worth asking every year, even for those lucky enough to reach triple-digit ages. 

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, August 21, 2022.

All cities have personalities and for more than 20 years I have told anyone who will listen just how friendly Akron is. People from all backgrounds and ethnicities regularly engage with each other in their neighborhoods, jobs and stores in ways you don’t see in all cities. 

African Americans account for just 13% of the nation’s population but comprise nearly a third of Akron’s residents. It’s statistically likely for Black and White Akronites to have the opportunity to get to know one another. 

That’s not to say it’s perfect. In 2011, a secretary at Firestone High School told me that the student one of my sons, who was then in the eighth grade, would be shadowing was Black and asked if that was OK. 

“Why on earth would you ask me that?” I demanded. 

“Because other parents have complained in the past when we haven’t told them,” she replied. 

Recent events have exposed deep racism in Akron

Yet, unlike Akron’s Black community, I was surprised (and deeply saddened) when horrific events in our city this summer exposed a deep vein of outright racism in some White Akronites and far too much White fragility in others. 

My last column was about the deadly fight on June 2 in my neighborhood. I pointed out that the police and media prejudged the cases of the three young men arrested in the death of Ethan Liming, without acknowledging the alleged crimes Liming and three others had committed when driving down West Market Street shooting water pellets at unsuspecting strangers in multiple locations. 

The U.S. Marshals, however, created an online poster that makes it seem like they hunted down three scary criminals (according to their attorneys, none of the basketball players have criminal records) when all they did was arrest the basketball players in their homes. 

Furthermore, little information has been given about the lives of the three who were simply playing basketball in the West Hill neighborhood. 

According to a relative of the three, Shawn, 20, and Tyler Stafford, 19, are brothers and Donovon Jones, 21, who has significant hearing impairment, is their cousin. Shawn is a prior shooting victim with pins and wires in his leg where a bullet was removed. He is also his mother’s caretaker. 

The way someone views the deadly fight seems largely dependent upon the color of their skin. 

On the Akron Beacon Journal’s Facebook page, most of the hundreds of comments to my last column are by White people, many of whom describe the deadly fight in ways that are impossible to know, if not completely false. Many also share grotesque notions of what they think should happen to the three basketball players being held on $1 million bonds. 

Conversely, nearly 200 Black folks shared the same column on their pages with comments like this one: “Perspective! This article was definitely needed.” 

I’ve raised five children in the neighborhood where the fight occurred, three of whom graduated from Firestone in the past decade. I’ve thought long about that fight. The narrative started by the police, promoted by the media and exploded by social media mobs does not add up. 

There were four young men in the Firestone group who attacked three young men playing basketball. Four to three, not three to one. 

The Firestone youths’ activities that night are remarkably similar to yet another godforsaken TikTok challenge. After pulling up in their car after dark, some of the four from Firestone group ran at the three unsuspecting basketball players while shooting them with pellets.

What did the others do? I suspect they filmed it for TikTok. 

When the basketball players realized, after first running away, that it wasn’t metal bullets hitting them, they turned around and immediately understood they had been assaulted as a joke. 

The basketball players then approached their assailants, but the Firestone teens didn’t hop in their car and drive away. A fight broke out.

What exactly happened in Ethan Liming’s death is unclear 

What happened next, and this is very important, is unclear. Attorneys say that at least one of the basketball players was injured when his face was smashed into the asphalt. A Firestone teen called 911 and said a friend was knocked unconscious during a group fight — not a beating or stomping death — and was still breathing. 

A preliminary autopsy report listed the decedent’s injuries, including a broken occipital bone (the only bone broken in his body), black eye and a single footprint on the chest wall. This list leaves open a number of ways in which the injuries could have been sustained. 

If video of the fight exists, perhaps who did what in that fight will soon be learned. But it won’t explain why four young men launched a surprise attack on three strangers, a violation of several Ohio laws including aggravated menacing, disorderly conduct and inducing panic. 

A little over three weeks after the fight, eight Akron police officers shot 46 bullets into the body of an unarmed Black man who is accused of firing one shot from his moving car as they chased him for purported traffic and equipment violations, neither of which are capital offenses. 

Akron, we have a serious race problem and it runs from the top on down. Now what? Consider South Africa’s post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Committee. It taught the world that healing racial divisions only happens after systemic racism is addressed head on, eyes wide open. 

I pray that we here in Akron have the courage to face our systemic racism head on and make desperately needed changes to our laws, policies, minds and hearts. 

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on July 24, 2022.

One evening when I was 14, five of my friends and I decided to play “ding dong ditch it.” Not an uncommon pastime for bored teens in the 1970s, we rang the doorbells at random houses and then ran away, our bodies giddily awash with adrenaline. 

We were lucky we didn’t die that night. 

At one house, we rang the bell on two occasions separated by about 15 minutes. The second time, the owner came out and chased us with a rifle. The house had recently been burglarized and the owner suspected the culprits of that crime had returned to strike again. 

The frontal lobes of the human brain are responsible for executive functioning, which includes impulse control, judgment and the ability to plan out steps for a desired goal or outcome.  

Unfortunately, however, frontal lobes do not fully develop until the early to mid-20s (later for males than females), which is why parents often ask young adult children who’ve done something reckless, “What were you thinking?” 

“What were they thinking?” is a question I’ve heard and certainly thought when considering Ethan Liming and three of his friends driving around West Akron the evening of June 2, shooting at random strangers (as far as has been reported) in multiple places with water pellet guns. 

Their fun ended when these four Firestone High School students targeted three young men, ages 19, 20 and 21, playing basketball at the courts next to the I Promise School. Assuming they were being shot at with real bullets, the young men ran. When they realized that was not the case, they turned back and a fight ensued. 

In a news conference, Akron police stated that Liming didn’t deserve to die. Those words land like concrete. The job of the police is to investigate. It’s up to the courts to consider the evidence and make judgments. 

Furthermore, the three young men playing basketball didn’t deserve to be terrorized by four young men who pulled up in a car at or after sunset (8:53 that night), jumped out and ran toward them while blasting two water pellet guns.  

And yet most of the reporting on this tragedy has painted Liming, who was white, as a good young man while leaning heavily on the engrained racist trope of the Black male criminal in the portrayal of the three basketball players, all of whom are African American. 

 If you’ve been following this case, ask yourself what you know about the three who were playing basketball. Are they related? Where’d they go to school? Are any in school now? Who do they live with? Where do they live? 

At most we know one of them has been employed at a warehouse for over two years. I doubt he is any longer after our county prosecutors and a judge decided that the three young men who were assaulted while playing ball are such a threat to society that they are being held in jail on $1 million bonds, or what lawyers sometimes call “publicity bonds.” 

According to Emily Bazelon in her book “Charged,” only two countries have cash bail bond systems: America and the Philippines (hardly a paragon of justice). The rest of the world simply expects people who are charged to show up at court because if they don’t a warrant for their arrest will be issued. 

I live two blocks from the I Promise School and presumably some, if not all, of the three young men playing basketball that night live in my neighborhood. I believe they should be released until trial. 

Let’s talk about my neighborhood.  

In 20 years of living in our neighborhood, my family has witnessed several gun-related incidents. The most recent was on a sunny afternoon last summer. 

My eldest son, Claude, was driving in the first block of Oakdale Avenue, just one block west of the I Promise School. In the span of no more than 15 seconds, the car ahead of him stopped, a man wearing a backpack walked from the curb to that car, briefly spoke to the occupants, then turned away. A passenger in the car held a gun out of his window and shot the backpack man in the lower back. The car peeled away. 

My son called 911 and then, along with other witnesses, aided the shooting victim. 

In my neighborhood, the basketball players had every reason to believe they were being shot at with real guns containing real bullets. 

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a duck. When it sounds and looks like bigotry — be it racial, gender, ability or more — it is. Best way to check? Play screenwriter and change up the scene. 

What if my three (tall, fit, white, blond) sons in their 20s had been playing basketball at the I Promise courts that night when the Firestone four pulled up in their car and began shooting? And what if, in the ensuing fight, one of the two young Black men in the car with Liming had died? Do you think my sons would be sitting in the county jail under $1 million bonds? I don’t. 

And what if my (tall, fit, white, blond) sons legally carried handguns? With our state’s whack-a-doodle gun laws, my sons could have killed each of the Firestone four and used the “Stand Your Ground” law as their defense. No doubt they’d be cleared of all charges, if any were even filed. 

Or let’s say the four Firestone males instead drove to a basketball court in upscale Bath and jumped out, pellet guns a-blazing, at three white males. Again, if in the ensuing fight Liming had died, who would be in jail today? Anybody? 

Or, if you would rather not consider hypotheticals, recall what actually happened to a Black 12-year-old playing with a toy gun in a Northeast Ohio city park with his sister in broad daylight in 2014. A 911 dispatcher received a call of a “guy” with a gun, and two seconds after police pulled up in their patrol car, one of the officers shot Tamir Rice dead. Two seconds. 

Yes, Ethan Liming’s family and friends are deeply grieving his loss. But so are the families of three youths who were minding their business, playing basketball on a warm summer’s eve when they were assaulted by a carload of young men with guns that first appeared deadly. 

What would you have done if you were the three playing basketball? What did the Firestone four believe were the possible outcomes when running at three strangers while shooting them with pellets? I doubt they thought it through. And now seven families and six young men must live with the tragic consequences. 

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on July 10, 2022.

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 this one. Not only because it marks the end of one of the hardest winters in years, but also because the worst of the two-year COVID pandemic may finally have receded with this year’s snow piles. 

In the past few weeks, I’ve seen repeated announcements of various events being held in person for the first time in three years. Dances, fundraisers, fish dinners, pancake breakfasts and, next Saturday, May 21, the annual Race for Case. 

Ten years ago, Craig Sampsell, one of Case Elementary’s interventionists, along with two other faculty members, Sarah Core and Jen Victor, organized the first Race for Case to raise money to create a computer lab, purchase iPads and a smart board for the building. 

In the years since, the Race for Case has funded inclusive equipment (read: accessible for kids with physical disabilities) and a rubberized surface for the school’s playground, as well as a greenhouse slated to be built at the end of this year. 

According to Sampsell, the proceeds from this year’s race will fund “school assemblies focused on social emotional learning as well as science, math and reading. We want to create the fun and joy of going to school again and increase the opportunities for our students to interact with outside resources. We will also see if we can fund a school-wide field trip.”  

According to a recent New York Times piece by David Leonhardt, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the United States increased both accountability and funding for public schools. “Typically, the funding increases were larger for low-income schools than for high-income schools. That may help explain why racial gaps in reading and math skills declined.” 

In the decades since, the data on funding increases for low-income public schools indicates that greater funding does, in fact, result in better outcomes, and not just while kids are in school, but long after they’ve graduated. 

The primary metric businesses look at when locating in a community is the quality of the workforce. This alone should cause all legislators, regardless of party, to prioritize maximum funding for public K-12 schools. 

Unfortunately, that has not happened in many states, including Ohio. As a popular bumper sticker reads: “It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake sale to buy a bomber.” 

Until schools have all the funding they need, supporting them with fundraisers, like the Race for Case, remains important, if not vital. 

This year’s race is the first of 10 in Akron Promise’s City Series Neighborhood Races. People who participate in four of the series’ races will be awarded medals. Rest assured, you don’t have to be a competitive athlete to take part. Participants ranging from those in baby buggies to elders using canes can run, walk or stroll the course. 

Unlike in years past, when the race started and ended at Hardesty Park, this year it will be held at the school (1420 Garman Road). There’s a 1-mile race that starts at 9:30 a.m., followed by the 5K at 10. Registration is online at bit.ly/race4case5k and will also be available onsite that morning. 

Perhaps best of all, at least from the perspective of the kids, after the races, there will be a carnival with inflatables and games for all ages. 

In 2018, my third child (who identifies as “they/their”) was at the time a junior in high school and came in second at the Race for Case. We were excited for their last year on Firestone’s cross country team that upcoming fall, believing they had a strong chance of making it to the state championships. 

But that summer, they developed mononucleosis, which dragged on for many months. Eventually a rheumatologist diagnosed my tall, fit 18-year-old with chronic fatigue syndrome. That 2018 Race for Case was the last 5K they will likely ever compete in, making the event especially poignant for us. 

In the past two years, all of humanity learned how that which is taken for granted can suddenly end, or at least go on hiatus. As much of community life finally resumes, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate this spring than by coming together to have fun raising money as an investment in some of our youngest citizens.  

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, which is similar to what many families across the planet have experienced, but also what has been happening in communities. From schools to restaurants to travel to masks and vaccines, I’ve written about an array of pandemic topics as the novel coronavirus evolved in wave after wave.  

If anyone feels that life at this moment is like the movie Groundhog Day with spring portending the end of masks and (knock on wood) COVID as we’ve known it, much as it did last spring — you’re not alone. But there are some key differences, particularly in schools. 

This time last year, it had only been a little over a month that Akron Public Schools had reopened buildings for in-person instruction. And the University of Akron was ending a third semester taught largely in hybrid or fully remote sessions.  

This school year, because of prudent measures taken last fall, both APS and UA have had buildings open, the majority of students in classrooms and, for the past few months, optional masking.  

As a parent of a child in APS and a faculty member at UA, I could not be more relieved to finally be at this point. And yet I’m at a loss for where far too many of our students are. 

I teach both freshman composition courses for UA’s English department and a seminar on thesis writing for graduate students in arts administration. The difference between the two groups is striking.  

I assumed a fair number of freshmen would not be COVID vaccinated as the university did not mandate the vaccine until after the fall semester had ended. Which is why, two weeks before classes began, I got my booster shot. 

Boy, was that the right call. While all of my graduate students were vaccinated, more than half of my freshmen were not. 

Given that younger people are more likely to experience milder cases of COVID, my undergraduates’ low vaccination rate was, while concerning, not alarming. I cannot say the same about their academic performance.  

I have in the past described my despair that so few undergraduates at my city university seldom (if ever) watch movies or TV programs. As for volitionally reading magazines, newspapers or — queue up an angelic choir—books? Fuhgettaboutit. 

And yet, with a lot of exposure, prodding and encouragement to dive deeply on topics that most interest them, I have for years been able to engage the majority of my freshmen.  

That is until this spring, which was the first semester we resumed normal requirements and deadlines.  

While my graduate students continue to produce work that is always passable and at times truly impressive, my current undergraduates remind me of people in a land where they don’t speak the language and I’m their only interpreter and there’s not enough of me for each of them. 

Weirdly most freshmen attended all classes and seemed truly engaged. And then the majority of them didn’t do the work. Multiple times in class I’ve sung the refrain from U2’s song “One”: Did I ask too much? More than a lot? You gave me nothin’ now it’s all I’ve got. 

At first I thought it was me, for it is the responsibility of leaders, which teachers are, to inspire. 

But in the past few months, I’ve heard the same concerns not only from other English professors, but across UA’s departments and from friends teaching throughout the country. 

APS teachers tell me they are seeing the same.  

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when regular school attendance in New Orleans Public Schools was not possible for the better part of a year, data soon revealed significant negative consequences including increased dropout rates and an average drop in performance of two grades. 

Today we must ask how many students have been negatively affected by all the measures we had to take in order to mitigate COVID? And what should we be doing as a community, a society and a nation to forestall a lost generation? 

The pandemic and all it wrought has been hard on everyone, but not uniformly. For those under the age of 20, the past two years comprise a significant portion of their lives. 

Now that the virulence of COVID is waning, the lasting repercussions are becoming visible. A top priority needs to be finding solutions to aid students who have gotten out of sync with what they need to succeed in school, and perhaps more. 

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, May 1, 2022.

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 urgency to start a family before I was 30. 

Partly a reflection of generational changes, along with individual choices, my parents were much younger — 19 and 20 — when they had me, their first child. In comparison, my three eldest sons, all in their 20s, are nowhere close to becoming parents, reflecting yet more generational shifts and personal decisions. 

It’s also possible I messed up my chances of ever becoming a grandparent when I gave birth to my fourth and fifth children at ages 44 and 46. My boys were 16, 13 and 9 when their next sibling, another brother, was born. All were old enough to help out and thus learned just how much work babies require. 

The first several years after the births of my last two children, the house was full of teens, tweens and tots. The big boys became naturals with their younger siblings, tending to them often without direction or even much thought. In fact, I sometimes had to tell my third son to back down and let me do the parenting. 

Those early years I also tried to replicate aspects of the older boys’ childhoods, including summer vacations, schooling and holiday traditions, with my littlest two. I wanted them all to share some collective memories so that the fourth and fifth children would be co-equal siblings with the first three. 

After a few years, I realized these efforts were unnecessary.  

No, the younger children do not have the same relationship with their older brothers as those three do with one another. But all five have a sibling relationship of their own that is equally embraced and secure.  

And when the big boys began heading off to college, one or two always remained in Akron. My eldest graduated from the University of Michigan and moved back home three years before my third son matriculated at Ohio State University. 

The differences between being a mom in my 30s versus my 50s weren’t obvious when my household included young adults. My youngest two children are lucky to have had five people raising them. It was a noisy, full home and mostly a lot of fun. 

But suddenly, just after we’d all hunkered together during the COVID shut down, everything changed. I raise my children to be independent, work hard and chase after their dreams. And by golly, if nothing else, that portion of my parenting has been an overwhelming success. 

The summer of 2020, I separated from my youngest children’s father just as the last of my first three moved far from Akron. My two littles now live with just one adult at a time as their dad and I alternate custodial weeks. 

My energy, or lack thereof, is the primary difference I have observed as an older mom now alone with young children. This is not necessarily bad — Elsa from “Frozen” could come to me for a few lessons on how to let it go. It also means I’m less gung-ho about monitoring the completion of homework and chores.  

I never overbooked my first three kids. Children need downtime and I have always needed to pursue goals beyond parenting. That said, I plan even fewer lessons, sports or activities with my youngest two children, and they generally entertain themselves. At 55 I’m not quite a free-range parent, but I’m also not far from it. 

Other things, however, remain constant: my home is video-game free and we don’t watch TV on school nights. And when my youngest son complains of boredom or won’t leave me alone when I’m working, I give him additional chores — a deterrent as powerful as it ever was. 

I’ve mulled over whether I’m as good a parent to the younger two as I was with the eldest three. I’ve decided it’s a false comparison. I’m a different mother today because I’m a different person than I was 20 years ago.  

While my 30-something self was a more hands-on parent, one approach isn’t necessarily better than the other. I also remind myself that most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were youngest children, which is to say they did well enough. 

Meanwhile, my attentions, however scant, to my bumper-crop kids take some of the pressure off of my eldest three to hurry up and give me grandchildren. For now. 

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on October 3, 2021.

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 photo prep bizarre, if not macabre. At the service 15 years later, as she smiled from a framed print of the Penney’s photo placed alongside her casket, I was grateful for her foresight. Grandma in the photo looked like I most remember her, not as she did in her final years after diabetes had ravaged her body.

The notion that we will all one day die is something many prefer not to think about, conducting life as if death will never come. While that may provide some sense of comfort, it’s kinder to those who will carry on after us to be prepared.

But sometimes death comes like Carl Sandburg’s fog, on little cat feet, and there is no time to prepare.

The humor in Steven Pastis’ comic strip “Pearls Before Swine” is acerbic. Yet it’s the only comic that has ever left me in tears. When friends post about the loss of a pet on social media, I often accompany a photo of Pastis’ strip describing the sadness he and his wife felt when they had to euthanize their dog, Edee, who had cancer.

Certainly the loss of a pet is not as grave as the loss of a human. And, yet, the deaths of these creatures, who love us with a simplicity most humans are not capable of, often leaves owners with an acute ache tinged with guilt. We have all the power and sometimes we must make difficult decisions with that power. 

I adopted Goldie, the first dog of my adult life, when I was 17. I was 31 and the mother of two small boys when I had to put her down. It frustrated my then-husband when, for months after Goldie’s death, I’d randomly weep. What he didn’t understand is that grief is commensurate with love for the departed. 

On NPR’s late-afternoon show, “All Things Considered,” I once heard a piece by a woman who had an irascible hound dog who bayed unbidden, chewed furniture with abandon and frequently escaped for far-flung adventures. 

The woman’s description of her very naughty dog conveyed frustration, yes, but also her abiding affection for him. I suspect many commuters who heard that piece considered pulling off the road. Torrents of tears blinded my vision when the woman described putting down her once vibrant, then cancer-filled, dog.

Last fall I shared how my bi-black Sheltie, Lily, had disappeared for four days only to turn up in Cuyahoga Falls, easily 12 miles away. Lily was bred to be a show dog but was rejected because her coloring had too much white. 

It’s likely Lily spent much of her first eight weeks of life crated because while sweet, she’s a hesitant dog. Where my other dogs rush in to greet me, Lily’s always a few away from the fray, waiting for a quieter moment, avoiding competition for attention and affection.

While I was in Michigan with my youngest children this summer, their father, Max, took care of my three dogs. Lily developed a GI sickness the week before we returned and Max took her to our vet, who reasonably treated her for an intestinal bug.

Two days after we returned to Akron, I went to Max’s house and found Lily extremely lethargic. She was clearly dehydrated and decompensating. I rushed her to Metropolitan Veterinary Hospital. As they still have COVID curbside service, a vet tech carried Lily inside to obtain her vitals. The vet tech quickly reappeared at my car door. 

Lily, who’d turned 11 last month, had gone into cardiac arrest and died in the young woman’s arms before she’d gotten to an exam room. 

Where I had expected to help my dog with IV fluids and then determine the source of her illness, I instead picked out a cremation package while waiting for Lily’s body to be brought into the exam room so I could say goodbye.

Unlike Grandma, Lily left unexpected and without any preparations. That she didn’t suffer for long brings some measure of comfort. 

Meanwhile the two collars Lily wore remain on the passenger-side floor of my car where I placed them just before the vet tech took her inside the hospital. I don’t plan on moving them for a while.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, August 22, 2021.

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 COVID-19 pandemic, I had no clue what the district just had announced. In fact, I hadn’t known to anticipate an announcement. 

Once Joe Biden was inaugurated, I went on a much-needed news diet. Since Donald Trump’s candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination became ascendant in 2016, I took in the daily news like I was drinking from a fire hose. 

I was not alone. During the Trump administration, unprecedented numbers of people from all political persuasions turned to their favorite news outlets. Subscriptions to the New York Times, for instance, doubled. Fox News, CNN and MSNBC all experienced ratings bonanzas.

A news diet, however, is not the same as going news free. I still get daily newsletters from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. But I don’t read them as closely, nor do I open as many embedded articles, as before.  

And, unlike last year, during the six weeks this summer when my youngest children and I lived in a small camper in my parents’ driveway in Michigan, I didn’t stream WKSU while cooking dinner. Instead, I listened to music and kept blissfully not up to date.

Which is why my first thought when hearing from the reporter was, “Uh-oh, I’ve missed something important.” 

During the past school year, I advocated for Akron Public Schools to reopen for in-person instruction in some measure, particularly for children with individualized education plans. In mid-March, they finally did, after an entire year of remote-only learning.  

Now I was afraid the district was going to reverse course, as it had last July, and return to remote-only learning. 

Luckily, my fear was off mark and I sighed with relief when I learned Akron schools will reopen for in-person instruction this fall with protocols in place to minimize the spread of COVID-19. 

Class sizes will be reduced to no more than 24 students — a decision any public school advocate can get behind. With any luck, this class-size cap will remain in effect after COVID-19 precautions are no longer necessary. 

And, as with last spring, the district will not require students to wear uniforms this year. The benefits of uniforms in K-12 public schools is mostly anecdotal and several studies have shown uniforms have no effect on performance. Four of my five children have had to wear uniforms — none liked it and all now eschew collared T-shirts. 

But the point that is perhaps most controversial, and probably why I was asked my thoughts by News 5, is that masks will be required of everyone inside APS buildings. 

Yes, we are all tired of masks. And, yes, as a fully vaccinated person, I have enjoyed a dramatic reduction in mask wearing this summer.  

However, I unequivocally support Akron Public Schools’ decision to require masks to be worn indoors.  

The delta variant of COVID-19, which is far more transmissible than other variants, is spreading rapidly in the United States. And it is 2.5 times more likely to infect children than the original variant. 

Currently, vaccination is not required of Akron Public Schools’ employees. In addition, we do not yet have a COVID vaccine for children under the age of 12. As soon as one becomes available, hopefully most eligible children will receive it. You can be certain that my youngest two will. 

But until then, it is important to protect all children from unnecessary exposure to COVID-19. This is especially true of children like my daughter Lyra who has Down syndrome. There is now a large body of evidence that people with intellectual disabilities are significantly more vulnerable to the effects, including death, of COVID-19. 

And yet I want Lyra to attend school in person precisely because her intellectual disability made last year’s all-remote learning little better than a disaster.  

The benefit of mask wearing in schools has been widely reported, including in this New York Times piece from July 29: 

“A study of schools conducting full in-person instruction in Missouri, where mask use was required and 73 percent of schools enforced distances of three to six feet between students, found that secondary transmission was rare.”  

Supporting our schools means being willing to honestly respond to decisions the district makes. Last year I was highly critical of how long Akron Public Schools remained 100% remote in light of the evidence that schools are low-transmission centers when appropriate safety protocols are followed. 

Heading into the 2021-22 school year, I heartily applaud Akron Public Schools for making the wise decision to reopen for in-person instruction while putting in place all reasonable and responsible measures to ensure the safety of everyone in the buildings. 

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on August 8, 2021.

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 of masking up, it felt odd not to wear one — for about 10 minutes.  

Life will never be as it was before the pandemic. Some things we’ll miss, while others are best left in the annals of history. That’s the nature of change. But I was mistaken in thinking that the world was settling into a post-pandemic new normal. 

In early summer, the delta variant swept across the globe, and it didn’t skip the United States. By late July, as families prepared to send students back to school, COVID outbreaks once again began to rise.  

Today, COVID infection and hospitalization rates in much of the nation are now as high as they were last December. Masks are back, as they should be. 

When K-12 schools in Summit County opened this fall, only one district, Akron Public Schools, had a mask mandate for everyone in the buildings. That number quickly rose to 11 of the county’s 17 districts after exposure-caused quarantines kept many staff members and students at home. 

Instead of the pandemic ending, we must now protect ourselves against perpetual rounds of new COVID variants until enough humans on this planet have received the COVID vaccine to achieve herd immunity. 

While traveling last month from Lima to Machu Picchu, I found that Peruvians take COVID very seriously, and for good reason.  

While many things in America’s health care system need improvement, Peru’s seems almost nonexistent by comparison. When the original variant of COVID swept through Peru, hospital beds were hard to come by, and oxygen even more so — a plight common in many developing countries. 

When compared to 205 other countries, Peru ranks No. 1 in COVID deaths per capita, with 6,114 per million. That is more than double the COVID death rate of Hungary, the second country on the list.  

COVID vaccines first became available in Peru in May and, as of August, only citizens ages 39 or older who lived in urban areas were eligible to receive them due to limited supplies. 

All Peruvians, except in remote mountain villages, wear double masks both indoors and outside. On public transit, including the buses and trains I took, face shields are required along with double masks.  

And hand sanitizer use is ubiquitous. Not only is it required before entering any premise, most people wear sanitizer bottles strung on lanyard necklaces. They spray their hands, their masks, their clothes and each other with unabashed regularity. 

Peru has no anti-vaxxer or safety-protocol-resistance movements. The first months of the original COVID outbreak devastated the country. From that lived experience, Peruvians understand that the risks of contracting COVID are far and away greater than any risks associated with vaccination.  

Does the luxurious belief that our health care system will save us should we contract COVID (a notion no Peruvian can entertain) contribute to some Americans’ entitled resistance to following safety protocols and getting vaccinated? 

The only way this pandemic will stop disrupting daily life, including economically, is for widespread vaccination to occur. Globally, this means rich nations like ours need to aggressively obtain and dispense vaccines in developing countries from which new variants will otherwise continue to arise and spread. 

Meanwhile, back in the States, 179 million of Americans have been vaccinated with so few significant side effects as to be statistically zero. But in a country of 331 million, the U.S. vaccination rate is only 54%, which is not high enough to neutralize a disease. 

Like many, I have loved ones who are vaccine hesitaters. Last spring, my three eldest sons wanted to stage an intervention for someone in our family who is a hesitater with an autoimmune disorder. But I doubt that would have persuaded this person to get a COVID vaccine. 

Instead, our loved one finally got vaccinated because someone they respected kept admonishing everyone to do so: the pastor at their church.  

This year it was masks off in May, back on in September, but I don’t think it’ll become a regular seasonal switcheroo. Remember when white shoes and shorts were fashionable only between Memorial Day and Labor Day? If you broke that rule, however, nobody died. The same is not true of COVID safety protocols. Just ask any Peruvian. 

Mask mandates likely will remain in place all year for the foreseeable future unless the world comes together to achieve widespread vaccination rates and thereby herd immunity for COVID-19.  

Which new normal do we want?  

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, September 26, 2021.

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 to Tucson, Arizona, where I was living.

Spending several days on a bus was mostly unmemorable. What stands out is the music of Kate Bush, an English artist with a haunting voice. I listened to her album “The Dreaming” nonstop on my Sony Walkman while reading “Christine” by Stephen King.

In the nearly 40 since, whenever I hear Bush’s music, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I immediately think of the novel’s ’58 Plymouth Fury possessing its owner and terrorizing the townspeople of Rockbridge, California. It’s creepy.

Music competes only with fragrance in its power to instantly transport a person to times past. That’s why couples fondly recount “their song,” one that reminds them of when they first fell in love, and class reunions play tunes that were popular the year the celebrants graduated.

The Beatles canon takes me back to my earliest childhood memories living in inner-city Chicago with my young dad and his hippy entourage. Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” conjures the darkened high school gymnasium where my friends and I hoped to be in the arms of our crushes for that 12-minute slow dance.

“Time” by The Alan Parsons Project makes me think of the sun and sand on Lake Michigan Beach where, in the summer of 1982, I unfortunately thought it a good idea to work on a tan.

Long ago on NPR, I heard a story in which a man rued the fact that he listened to pop music as a teen while his wife grew up with parents who played jazz, blues and classical music. As a result, he knew all the words to “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” whereas his wife could sing along with Billie Holiday’s entire catalog.

The takeaway was to give some consideration to the music played when children’s brains are at their peak memory-building capacity. While I’ve never specifically curated the music we listen to, my kids have grown up exposed to far more musical genres than the poor man in that NPR piece.

In 2007, soon after I left my three sons’ father, I took them on a cross-country road trip. We brought with us just four CDs, including a mix made by a friend. That limited musical repertoire resonates with each of us to this day. Recently, my son Hugo, who is now 24, told me one of the songs, Emmylou Harris’s beautifully depressing “Red Dirt Girl,” marks the end of childhood for him.

After the road trip, the boys and I had a few hardscrabble years. I discovered Damien Rice’s album “O,” which I exclusively played in the car for months. As odd as it may sound, Rice’s plaintive melodies buoyed my boys and me as they acknowledged that life is sometimes complicated.

This past spring, we watched an extended live performance of the album’s song “I Remember” and remember we did.

This has been quite a year for the irrepressible Jon Batiste, the music director and band leader for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He’s won an Oscar, Golden Globe and Critic’s Choice Award for composing the music to Pixar’s fun, yet serious film “Soul.”

But it is Batiste’s latest album, “We Are,” that scores with my youngest children, Leif and Lyra. The tracks are a joyful mix with a dash of sadness that pull from jazz, pop, funk, rap, gospel, Motown and classical music.

My two littles have been attending day camp in northern Michigan since mid-June. At 8:15 each weekday, as we pile into my car, 8-year-old Lyra cries out, “Our friend, Jon Batiste!” while 11-year-old Leif connects my iPhone to the car and starts our friend’s album.

When the New Orleans Gospel Soul Children choir launches into the title song’s refrain, “We are the golden ones, we are the chosen ones,” Lyra is right there with them belting it out in the back seat.

When I pick the children up at the end of the day, Leif immediately restarts Batiste’s album. We’ve now listened to it so many times, Leif’s begun analyzing the structure of the songs.

“I like that bit, you know like video-game music bits, that’s in the song ‘WHATCHUTALKINBOUT,’ ” he recently told me, accurately referring to the recognizable sound of 8-bit music found in retro video games. I hadn’t noticed until he pointed it out to me.

There’s no way to know how Leif or Lyra will recall “We Are” and what memories it will one day evoke in them. But that they will, I have no doubt. And what splendorous music to have lodged in one’s long-term memory.

My children and I cannot recommend enough giving the album, along with Batiste’s recent interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, a listen.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on July 25, 2021.

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 such diagnoses, including deafness, dwarfism, autism and more. Repeatedly, parents recount struggling over difficult choices, such as cochlear implants, medical bone breaking or even if children should remain in the home with their families.

I read Solomon’s book in 2012 soon after my 8-year-old daughter, Lyra, was born with Down syndrome (DS). And while I read the chapter on DS closely and repeatedly, what struck me most was how parents throughout the book must mind the boundary where helping can cross over to harming.

“Fixing is the illness model; acceptance is the identity model; which way any family goes reflects their assumptions and resources,” writes Solomon. And while I insist on people-first language — Lyra is a girl who has DS, she’s not a “Down syndrome girl” — it’s also true that having an extra 21st chromosome literally affects every cell in her body.

Down syndrome causes intellectual disabilities and often other comorbidities (Lyra, for instance, was born with bilateral cataracts). As her mother, I have tried to help her maximize her potential so she can live her life to the fullest and pursue whatever dreams she may have.

But what if, in my efforts to support her, I lose sight of the fact that DS is an essential part of who she is? And if I do, is it because I have a problem accepting who she is? As with some parents in Solomon’s book, what if who I expect Lyra to be fundamentally conflicts with who she is and will be?

The weeks following Lyra’s birth were filled with myriad medical appointments. I also anxiously tried to learn all I could about DS and early interventions. One afternoon, just days after her birth, I held my baby in my arms and cried over her diagnosis. And then I carried on.

During Lyra’s first five years of life, I took her to weekly speech, physical and occupational therapy sessions. I patched her eyes to help her see better, I squeezed her into spandex therapy pants to help her move better. I used a series of straws that were successively harder to suck on to train her tongue to stay properly placed in her mouth.

Lyra’s father and I soon described our daughter as high functioning, a term I’d never considered with any of my other children. I now wonder if that term, which is falling out of use in many disability communities, doesn’t belie an attachment to typical accomplishments.

Just prior to her entering kindergarten, one of Lyra’s preschool teachers told me she was glad we’d advocated for Lyra to be in a general education classroom. The difference, however, between preschool and kindergarten is substantial.

Lyra struggled. We had her repeat kindergarten in the 2019-2020 school year and when we met with her educational team in February 2020, everyone agreed that Lyra would be first-grade ready the following fall.

The next month, COVID-19 stopped everything. As hard as remote learning was for most students, it was particularly devastating for those with disabilities like Lyra’s. The full impact of a year without in-person schooling is hard to assess, but it’s clear Lyra regressed.

As a result, I have been obsessively ruminating: Am I doing enough to help my daughter? Or do I need to adjust my expectations? The answer is never clear and it’s probably a little of both.

When Akron Public Schools finally reopened in March, Lyra was elated to return. At least for the first weeks. In early April, she began telling me she didn’t want to go to school. At the same time, her educators struggled to get her to work or engage in classroom activities.

After the school year ended, Lyra’s father and I had a candid discussion with Lyra’s intervention specialist. This fall, Lyra will attend a multiple disability classroom where she’ll have fewer classmates and worksheets, less pressure and more one-on-one instruction. We hope this will help Lyra to love school once again while catching up on what she’s not fully mastered.

There is much about Lyra that is easy to celebrate and rejoice in. But it’s also easy to want her to succeed on our terms — to flourish in school, to attend one of the many college programs springing up for people with intellectual disabilities, to find acceptance in the world, to let her voice be heard far and wide.

And it’s not wrong to want that. But sometimes it’s hard to know if our goals for her may not actually limit all she is and can be. If I pray for anything, it’s for discernment.

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 moments in their lives, that Jordan’s parents consented to have their daughter’s organs donated.  

“It may sound strange, but donating Jordan’s organs gave us some happiness in the midst of our grief,” Lynne told me when we recently spoke.  

Organs donated from people who have overdosed can be profused, or flushed clean, of any residual toxins. However, as with all organ donation, donors who’ve overdosed must be in a hospital and ventilated when declared brain dead. 

These and other rigorous requirements all but guarantee that the deaths of organ donors are traumatic in nature.  

While some donors’ wishes are documented on their driver’s licenses or living wills, other times they are not, and families already confronted with extreme loss must quickly decide whether to allow the donation of their loved one’s organs. 

Lynne was no stranger to the process of organ donation, which she had discussed at length with Jordan and her other daughter, MaKenna. For five years, Lynne worked as an administrative assistant for a cardiothoracic transplant surgeon. As such, she came to know many organ recipients and, therefore, understood the value of donating her daughter’s organs. 

“Even in that moment, you find a place to have something good come from your loved one,” Lynne said. 

On Christmas Eve 2014, just a little over a month after Jordan’s death, Lynne learned that Jordan’s heart, liver, pancreas and one kidney had gone to four men in two states ranging from ages 48 to 71.  

At six months post-donation, recipients and donor families are given the option to contact one another, but only after agreed upon by both parties, which Lynne did. 

She received a letter from the recipient of Jordan’s kidney and wrote him back immediately. And then, for whatever reason, he did not write again for five more years. 

Roman Dann received Jordan’s liver and he, too, wrote to Lynne as soon as he could and the two regularly corresponded. However, Roman was hesitant to meet. Then, several months later while at her job at Chagrin Falls Family Health Center, Lynne helped a patient from the same town and with the same last name as Jordan’s liver recipient. 

“Are you related to a man named Roman?” she asked him. 

“That’s my brother,” he replied. 

“I’m Jordan’s mom,” Lynne told him, and they both burst into tears and hugged before going into the hallway to sit on a bench and talk. Roman felt that was the sign he needed and arranged to meet Lynne. Since then, Lynne and Roman have regularly visited Jordan’s grave together, including on Jordan’s birthday and Roman’s transplant anniversary. 

“Roman has taken such good care of Jordan,” Lynne told me.

On one hand, she means Jordan’s physical essence, her liver that gives Roman life. But mostly it’s in a larger, more spiritual sense.

“Roman said he’s always known that Jordan’s writing this story,” Lynne told me. “He and his wife are now like family to me.” 

In my last column, I described my childhood best friend, Kelly O’Brien Steverson, who is alive today because of a liver and kidney transplant she received from a woman about our age. At the time that the organs became available, there were terrible snowstorms in Indianapolis where Kelly had been in an ICU on continuous kidney filtration for four months. She imagines her donor likely died in a car accident.

But Kelly doesn’t know for sure because she’s not yet decided to contact the donor family. It is common for recipients to feel not only overwhelming gratitude for the organs that saved their lives, but also no small measure of guilt that someone else’s death provided them the opportunity to live. 

Lynne works with a donor family support group through Lifebanc, the organization responsible for facilitating organ donation in Northeast Ohio. Members of other donor families often tell Lynne they’ve not heard from the recipients of their loved one’s organs and hope that they will. For many donor families, hearing from recipients is something they eagerly await.  

After I spoke with Lynne, I called Kelly and told her this.  

“I just don’t know what to say,” Kelly told me.

I told her that Lynne said even a store-bought thank-you card with a signature means the world to donor families.  

It’s important to talk with your family about organ and tissue donation. Having a loved one die in a traumatic way is nothing we ever hope happens, and for most of us it won’t. 

But if, God forbid, it does, there is some measure of comfort in knowing that out of tragedy other lives may be saved.  

“I miss Jordan terribly,” Lynne told me, “but through her gifts of happy people living life, it gives me gratitude knowing something good has come from my loved one. It’s a legacy they leave behind.” 

To register to be an organ, eye and tissue donor, go to this Lifebanc link.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on June 13, 2021.

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 not limited to, free access to computers and the internet, as well as programming for all ages, from babies to seniors.

And, importantly, public libraries have become the de facto after-school program and day care for many latchkey children nationwide.

Many lifelong Ohioans may not know that our libraries overwhelmingly provide better services and materials than those in other states. I hear this frequently from people new to Ohio.

Funding is key to why we have such great library systems in Ohio. It allows for the creation and continuation of another anchor in our communities, along with schools, places of worship and businesses.

And within these anchors are dedicated librarians and staff. I sometimes wonder if they all must pass an empathy and kindness test before being hired.

My second son, Hugo, now 24, attended middle school at Miller South School for the Arts. After school most days, he carried his backpack loaded with books and his saxophone case down a hill and across a field to the nearby Vernon Odom library branch.

During the years Hugo was at Miller South, I had three kids in three different schools. The commute took over an hour, twice daily. Mornings were harried as I tried to get everyone to school on time. Afternoons, not so much because Hugo would safely work and play with friends at the library until I arrived.

When I’d walk in to find Hugo, I observed librarians taking their nonfunded mission seriously, providing extra programming, leading book clubs, holding craft events, game days and, once a week, showing movies to the Miller South students who filled the building.

One Mother’s Day, Hugo gave me a bar of lavender soap he’d made at the library. Not only did I love receiving a gift Hugo had handcrafted, he felt excited the way one does when giving the perfect gift.

A few years ago, the Akron-Summit County Public Library system partnered with the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank to provide nutritious snacks for the after-school kids, some of whom eat their school lunches as early as 10:30 in the morning. This program was necessarily paused during the pandemic, but according to the library system’s executive director, Pam Hickson-Stevenson, it is expected to resume when possible.

Since 2003, the branch we’ve most patronized is at Highland Square. The librarians know my five children by name and frequently ask me about my adult children.

One of my favorite librarians at the Highland Square branch was a woman named Amy. She had short dark hair, one of those Demi Moore gravelly voices and a wry sense of humor.

Several years ago, I noticed the display case near the entrance was filled with photos of Amy and her son. When I asked another librarian about it, she said, “Well, I don’t know if you know, but Amy lost her son not long ago.”

I did know. He was the light of her life, which she took after cancer stole him from her. I ugly-cried right there at the checkout desk while the librarian, who knew Amy far better than I did and who was still processing her own grief, comforted me.

Last fall, I took my graduate students from the University of Akron to the Main Library to show them how to do grant research using the Foundation Center directory, which is an excellent web-based service. But the website is not free, that is, except at Ohio libraries, which pay a fee to make it available to patrons without charge.

However, the website was not working that night, something two very concerned librarians determined after I’d alerted them that we were unable to log on. Fortunately, I’d also invited a professional grant writer to talk with my students, so the class was not a wash.

Then, for the next two weeks, I received regular updates from librarians until the website was once again available, each call peppered with unnecessary apologies.

On the ballot in the upcoming May 4 election is a renewal of the levy that accounts for 55% of Akron-Summit County Public Library’s funding. Without passage of the levy, it’s safe to assume that jobs would be eliminated, hours of operation would be slashed and, with such drastic cuts, after-school hours and programming would shrink.

Because the levy is a renewal, it will not increase taxes. (Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d give the library a bump up in its funding.)

The levy costs homeowners $4.21 per $100,000 in home value per month. That’s basement-bargain pricing for a priceless resource in our communities. Please vote yes to the continued funding of our amazing library system.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on April 18, 2021.

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 regeneration of life after it lay dormant for several months. And how fast it happens! Just two columns ago, I was reveling in all the snow shoveling I was doing; now I’m delighted by crocuses popping up daily.

This year, springtime has me giddier than ever. COVID vaccines are making their way into people’s arms and even before we reach herd immunity, warmer weather will allow outdoor, socially distanced get-togethers to occur.

Like so many, I miss being with friends. FaceTime and text messages cannot replace sharing an evening with others. When has anyone belly laughed in a video conference? I sure haven’t.

Almost a year to the day that they closed, Akron Public Schools reopened for full-time, in-person instruction. My 8-year-old, Lyra, acts like every school day is Christmas, so glad is she to be back with her teachers and friends.

While seeing the light at the end of this long pandemic tunnel, I don’t expect life will pick up exactly where it was when things stopped a year ago. And that can be a good thing.

Hands down, the best change for Lyra is that she gained her very own friend for the first time. Her brother Leif’s friends always have accepted Lyra fully. That said, they are still primarily Leif’s friends.

Lyra met 10-year-old Jocelyn Burkholder when they were in the same Dancing Unlimited class at Akron Children’s Hospital a couple of years ago, but they didn’t really interact. The classes, run by Kellie Lightfoot, are a joy-filled hour of structured chaos where Lyra enjoys watching herself dance in the mirror behind the barre while ignoring all other children.

Last August, when we learned the schools wouldn’t reopen for in-person learning, Jocelyn joined the educational pod we created at our home. Now, after seven months of working together with the teacher we hired, Jocie and Lyra have their own true friendship. I know this because they squabble and make up just like all childhood friends do.

Furthermore, I don’t doubt that Lyra will visit Jocie at her house when it’s possible. Only one family has ever offered to have Lyra over without another adult from our family. I understand why:Most parents are unsure of how to treat a child with Down syndrome.

But parents of children with disabilities know exactly what to do with another child with a disability. (Answer: pretty much the same thing you do with typical kids.)

It is clear this past year has permanently altered what education will look like in America. For one thing, remote learning is here to stay in some form or fashion. While it’s important for kids to be physically in a classroom, there are other times when remote learning can augment or replace in-person learning. If a child cannot be at school for whatever reason, that no longer means education must stop.

Secondly, because most students need help regaining what was lost this past year, strides are being made to help struggling students with the support of federal funding. Many schools will undoubtedly create new infrastructures to solve educational problems that have held back students of all backgrounds for far too long.

There’s also talk of better mental health resources, buildings and funding for public K-12 schools. This is fabulous for there is no better way to address a variety of systemic problems in any country than by providing equal access to quality education.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a recent column on Bangladesh, a country that Henry Kissinger called a “basket case” 50 years ago. Today, Bangladesh has a robust economy and its citizens are vastly healthier. How did they do this? By providing accessible education to all children, including girls.

It’s often hard to get politicians to support substantive, proven plans to address systemic problems if the results are not immediate. But the COVID-19 global pandemic has been a cataclysmic event that refuses to allow anyone to just carry on. And therein lies the opportunity to re-create many things anew and better.

Am I glad there was a pandemic? Of course not. But since there was, how can we address the systemic problems it exposed while fixing the new ones it caused, thereby creating a better future for everyone?

Personally, I no longer take for granted many things I once did. Today, as COVID risks recede and positive changes are hopefully embraced, things are shaping up for a most promising spring and beyond.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on March 18, 2021.

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 the foundation for future ones.

A childhood friend of mine who died of leukemia in the 1970s would likely survive today. Life expectancy for people with Down syndrome has increased more than twofold since 1980 because of the development of treatments for conditions, such as heart and gastrointestinal, that afflict the entire population.

But, of course, there are no guarantees.

Two weekends ago, we learned that a family at the school of our 11-year-old son, Leif, had been involved in an accident. The student’s father had died and the student herself did not survive her injuries and was removed from life support after organ donation.

The child’s only sibling is in Leif’s class and the school took great care when discussing the tragedy with the classmates. Afterward, Leif asked me for a hug, but seemed otherwise unaffected. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t feel real to him. But that may change, particularly when full-time, in-person instruction resumes.

In an effort to be supportive, Leif told his classmate during a virtual discussion that he knows how she feels, reminding me of the saying, “Better the friend who says the wrong thing than those who say nothing at all.” That afternoon, I told Leif there’s no way he can know what it’s like to lose a parent and sibling in the same week.

The fact is, none of us know how someone who is grieving feels, even if we ourselves have experienced great loss. Grief is unique to each person and each loss.

I don’t pretend to have the answers to fundamental existential questions, but having those answers isn’t necessary. I am always willing to honestly discuss anything with my children, even when the topics become complex.

To gauge what a young child is ready to learn, I respond to inquiries such as, “Where do babies come from? What happens when we die?” by asking, “What do you think?” Leif is the only one who’s ever retorted, “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you!”

Leif’s next older brother, Jules, who also went to the same school, called him from college after the deaths and they talked at length. My second son, Hugo, told me he’s glad we openly discuss mortality in our family. He feels it makes living easier.

If there is a memorial service for this father and child, we will certainly attend, even if, due to the pandemic, it’s months from now. It is important to show up for survivors, both at a funeral and in the months to follow.

The last funeral all five of my children and I attended was for a dear friend’s mother just before Ohio went into lockdown. My adult children have been to enough funerals to know what to do and, perhaps more importantly, what not to do when they have to plan mine. Which, of course, we’ve discussed.

And that is the natural order of things: children burying parents who have lived full and long lives. Laying a child to rest is not.

But Death obeys no rules. Why did my children and I not die 20 years ago when our car slid across five busy lanes of interstate traffic just south of Chicago? And why did this family experience unfathomable tragedy on a simple outing?

In 2016, The Guardian published a piece by David Ferguson in which he describes grief with poignant accuracy. He writes, “There’s nothing good that comes out of the death of someone you love, but I have learned this: the magnitude and bottomlessness of the pain you feel is a testament to the love you shared.”

And he pines for the Victorian traditions of black ribbons being placed on front doors and worn as armbands and hat bands as “a signal to the world that says: ‘Be kind to me. I am in pain.’”

The only way through grief, which is not a sprint, but a marathon, is to grieve. And as communities, we need to be gentle to those making that journey. Never expect nor insist they follow any preordained protocols while experiencing the rawest of all emotions.

Be kind to them, they are in pain.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on March 7, 2021.

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 my stepmom and married a woman with three young daughters who essentially replaced us. In the 27 years I’ve been a mother, my father’s never visited. Any interaction with him required my initiation and follow-through, ultimately failing a cost-benefit analysis.

My stepmom, on the other hand, has remained constant in her children’s lives. She’s celebrated our weddings and supported our divorces. She came to my home and took care of me every time I had a baby. She’s the only grandmother my older boys grew up with, a role she’s embraced so fully, it’s a large part of her identity.

There are no guarantees that any relationship will be permanent. But it is more assured between parents and children than between lovers. Nobody knows anyone as well as a child knows a parent. And, when fully committed, a parent cannot be laid more emotionally bare than by a child.

A committed parent shows up in both easy and difficult times, holding their seat as the one in charge while empathizing with children’s often confusing emotions. “How to Talk so Your Children Will Listen,” which was published in 1982, remains the parenting bible on how to do this.

Young children and teenagers alike often seem irrational. Most school mornings my 10-year-old, Leif, ignores my calls to get up and is whiny and angry when I make him do so, even though he’s slept for nine or more hours. “Get your butt down here right now!” I’ve yelled more times than I wish to admit.

Yet yelling never works. What does is going to his room to comfort him, stroke his head, give him a hug and tell him he’s going to have a good day. That’s not always possible, however, as there are breakfasts and lunches to make and another child, along with myself, to get ready.

When he was a teenager, my second son, Hugo, once shouted at me, “I only have one problem and it’s you!” For years, he directed what felt like endless anger at me. But as unpleasant as it was to live with, I tried not to take it personally.

“Why is he always so hard on you?” my partner, Max, asked after Hugo had marched into our bedroom and told me all the ways I had disappointed him on his 16th birthday. I believed then, as I do now, that Hugo regularly tested my commitment to him from a place of pain over his father, who never made an effort to have a relationship with him.

Hugo’s now 24 and we talk daily. We’ve started our own two-person book club after he recently texted, “For whatever reason, I’m craving some depressing, overly descriptive and nature-focused literature. Do you have any Russian authors to recommend?” We’re starting with Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls.”

But what of the anger of an adult child? One who never gave me trouble before now claims that if he is to have a relationship with me, he needs me to understand him. He’s angry I didn’t intuit what he is going through. Of all my qualities, psychic powers are not on the list.

Regardless, “If I am going to have a relationship with you” are words that cut my heart to the quick. Emotions are neither right nor wrong, they just are, and I’ve always treated them as such. But it isn’t always a two-way street that, certainly not with this son at this time.

It reminds me of young baby boomers stating that they needed to go find themselves, to which their greatest-generation parents scratched their heads and said, “Huh?” And that somehow made the young boomers angry.

On a walk last month, my son talked and I listened. When I was a child, I felt hot shame whenever I disappointed an adult I respected. It felt similar listening to my son’s complaints.

There is nothing, short of causing harm, that I won’t accept of my children, which I’ve made clear in word and action all their lives. Yet this child, in an effort to find his way, feels he must push away from me. I don’t know what I could’ve done differently, but my love for him remains steadfast.

There are many benefits in being the mother of a large family, including seeing children turn out so differently from one another that it’s impossible to credit or blame myself too much for who they become. But also, there are witnesses, people who have known each other all their lives.

“He’s being really selfish right now and you need to set boundaries with him,” my two other adult sons recently told me. And they reminded me, as they have throughout their brother’s life, that he’s not the angel I think he is.

“But he’s my child,” I told them, a relationship they cannot yet understand as they are not yet parents.

One summer years ago, I told my father, mother and stepmom about things that they did in my childhood that painfully echoed into my adulthood. My father and mother became angry and stopped talking to me, neither a surprise nor a disappointment. My stepmom wept as I spoke and apologized with a simple sincerity, making no excuses.

Her response, meaningful to me then, is an example for me now.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, February 7, 2021.