November 2025 – Whoopsie Piggle

Leif, Max, Lyra and Holly at Akron’s Oct. 18 No Kings Day protest.

No sooner had I finished my last column extolling the beauty of autumn in our part of the world, when the weather shifted. Highs went from upper 60s to low 50s, still pleasant but indicating the waning days until winter arrives. For those with yards and gardens, it’s time to put away patio furniture, bring in plants that will winter over, blow leaves and generally close down outdoor living spaces enjoyed during milder months.

Located at the end of the shared driveway of my two homes, a garage stores all the yard equipment ‒ a mower, blowers for leaves and snow, rakes, shovels and more. And when I rented out my second home last spring after completing major renovations, I hauled everything my adult sons had stored in the basement of my rental out to the garage. Boxes, rugs, an artist’s easel and more were urgently and inefficiently tossed inside.

With winter coming, order in the garage could no longer wait and I made an offer to my younger children’s father, Max. If he helped organize my garage one weekend, I’d do the same for him the following one. “No more than two hours on Saturday,” I told him. He was there all day. We met early at Home Depot where I bought shelves that Max and our son, Leif, loaded into Max’s minivan and we caravanned to my homes.

A 4-by-8-foot Border’s bookstore table Max and I had purchased when the chain closed in 2011 sat in the garage where I wanted to put the shelves. Made of solid oak, the underside of the table was reinforced with metal so it could hold stacks upon stacks of books. While sturdy enough for towers of boxes and rows of flower pots, the table wasn’t as functional for storage as shelves. Out to the devil strip it went, and I offered it for free on Facebook Marketplace. A young couple with a 2-year-old child claimed it. To my delight, the woman later sent a photo of the table in their dining room, writing that it will be the place of many meals, artwork and LEGO projects.

By day’s end, the garage was cleaner and better organized than it has been in the 20-some years I’ve owned it. The following Saturday, I returned the favor. When Max and I broke up, he bought a house in Fairlawn specifically to live in the Copley school district. Our daughter, who has Down syndrome, is thriving in the SAIL program at Akron schools, but if that were ever to change, we wanted to ensure the best possible alternative.

I was reminded that day of Max’s ability to imagine how useful almost anything can be. He had three garbage bins filled with empty mulch bags. When I asked why, he said to clean dog waste from his yard. Max and I have a week-on-week-off custody schedule and our son’s German shepherd, Otto, goes with the children to both homes. It would take more than a year to use all the mulch bags as Max intended. I told him to pitch them.

“That’s why I want you here, to help me make these decisions,” Max told me. Leif and I took four van loads of trash and cardboard to Fairlawn’s waste and recycling center. And when I left that day, I took a car laden with donations to a Goodwill collection center.

Max and I were friends for several years before we dated, which perhaps is why we’ve found it possible to remain friends after deciding to end our romantic relationship. This was not the case with the father of my first three children, who disappeared from all of our lives not long after the divorce was finalized.

Parenting well is a terrific responsibility made far easier with a co-parent, particularly when both parents approach the job as similarly as we do. Our two children come to my home after school every day and Max picks them up after work when it’s his custodial week. Sometimes he stays for dinner; other times he takes all of us out. Max and I would see each other so frequently if we didn’t have children, but we do. And I am grateful for the relationship we have.

I recently took our two children to their pediatrician for their annual physicals. As always, she asked Leif many questions while I sat and listened. His education, activities and social life are equally and easily supported by both his parents.

“Do you know how lucky you are that your parents get along?” the pediatrician asked Leif.

When he said he did, she underscored just how lucky he is. Having lived the opposite, I know how lucky we all are to remain a functional family even though we now live in separate homes.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, November 9, 2025.

“They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;
But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.”

Years ago, I gave each of my children $5 once they’d memorized Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley’s homage to autumn, “When the Frost Is on the Punkin.” The verses are my delightful ear worm every fall. Like a seasonal soundtrack, the lines randomly erupt from my lips in the car, on walks or wherever I take in the sights and smells of the season.

This past spring, when it seemed it would rain forever, my yard was fenced in to keep neighborhood dogs from leaving me unwanted presents while also keeping my dogs from dining at a buffet of cat food one neighbor daily places on the ground. Though installed as a matter of function, the fence immediately gave the feeling of outdoor “rooms” in my now private yard.

I didn’t birth several sons because of how much labor they could one day provide, but it’s worked out nicely. My adult children returned home Memorial Day Weekend to paint fences both new and old, refinish patio furniture, divide and reposition hydrangeas along the new fence and plant new trees and bushes, including a genie magnolia. The sodden spring ensured everything we planted was happily established by mid-summer when drought set in.

Every morning, I meet up with other dog owners in a park where we walk two miles with our eager pups. Once the drought hit, I spent half an hour watering the gardens after each morning walk. And while the drought prevented the dogs from becoming muddy, it turned the trails into fine dust that water alone cannot wash off their fur. I stationed a vat of dog shampoo next to my hose in July and my three dogs quickly became accustomed to the post-walk wash drill.

As happens most years, we had a brief foretaste of autumn at the end of August before the heat of summer returned. The first weeks of September, I arose at dawn to get the dogs to the park before the sun yanked the mercury up. Yet because it was September, the days grew shorter and the last heat wave of the year could not settle in for an extended stay.

When the heat lifted and autumn truly began, the last stanza of Riley’s poem, where he declares that if angels were to come a-calling he’d want them to arrive this time of year, resonated as it always does. Tree leaves first hint at, then explode in a color show. Sunlight becomes golden; nights are cool enough to leave the windows open. If you kept up with watering, many flowers continue to bloom, particularly dahlias and zinnias. All of this makes it a joy to be outside for any reason and I’ve served more meals on my patio in the past five weeks than I had in the prior five months.

The first autumn I lived in Akron, it snowed on Oct. 4. I remember standing in my house slack-jawed at the sight of flurries outside. More than two decades later, winter consistently arrives later and leaves earlier. Climate change is a fact with horrible consequences, which is why I feel a twinge of shame for relishing the mild weather that now gloriously extends well into October.

My 15-year-old son, Leif, has loved Halloween from the moment he was old enough to understand it. Every year, he’d want to set up Halloween decorations as soon as school started but I’d make him wait until the last weekend of September. This year, I hung a glittery skull face on the front door but it seems Leif has outgrown his passion for all things Halloween − except dressing up in a costume. Plastic skeletons, ghouls and zombie flamingos remain boxed up in the garage while chainmail and swords go on the boy.

Everything transitions.

However glorious and temperate autumn is, its poignant beauty heralds the coming death, albeit temporary, of garden, leaves and grass. Soon we will stay mostly indoors, where some of us will eagerly plan next year’s gardens. Snow will arrive, bringing its own sparkling beauty, blanketing the earth while she rests, collecting energy for spring and all that it, too, brings.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, October 26, 2025.

Month: November 2025

Maintaining a functional family after parents break up makes co-parenting easier

‘When the frost is on the punkin,’ enjoy the sights and smells of autumn

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