The key to a healthy family with grown kids: Showing up

July 29, 2026 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

I once knew two women whose husbands were brothers and, on the first weekend of each month, the two families and the husbands’ parents would take turns working at one of the young couples’ homes or that of the parents. Young cousins played while older cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents either worked on a project or helped cook meals for everyone.

I easily imagined one day doing the same with my own sons when they were grown.

The primary job of parents, however, is to raise children who will fledge and become self-sufficient adults who pursue their own aspirations, not those of their parents, wherever that may take them. My first two children left Ohio to pursue college degrees in the arts, while my third child went to Columbus, where they changed majors at OSU multiple times.

During COVID, all my children returned to Akron. For several months, marked more by camaraderie than lockdown stress, we again all lived together. Then, one by one, they resumed their journeys in life. My eldest went to Texas for graduate school, after which he took a job in D.C. My second son followed his girlfriend west, eventually settling in Wisconsin, while my third child left for Columbus and many other places.

But in my heart, I not-so-secretly hoped that, like so many people raised in Akron, when my children had children of their own, they would return home. For a few months last year, my deepest wish looked as though it would come true. While visiting to help with projects at my home, my son Hugo and his wife, Claudia, announced they were expecting a baby and also looking for work in Northeast Ohio. I immediately cried.

“Would you rather win the lottery,” my fourth and youngest son asked me, “or have Hugo and Claudia move back?”

“No contest. Have them move home,” I replied.

I’m sad to confirm that the reports of a flat job market − low firing rates coupled with low hiring rates − are all too true. After many months of job hunting, my son and daughter-in-law didn’t find jobs, or even any promising leads, in Northeast Ohio. And so, with an incoming baby and other good reasons to move out of their apartment, the couple bought a house in Wisconsin.

Just weeks before the baby’s due date, I stayed with Hugo and Claudia in their new home and worked with my son in a yard that’s all his. Because the housing market is incredibly tight in Madison (the world headquarters of Epic, a medical software company), the previous owners had done little to spruce up the place, which had been a rental, before putting it on the market.

Like the descendants of farmers that we are, Hugo and I grabbed shovels and started digging. We tore out an overgrown, trash-collecting privet bush, pulled up yards of sprouting fat roots from a tree that no longer exists and planted hydrangea bushes.

The work was deeply satisfying, but there was too much to accomplish in just one visit, including the removal of an overwhelming number of old bush stumps. I therefore proposed that our family descend upon the young couple July Fourth weekend. The baby would be about a month old, everyone would have holiday time off from work and, with four healthy men working together, a landscaped yard was within reach.

Holly Christensen's family members wait for their turn to hold their newest member, Flora. — Waiting in line to hold our newest family member, Baby Flora.

On July 2, my eldest son flew to Madison from D.C., while my youngest two children, their father, Max (my ex, but still family), and I arrived in a minivan loaded with goodies for our family’s new star.

For weeks beforehand, my daughter, Lyra, excitedly talked about going to Madison to see “Baby Florence.” If we’d have let her, Lyra would have held her niece all weekend, but she was up against a deep bench of stiff competition. None of us checked into the hotel until we had first met and held our wee, sweet Flora, as her parents call her.

The next morning, Max and my eldest son left the hotel at 6 a.m. to rent a stump grinder. Then, while I cooked a 14-egg frittata in a pan on the stove and sausages in the oven, the men began the yard’s transformation. For three days and four nights, we worked hard, cooked often and played several rounds of euchre.

Family members pitch in to help Holly Christensen's son work on his new yard. — Claude, Max and Leif pitch in to help Hugo landscape the yard of his and his wife’s first home.

The main ingredient in the recipe for a healthy family is showing up.

My grandchild may live farther away than I prefer, but our family remains close, held by bonds that are reinforced each time we pull together, which is harder to arrange and happens less frequently than if everyone lived in Northeast Ohio. But the extra effort is well worth it.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, July 19, 2026.

Parenting & Family · Uncategorized

Taking kids on a grand globe-trotting adventure

July 27, 2026 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

My friend Jen has always been restless.

We met more than 25 years ago at Ohio State University. After graduation, she worked for a year on a farm in Kansas cultivating native prairie plants. Then she joined the Peace Corps and worked for two years with farmers in Honduras.

She met Milan after returning from the Peace Corps. They moved to the East, got married, changed their last names to Marvelous and settled in Philadelphia. When their first two children were still small, Jen insisted they move to the countryside near Ithaca, N.Y. They bought property, had twins, and raised their four girls and some chickens while Jen worked on a nursing degree.

A few years later, they moved back to Philly. Jen is a hospital nurse while Milan runs their properties, fixer-uppers that he fixes up and rents out. He also home-schools the girls. Occasionally, Jen flies off, volunteering her nursing skills in places like Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

But for many years, maybe all along, her deepest desire was to circumnavigate the globe with her family. And you know what? She did it. They left when their girls were 15, 12, 9 and 9.

It was August 2015 and I was pulling weeds in our garden when she called. “We’re on the highway in Colorado, driving an Auto Driveaway car from Philly to San Francisco. Then we’ll head up to Canada.”

“Wait, you mean now? You’re leaving now?” It’s not that I didn’t believe they’d actually do it, but Jen had talked about this trip and documented the extensive preparations on her blog, Tripping Fantastic, for so long it felt like an ever-receding horizon.

In Vancouver, they boarded a cruise ship, spent 16 nights at sea, disembarking in Shanghai. From there, they took a train, buses and taxis to Laos, where they stayed for a month before heading to Thailand.

In January, when I was in Detroit for job-related training, I sat in my hotel room reading Jen’s blog. Her family settled in Bangkok, a temporary home base from which they explored the Malay Peninsula including volunteering at an elephant sanctuary and watching the sun rise on the first morning of 2016 at the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

They arrived in India in February. I studied ancient Indian art and architecture at OSU, but have never been to the Asian subcontinent. As late winter gray prevailed outside my office window, saturated colors exploded from my desktop screen — Jen’s photos from the state of Rajasthan.

Post after post left me with a mix of longing to take such a trip with my family and yet also feeling inadequate to the challenges of such travel. This was not a curated tour by way of Hilton hotels. With lots of research beforehand and during the trip, it was done on the cheap and, after the initial cruise, never plush. Once they journeyed on a train in China with no seats, only bunk beds flanking the walls, making it impossible to sit upright. The photo made me queasy with claustrophobia.

By spring, they had traveled from India through Nepal and back to China. I saw these countries in ways I had not imagined from listening to the news. China looks modern and efficient. In India, ancient civilizations remain impressed upon the hustle-bustle of the present day.

Jen Marvelous and her four daughters in Bangkok, Thailand in 2015.

When they backtracked to China, I thought maybe they were returning home. But instead they took the Trans-Siberian Railway from Beijing to Russia. From the eastern countryside beginning with Lake Baikal, they traveled to Moscow, stopping in Mongolia along the way. And from Russia they went to Istanbul just after the attempted coup.

Last summer, they wended their way through Europe: Romania, Greece, Croatia, Italy, France, England, Ireland and, finally, Spain where they boarded a ship in Barcelona. It brought them across the Atlantic to New York City.

Thirteen months, $86,000, six people. They circled the Earth.

Jen’s parents live in Northeast Ohio. She visited them soon after returning and we met for lunch.

“I keep thinking how a trip like that would completely change the way your children view life, the world, everything!” I told her. I have traveled with my children to many places, but nothing like my friend had done.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. When they weren’t crying that we’d ruined their lives, they liked most of it. I think.”

“What!?!”

“Seriously, it was hot in Istanbul, so they didn’t want to leave our hotel and just laid around the room. But when they Facetimed their friends, they stuck their phones out the window to show them where we were, like it was fabulous. It could be frustrating at times.”

Ah, kind of like all parenting.

If you do your job right as a parent, it’s impossible for your kids to appreciate it. This is true of both the quotidian — say, providing nutritious meals, helping with homework, regular bedtimes — as well as the exceptional, like a trip around the world.

You don’t do it expecting them to say, “Thanks for buying organic food and cooking a delicious dinner for me yet again.” You do it because that’s what it is to be a parent and they don’t appreciate it because it’s all they know.

However, on the days when your children seem particularly ungrateful, remind yourself that one day they will have to take care of themselves and perhaps children of their own. It is then that they will truly appreciate all you’ve done for them and want to tell you so.

Certainly one day, if not already, Jen’s girls will.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, June 3, 2017.

Civil Rights · Down syndrome · Lyra's Latests · Parenting & Family · Uncategorized

Jesse Ridgway misleads with Down syndrome abortion post

July 3, 2026 whoopsiepiggle2 Comments

In 2014, my youngest children and I attended a family-friendly party in a sprawling yard where I had a long conversation with a smart and funny woman my age. Nearby, my nearly 2-year-old daughter, Lyra, moved remarkably fast using her newly perfected bear walk.

“She’s so cute, how she crawls on her hands and feet,” the woman said.

“Yeah, it takes children with Down syndrome longer to crawl and walk.”

“Wait, your daughter has Down syndrome?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“You are so much stronger than I could have been,” she said, but I disagreed.

“No,” she continued, “I’m telling you that you are stronger than I was. In my late 30s, I was still single and had IVF to get pregnant. When I was pretty far along, they told me the baby had Down syndrome and gave me two days to decide. I couldn’t do it. I would have been alone, I … I didn’t do it.”

“I have no judgment,” I said, knowing this woman made the best decision she could with the information she was given. The features on her face rearranged themselves, her eyes going from narrowed and intense to widely opened.

“But I see your daughter and,” she paused, “it makes me wonder…”

I was reminded of that conversation when I recently learned of a YouTube influencer and his wife who decided to terminate her planned pregnancy. Until then, I had never heard of Jesse Ridgway, whose story-telling videos have earned him over 4 million followers.

Weeks earlier, the Ridgways had shared with the public the exciting news of their pregnancy. Then, on June 3, Ridgway posted on his X account that his wife had undergone an abortion because of a fetal DS diagnosis. Rather than simply asking for privacy and compassion, Ridgway felt the need to justify why they had chosen to end the pregnancy, describing what he believes living with DS to be like, not only for people with the syndrome, but also their families. His post contains both misleading and patently false information, as well as his assessment that “Down Syndome isn’t a ‘blessing’, it is objectively shitty from a health perspective.”

Over a decade ago, I began making an automatic monthly donation to Down Syndrome Diagnosis Network, a non-profit with the primary mission of educating health care professionals on how to give accurate, up-to-date information on Down syndrome at the time of diagnosis. Unfortunately, as Ridgway’s post underscores, the work of the network is far from over.

In his post, Ridgway states the odds of having a baby with DS are 1 in 1,000, which is true if the mother is 28. But at 31, Ashley Ridgway’s chances of having a baby with DS were 1 in 800. When I was pregnant with my daughter at 45, my odds were 1 in 30. For a 20-year-old, it is 1 in 2,000.

Choosing to bring a child into the world always includes the gamble of a diagnosis. But unlike other diagnoses, such as autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, eating disorders, childhood cancer, depression, bi-polar disorder, addiction and many more, DS can be definitively diagnosed prenatally because it is caused by the observable presence of an extra twenty-first chromosome.

Are there challenges raising a child with DS? Of course there are, as there are with any child.

As for health concerns, Ridgway is correct that roughly 50% of newborns with DS are born with heart conditions, the most common of which is atrioventricular septal defect (AVSD). But in the past 40 years, tremendous advances in cardiac care have occurred and, according to the National Institutes of Health, over 95% of newborn AVSD surgeries are successful, including for babies with DS.

Ridgway also mentions hearing challenges and vision problems, yet that is not the same as deafness and blindness. Many hearing problems people with DS have are treatable conditions, such as “glue ear” in which secretions accumulate in the middle ear, something simply solved by regular monitoring and cleaning when needed. Similarly, the majority of vision problems in Down syndrome are the same as those in the typical population: nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism − all of which are easily corrected.

But of all the misleading statements Ridgway made, the most egregiously false is: “I didn’t realize just how rough it is for the child, let alone the family…”

Dr. Brian Skotko, a Northeast Ohio native who is now the director of the Down Syndrome Program at Mass General Brigham in Boston, has conducted several studies on the quality of life for people with DS and their families. He found that “nearly 99 percent of people with DS indicated that they were happy with their lives, 97 percent liked who they are, and 96 percent liked how they look.” He also surveyed siblings of people with DS and 88% said that they are better people for having had a brother or sister with DS. That finding was surely no surprise to Skotko, who has a sister with DS.

As for parents, a National Institutes of Health study found the divorce rate for couples with a child with DS is lower than in families that have a child with a different birth diagnosis and also lower for those with children that have no identified disability.

I respect the Ridgways’ decision to terminate a wanted pregnancy in the face of a DS diagnosis, just as I respected the choice of the woman I met 12 years ago. But I call him out, particularly as someone whose job is literally to influence people, for using his experience to promote the bigotry of ableism − the belief that those among us without certain IQs, abilities and incomes are strictly a burden, not valued members of society. As with any bigotry or bias − which are always based upon falsehoods− getting to know someone seemingly unlike you often leads to the discovery they are not so different after all.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, June 21, 2026.

Home renovation · Parenting & Family · Uncategorized

How my contractor friend repairs more than homes

June 19, 2026 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Being the landlord of a single rental property is largely a passive source of income–except when tenants turn over. When that happened to Dreisbach House early last month, I spent a week cleaning it. That same week, my wallet was stolen, one of my dogs got sick all over the house I live in and the air conditioning did not work when I turned it on for the first time this season.

But, to quote Stephen Colbert, I’d rather be grateful for than mad at. The person who stole my wallet removed my driver’s license and insurance cards and left them in my purse…boy, howdy, am I grateful! My 16-year-old son offered to clean the dog sick from the carpets…and he did a good job! Furthermore, the dog recovered without a (costly) trip to the vet. My AC had simply tripped the breaker and while I paid $135 for a technician to flip a switch, it could have been worse.

As for Dreisbach House, Jack, the contractor who renovated it last year, walked through it with me and wrote out a repair punch list. But two weeks later, when he was scheduled to do the work, I’m happy to report that Jack was too busy with other projects to do the job. He asked his mostly retired mentor, Paul, to do the work instead.

Paul and a neighbor's child at his property during the maple and black walnut sugaring season earlier this year. — Paul and a neighbor’s child at his property during maple and black walnut sugaring season earlier this year.

Paul first worked on Dreisbach House shortly after I purchased it in 2003. In every room of the house, I can point to something and say, “Paul built/renovated/fixed that.” A superlative contractor, he also leaves a space cleaner than when he started and has a sagacity that comes with decades facing life’s challenges head on, no excuses. For over 20 years, I’ve made it a point to sit and talk with Paul during his lunch breaks whenever he’s worked for me.

I first met Paul at the K-8 school his two sons and my four attended. Ten years later, when my eldest son, Claude, was home from college, he worked for Paul for a few weeks before returning to Ann Arbor for a summer program. When my second son, Hugo, learned how well Paul paid his workers, he wanted to work for him, too.

“No, way, Hugo,” Claude and I both told him. “You’d not make it through the first week.” We said this not because Hugo is lazy − he isn’t. At 14, he groomed dogs at a salon where clients can bite and void their bladders and bowels on their groomer, and sometimes did. At 16, he quit the salon to work at Old Carolina Barbecue, a job that infused his jeans with the aroma of slow-roasted pork.

But Hugo is both independent and has a tinge of Tom Sawyer. How often did I find one of Hugo’s brothers doing the job I had assigned to him because he had convinced them it would be better if he did something else (i.e., “You keep raking the leaves while I look for a bigger tarp.”)? Many, many times.

Hugo worked for Paul the last two summers before he went to college. He’d regale us with stories of the projects he’d worked on, and told Claude and me years later that whenever he was tempted to quit, he’d resisted because he didn’t want to give us the satisfaction of being able to say, “We told you so.”

Once, when remodeling a house’s second floor bathroom, they smashed the original cast-iron tub into sections to remove it. As Hugo carried out a large piece, a floorboard gave way under the weight and he was thrown to the ground. The impact shredded the skin of one of his forearms.

“Your arm better not be broken, Hugo,” Paul said as he inspected the bloody wound, “or your mom will kill me.”

With a knot in his stomach, Hugo would watch Paul inspect his drywall work. Paul would solemnly walk up to the wall, putty knife in hand, then slowly slide the flat edge of the knife down the section where Hugo had spackled over the nails and then sanded. If the wall was not as smooth as a mirror, Hugo had to redo it.

When he left for Eastman School of Music to study opera vocal performance, Hugo took a tool box he’d assembled with the money he’d earned working for Paul and would let his former employer know when he fixed things in the dorms. After his sophomore year, Hugo held a Leider concert in Akron to raise money to attend a voice program in Austria. Just before the concert began, I went backstage to see if he needed anything.

“I’m fine, but have you seen Paul? Is he here?” Paul, and his wife, Nancy, had arrived early and were seated near the front.

Was Paul a tough boss? Yes, he was, because he was fully invested in my son, as he is with all his workers. Paul’s consistent commitment of time and attention as he taught Hugo how to repair and remodel homes did more than just give my son handy skills, it also helped fill a father-shaped hole in Hugo’s heart.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, June 7, 2026.

Down syndrome · Lyra's Latests · Parenting & Family

Check assumptions on what teen with Down syndrome can do

April 4, 2026 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

“Assume That I Can, So Maybe I Will,” released in 2024, is one of my favorite World Down Syndrome Day video shorts.

Down syndrome occurs when a person has three copies of the 21st chromosome, which is why World Down Syndrome Day is on 3/21. Every March 21, events that celebrate people with Down syndrome (DS) take place worldwide.

Because my daughter, Lyra, a 13-year-old sixth grader, has DS, she has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) at her public school. IEPs have specific goals for each student and must be updated every year. This year, Lyra’s IEP team, comprised of teachers, intervention specialists, administrators, her father and I, all agreed it was time to add to her goals the skills she’ll one day need for employment and independent living.

In other words, we need to check our assumptions and see what Lyra can do.

When she was an infant, we had to figure out how to best support our child with two unexpected diagnoses (she was born with cataracts as well as DS) we knew little about. We met with medical professionals, read books, visited websites and joined DS organizations. One of these, Down Syndrome Diagnosis Network, organizes closed Facebook groups for mothers whose children with DS are the same age. Throughout Lyra’s first five years, this cohort group was an invaluable resource. The other moms and I shared tips on speech development, proper walking techniques, fine motor skill development and, eventually, potty training.

Then came early schooling. Mothers shared successes and, again, tips on what helped our kids with classroom dynamics as well as early math and reading skills. (Fun fact: strong short-term memory often accompanies a DS diagnosis and many children with DS easily learn to read.) We also supported one another when some schools did not meet the needs of our children.

Then, around the time Lyra began the first grade, life plateaued. We hadn’t figured out everything, but our early concerns had been addressed. Lyra walked, talked and actively participated in school and extracurricular activities. It was like we’d graduated from a multi-year crash course in all things DS and, for about five years, conversations with other DS parents were mostly social.

Then, a little over a year ago, puberty hit and once again we are in new territory. When Lyra was little, we made many medical and educational decisions without her input, as we did all our children when they were very young. But we now find ourselves deciding things for our teen-aged daughter that she, unlike her neuro-typical peers, cannot objectively discuss with us. These guardianship-like situations come, for me at least, with a pique of grief. Undoubtedly, as our daughter becomes an adult many such decisions will need to be made.

Although she’s still in middle school, Lyra will be 18 in just over four years. This fact (and all things puberty) gave rise to a smaller, yet robust, version of the panic I’d felt in Lyra’s first years, which grew until I received an email from a regular reader of this column. John Rasinski has a 25-year-old son, John Paul, who has DS and works four days a week as a stable assistant at Pegasus Farm in Hartville. Pegasus is widely known for its equine therapy programs for people of all ages with disabilities, but it was not until Rasinski wrote to me that I learned it also has a work program for adults with developmental disabilities.

Lyra Christensen and John Paul Rasinski, who was dressed as the Tin Man for a Halloween party he later attended, meet Pegasus Farms. — Lyra Christensen and John Paul Rasinski, who was dressed as the Tin Man for a Halloween party he later attended, meet at Pegasus Farms.

On an afternoon in late October, Lyra, her brother Leif and I met Rasinski and John Paul at Pegasus. In one of the cleanest stables I’ve ever seen, we watched clients mount and ride several of the farm’s horses into an arena. I imagined commuting his son to work and back took a tremendous toll on Rasinski’s life as the farm is 40 minutes from Akron, where the two live and Rasinski works.

“Oh, no, I don’t drive him. He has transportation,” he told me. When I asked the cost, I learned it is covered by a Medicaid waiver, something John Paul became eligible for at age 18. This led to a flurry of questions, and we agreed to meet at a later date for coffee, where Rasinski outlined for me, first in conversation and then in a follow-up email, various Summit County, state and federal services and programs for adults with with developmental disabilities.

My relief at meeting someone further down the road our family is about to travel, and who is willing to share his knowledge and experience, is indescribable. As we discover what Lyra can do in the years ahead including at high school, work, independent living and her social life, I hope to give to other families what Rasinski has given to ours by sharing what we learn.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, March 29, 2026.

Down syndrome · Education · Parenting & Family · Uncategorized

Lorelei Green touched countless lives

February 8, 2026 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

If you had 80 or 90 years on this planet, how many lives do you think you might positively impact? A dozen? Twenty? Those in helping professions may benefit large numbers of people, but what about the rest of us?

Let me tell you about a girl who who managed to touch the lives of almost everyone in Copley in fewer than 12 years.

When Lorelei Green was born to her parents, Kate and Bryan, in February 2014, they were more prepared for a child with Down syndrome than most families. Kate has worked at Ohio developmental disabilities boards throughout her career as a support and service coordinator (case manager), something that helped them hit the ground running.

People with Down syndrome (DS) are at a higher risk of additional medical conditions, and newborns are screened for life-threatening ones. Over 40% have congenital heart defects and they have a higher risk of acute myeloid leukemia. Also common is congenital duodenal atresia, in which the small intestine is either completely separated or blocked, as was the case with Lorelei. It was surgically corrected shortly after her birth.

That would prove to be the first of many surgeries and procedures Lorelei required. Her first year, she had four surgeries to fix a hernia. When she was 3, surgeons implanted a pacemaker and she received hearing aids. And throughout her life, Lorelei was frequently hospitalized for pulmonary issues. But from the get-go, one thing was clear: Lorelei was sassy and always rallied.

Addy Green fixes the hair of her sister, Lorelei, while Lorelei was hospitalized. — Addy Green braiding the hair of her sister, Lorelei, during Lorelei’s recent hospitalization.

When you become the parent of a child with Down syndrome, you automatically join the community of DS families. But that’s not how I met the Greens. Stephanie Kist, a friend of mine from grad school, has triplets who are a month older than my daughter with DS, Lyra. The Kists live near the Greens and their children are friends with Lorelei and her older sister, Addy. For a few years, we met up at each other’s homes, but that came to a halt when COVID hit.

In 2021, Bryan, who was an ever-active and present father, suffered a permanent brain injury and resides in a nursing home as a result. Even with support from family and friends, it is far harder to work full time and raise two daughters, one of whom has chronic medical needs, as a single parent. Lorelei’s renowned ability to rally came naturally – she inherited it from her mother.

From left, Lorelei Green with her mom, Kate, and sister, Addy, several years ago. — From the left: Lorelei, her mom, Kate, and sister, Addy, several years ago.

Over time, life mostly settled down for Kate and her daughters. For years, both girls ardently practiced and performed dance at Studio West Performing Arts Center. At Copley schools this fall, Addy started high school while Lorelei began sixth grade. With Addy old enough to babysit and Lorelei stable, Kate and another friend came to my house for dinner last May. A few weeks later, Lorelei’s atlanto-axial joint (C1 and C2) were surgically fused. People with DS are prone to subluxation of their spinal joints and before they ride horses in equine therapy programs, it is strongly recommended that the atlanto-axial joint be examined through an MRI for subluxation because slippage can cause significant, even life-threatening, damage.

Lorelei’s surgery went well, but one day in October she came home from school limping. Two days later, she was at Akron Children’s Hospital, unable to functionally move any of her limbs. I read all of Kate’s posts on Lorelei’s progress. Like most everyone, I believed this was just another medical episode Lorelei would power through like she always has.

As always, her spirit never stopped, but on Jan. 14, her body sadly did. Weddings and funerals are also reunions. But unlike family or class reunions, they bring together people from every corner of the celebrated person’s life. At Lorelei’s service, I saw DS friends from throughout NE Ohio. I also saw my eye doctor, a colleague from the university, a colleague from Akron schools and many other people I had no idea also knew Lorelei.

Two of her classmates gave eulogies. Hattie Pickett was remarkably poised as she described the lunch table at which Lorelei reigned and made all the other students pray, with their eyes closed, before eating. They often peeked precisely to have Lorelei scold them. When William Sloan spoke, his struggle with grief was so great that first his mother, and then Kate, stepped up to the podium to support him. Officers from the Fairlawn Police Department knew Lorelei from working as resources officers at her school buildings. The department posted a tribute to her on their Facebook page. The Copley boys’ basketball teams have worn purple ribbons with Lorelei’s name on them in their recent games.

A memorial fund has been established for Lorelei Green, a beloved Copley girl who died this month at the age of 11.

It wasn’t so long ago that people with Down syndrome, or most other disabilities, were not welcome to attend public schools. Laws passed starting in the 1970s changed that, which has been a tremendous benefit to children with disabilities. But you know what? It’s been a benefit to students without disabilities, too.

Lorelei expanded the lives of her many friends at Copley-Fairlawn City Schools and elsewhere, cultivating in them an abiding empathy. What she taught them is now a part of who her friends are. And Lorelei did this just by being herself.

This column was first published on Sunday, February 1, 2026.

Parenting & Family

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

November 15, 2025 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

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.

Parenting & Family · Uncategorized

Thanksgiving where people stay put while the art of Norman Rockwell travels

November 26, 2024 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

On July 7, 2007, the expanded and renovated Akron Art Museum reopened with a retrospective exhibit of American painter Norman Rockwell. In my 1970s childhood, Rockwell’s endearing, if not sentimental, covers from the Saturday Evening Post — 322 painted over 47 years — were ubiquitously reproduced.

Yet Rockwell did not shy away from political subjects, including 1943’s Four Freedoms covers (freedom of speech and of worship, from want and from fear), 1961’s “Golden Rule” (a version of which Nancy Reagan gifted the United Nations in 1985) and 1964’s iconic “The Problem We Live With” in which 6-year-old Ruby Bridges walks to school escorted by four U.S. marshals. Bridges was the first Black child to attend a formerly all-white public elementary school in New Orleans. Though not shown, Rockwell makes clear that the crowd Bridges walked past was viciously hostile.

My first three sons, then ages 13, 10 and 7, enjoyed the exhibit, but it most impressed my second son, Hugo. The following spring, when Miller South students were to dress as their favorite artist, Hugo wore a chambray shirt, khaki pants, horn rimmed glasses and held a tobacco pipe in his mouth — just as Rockwell does in a self-portrait. Ten years later, when Hugo worked at Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in Lenox, Massachusetts, he toured Rockwell’s nearby home and museum.

Over the years, I’ve purchased Rockwell collectibles at thrift stores and estate sales for Hugo. The most treasured is a museum-quality book with glossy color reprints, several lightly attached to pages so they can be removed and framed. Last month at the American Cancer Society Discovery Shop in Wallhaven, I found six porcelain replicas of various Rockwell Saturday Evening Post covers. All were 50% off their already reasonable prices.

But did my nearly 28-year-old, recently married son really want half a dozen figurines? I called to check.

“Oh, it’s impossible to go overboard on Rockwell, Mama. Claudia and I were just joking that we might need to buy a display cabinet for my collection.”

After we hung up, I also found several mugs emblazoned with Rockwell images. I bought them all.

Holly Christensen found these Norman Rockwell collectibles for her son Hugo's birthday at the American Cancer Society Discovery Shop in Akron's Wallhaven neighborhood. — Hugo’s birthday bounty. Three of the figurines included miniature copies of the original Saturday Evening Post cover they replicate.

For many years, my family made the long drive to northern Michigan for Thanksgiving. My stepmom’s next door neighbor, who spent Thanksgivings in Ohio, would let us stay at her house. My stepmom and I used both kitchens to cook up enough dishes to cover a large table while my boys helped their grandpa, the city sexton, tidy the cemetery before he furloughed during winter’s coldest months.

After my first two sons went away to college, we managed complicated logistics to continue spending Thanksgiving together in Michigan, which we all treasured. And then, like many families, we did not gather in 2020 because of COVID. The next summer, my stepmom and the neighbor got into a (stupendously silly) dispute and we lost our place to stay.

Everyone came to Akron in 2022, but last year, Hugo, whose birthday was on Thanksgiving, had to work that weekend. From Akron and D.C., we made our way to Madison, Wisconsin. where Hugo and his wife live. Hugo again must work this year but rather than travel, we’ve decided to stay in our respective cities. There are those who persist, sometimes at great lengths, in carrying on traditions long after they are enjoyable. Forced annoyance, if not misery, makes no sense. It can also preclude the joy found in fresh experiences.

Once the decision was made, I felt a sense of relief. No long drive after days of packing food, gifts (might as well swap Christmas presents when together) and all that is needed for several humans and dogs. And with just my two youngest children with me, to heck with the traditional (labor intensive) dinner portrayed in Rockwell’s “Freedom from Want.”

The dad of my littles (now 14 and 12) had no plans, so I invited him to join us. Together we will make pork shoulder roast with peach and whole grain mustard gravy, mashed potatoes, Brussel sprouts, coleslaw and my butternut squash pies, which for more than a quarter century Hugo has considered his birthday “cakes.”

Alas, Hugo won’t be here for his pies this Thanksgiving and I had to spend a small fortune to ship his birthday bounty of fragile figurines to Madison. But I am comforted by two thoughts. First, someone’s Rockwell collection, probably donated by their children, happily made its way to a new collector. Secondly, I will make my pies again in mid-December when Hugo flies to Akron to spend a long weekend with me.

All will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well. Blessings on your Thanksgiving.

Down syndrome · Lyra's Latests · Parenting & Family

Vision Center without optical care loses sight of patient needs (Part 2)

May 10, 2024 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

I recently wrote about the Vision Center at Akron Children’s Hospital and pointed out that, no matter how excellent the Vision Center’s eye surgeons and optometrists are, the center abandons their patients in the last mile of care.

Glasses designed for the general population rarely fit patients with atypical facial anatomy. Compared to typical children, my daughter Lyra’s facial features are clustered closer together, the bridge of her nose is extremely flat and her ears are closer to her eyes. All of which is common in people with Down syndrome, which she has.

Frames exist for a variety of different facial structures, but few eye doctors carry those lines. That’s because, unlike the patient population at the Vision Center, most eye doctors have few patients who need specialized frames.

Akron Children’s Hospital takes all insurance, but most community eye doctors do not. Lyra’s primary insurance is Medicaid. Her secondary insurance, Children with Medical Handicaps (CMH), is provided by the state of Ohio but only for specific diagnoses. Lyra’s CMH covers her vision care, but because so few providers are approved by the state to accept CMH, and with no optical services at Akron Children’s, we’ve never been able to use it for glasses. (Ohio’s government does not consider Down syndrome a medical handicap and, therefore, care related to DS is not covered by CMH.)

Lyra began wearing glasses at age 3 when it became too difficult to change her contact lenses. Her first frames were by a company that no longer exists, Miraflex. They were designed for the small nose bridges of babies and young children, making them ideal for young children with DS.

We purchased them at Adolph Optical, a family-owned Akron business. Adolph Optical is a good option for many and they participate in programs that help un- and under-insured patients. They do not, however, take Lyra’s insurance, and her glasses are incredibly expensive. Her prescription is +22 diopters, which means her lenses are too thick for cheaper, but heavier, glass lenses. The thick lenses bulge out of the frames, making it easy for them to get scratched. The best anti-scratch coating is also the costliest. Finally, as most of us over the age of 45 well know, multifocal lenses cost much more than single-focus lenses. Lyra’s specialized bifocals typically take between six weeks and three months to make and cost over $500.

The Eye Site in Copley is the only local optometry practice I have found that takes Lyra’s Medicaid plan, Buckeye Community Health. Buckeye contributes a maximum of $130 per year for glasses. As a small provider, Eye Site has not been able to obtain state approval to accept CMH.

After months of searching, I found an optometry practice in Alliance that takes CMH and drove there with Lyra and her prescription to pick out frames. But when I arrived, I learned that the practice does not take Medicaid. A patient’s primary insurance must first be billed by the same provider before CMH will accept a claim.

After Lyra outgrew her Miraflex frames, I ordered a pair of frames online and took them to the Eye Site for lenses. But because her lenses are so heavy, they frequently popped out of the plastic frames, and one eventually broke. An optician who regularly works with high prescriptions would have steered me toward wire frames.

Wire frames usually have a screw holding the lenses tightly in place and nose pads that help accommodate tiny nose bridges — though Lyra’s glasses still slide halfway down her nose. I keep a jar of replacement nose pads because they frequently fall off and the spikes they are attached to cut into Lyra’s face.

I also have a jar of silicon sleeves for her frames’ temples. As the temples of most frames are too long for Lyra, I snip the ends with wire cutters and re-bend them to fit around her ears. The flat end of the temples, designed for comfort, are lost in the shortening process. The silicon sleeves help minimize pressure and protect her skin from the cut ends.

In response to my prior column, an ACH employee who works with the Vision Center’s patients sent an email that underscores ACH’s disconnect between excellent medical care and the functional application of treatment: “I have a difficult time understanding why you would not continue to make appointments with the remaining pediatric ophthalmologists at Akron Children’s Hospital and possibly travel elsewhere for optical services.”

They make it sound so simple.

Think of the families less fortunate than I with children who need specialized glasses. A single mom who may have to take off work and use public transportation to get to ACH. Once her child’s eyes have had excellent medical care at the Vision Center, she then has to figure out where to go to get glasses. What are the chances she’ll get them soon, if at all?

The practice nearest to ACH that offers optical services and accepts both Medicaid and CMH also has ophthalmologists who are just as excellent as those at ACH. That would be UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s in Cleveland.

We are fortunate to have a superb children’s hospital in Akron. But why would I get my daughter’s prescription at one hospital only to take it to another hospital for fulfillment when I can do everything in one location? Sadly, that one location is not Akron Children’s.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, April 28, 2024.

Down syndrome · Lyra's Latests · Parenting & Family · Uncategorized

Akron Children’s Hospital needs the vision to add optical care (Part 1)

May 10, 2024May 10, 2024 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital has it. Nationwide Children’s Hospital has it. Even Dayton Children’s Hospital has it. Akron Children’s Hospital, however, does not. What is lacking? An optical department in its Vision Center.

During my pregnancy with my now 11-year-old daughter, Lyra, non-invasive testing revealed nothing unusual. With eyes scrunched shut, Lyra cried loudly at the moment of her birth. I took her in my arms and when she opened her eyes, I saw what the testing had not. “Her eyes look Downsy and her pupils are milky white,” I said.

Dr. Richard Hertle with Holly Christensen's daughter, Lyra, who’s wearing Miraflex frames, in 2018 before she had a procedure under general anesthesia at Akron Children's Hospital. — Dr. Richard Hertle and Lyra, who is wearing Miraflex frames, before an exam under general anesthesia at ACH in 2018.

The first weeks of Lyra’s life were a medical whirlwind. Children’s Hospital’s Genetic Center confirmed that Lyra has trisomy-21, the most common form of Down syndrome. That same week, Dr. Richard Hertle, an ophthalmologist at Akron Children’s Vision Center, diagnosed Lyra’s bilateral cataracts. Her lenses were surgically removed one at a time at ages six and seven weeks. Until Lyra’s diagnosis, I was unaware cataracts could occur congenitally. In the typical population, only one third of 1% of babies are born with cataracts. In the Down syndrome population it is 3%, also a small number.

Unlike cataract surgery for adults, synthetic intraocular lenses (IOLs) are not implanted just after a baby’s lensectomies. Eyeballs grow until age 20, with rapid growth occurring both immediately after birth and again at puberty. Furthermore, studies show that IOLs implanted before the age of 5 significantly increase a child’s chances of glaucoma.

I quickly came to trust Dr. Hertle. When asked details about the surgeries and eye anatomy, he became as animated as a kid at his own birthday party. During her two lensectomies, he installed scaffolding in her tiny eyeballs for the placement of IOLs, should she need or want them at a later date.

After her eyes had healed, Lyra wore contact lenses that when viewed in profile looked like alien space ships —discs with a sizable bulge in the middle. But as she got older (and stronger), changing Lyra’s lenses became difficult. I would hold Lyra tight while one Vision Center technician used a speculum to hold open her eyelids and a second technician changed the lenses.

When she was 3, we all agreed that changing Lyra’s contacts was too traumatizing and switched her to glasses. With no natural lenses, Lyra’s prescription is +22, and the lenses of her glasses are very thick. She wore Miraflex frames, a then widely available brand designed for the small nose bridges of babies and toddlers. They also work well for young children with Down syndrome, as they typically retain small nose bridges throughout life.

Miraflex is no longer an option. In 2020, the brand was acquired by the eye frame mega-conglomerate Essilor Luxotica Group, which promptly discontinued the line. Other brands, including Specs4Us and Erin’s World, also are designed for the unique facial features of people with Down syndrome. But it is a struggle for parents of children with a variety of special vision needs to find these, or other well-fitting, truly functional, frames.

And here’s why: Your local eye doctor does not have many patients with Down syndrome or other diagnoses that require specialized frames, so they are unlikely to carry them. Also, most optometry and ophthalmology practices do not accept Medicaid, which they must in order for a patient to use the Ohio Department of Health’s secondary state medical insurance, Children with Medical Handicaps (CMH). A pair of glasses for a child like Lyra can easily cost more than $500.

The Vision Center at Akron Children’s Hospital does their patients a gross disservice by not having an optical department. Unlike the offices of most eye doctors, the Vision Center’s patient population has an abundance of children who need specialized eyewear. And, like most children’s hospitals, Akron Children’s accepts Medicaid and CMH.

When I first wrote of this glaring optical oversight back in 2018, a team member of the Vision Center reached out to tell me that they would offer frames when they moved to their new location in the Considine Building in 2019. Yet as of today, the Vision Center still lacks optical care.

Lyra wore Miraflex frames for about four years. When she outgrew them, I began buying frames online and modifying them. Nose pads help keep the heavy lenses in front of her eyes, though it’s never as perfect as the frames designed for small nose bridges. And because the stems of frames designed for a typical child are too long for children with DS, I cut them with wire cutters, cover the sharp ends with silicone sleeves and re-bend them to fit around her ears.

On April 1, a letter from the Vision Center informed us that Dr. Hertle had retired two days earlier. Lyra has an army of support for her Down syndrome needs at school and through private therapies. But I have counted on Dr. Hertle alone for her medical eye care. I was shocked when I read the letter and momentarily felt panicked. However, change brings with it opportunities. I would never have left Dr. Hertle’s care. But as he’s no longer at Akron Children’s, we now will make the trek to Rainbow Babies and Children’s for truly comprehensive vision care.

This was published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, April 14, 2024.

Parenting & Family

Son finds his way after worrying about future

September 28, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

On a recent Sunday at Akron Family Restaurant, I was reminded of one of my earliest Beacon Journal columns in which I wrote about my eldest son, Claude. In January 2017, he took me to lunch at Akron Family to discuss his existential anxiety.

Claude was a freshly minted college graduate who didn’t know what to do next. In fact, instead of graduating the previous spring, when he had all the credits he needed, he took an extra semester at the University of Michigan.

With three more decades of life under my belt than my son, I knew Claude would be fine even if I could not tell him precisely how his life would unfold. He is curious and hardworking, which has made him many things, including pretty smart.

Claude met his closest friend at college the day they moved into the freshman dorms. Neal earned a degree in engineering, promptly left for Berkeley and began a Ph.D. program with a comfortable stipend. Claude envied Neal’s knowledge of what to do next, even if his friend wasn’t always satisfied.

“I sometimes think I should have taken a gap year after high school,” Claude told me over soup that day.

Thank God you didn’t, I thought.

My parents held entry-level jobs. My mother worked hard, mostly as a waitress, sometimes as a secretary, and lastly baking coffee cakes and fruit bars she sold at markets not unlike the Mustard Seed. My dad worked seldomly, usually retail when he did — a hardware store in Michigan, Circle K in Arizona.

Neither ever talked with me about going to college. After high school, I took classes here and there, including the University of Arizona and Wright State. Finally, at age 21, I settled in at Ohio State where I voraciously studied religion and French, receiving degrees in each at 26.

I set a different course for my children. “After high school,” I told them, “you go to college.” Not “you could” nor “you should,” but “you go.” However, I never pushed them toward, nor dissuaded them from, any particular major. “Just get a bachelor’s degree, that’s what matters.”

A gap year after high school, I feared, might easily lead to a long-term forestalling of college like me, or a permanent one like my parents.

But my children are different from my parents or me. They had a blueprint because I had gone to college and earned degrees. When they talked about juggling studying for tests and writing papers, I understood and could make suggestions.

Also, for four years as a single parent, I regularly brought home Pizza Bogo pizzas before heading off to night classes. I earned my graduate degree at age 44.

Today, my first three children have bachelor’s degrees.

In the years after that luncheon conversation, Claude did as I expected while doing things I could not have predicted. He worked a string of odd jobs, including a stint at Starbucks. They were not career inducing.

In the fall of 2019, Claude became an AmeriCorps VISTA and worked at the Summit Food Coalition, then located at Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank. He also worked several positions at Macaroni Grill to supplement his meager stipend.

Six months later, the pandemic hit. Claude loaded boxes of food into vehicles at distribution events and learned much about food insecurity, who it affects and why, and that the best-practices model for combating hunger is food stamps, not food banks.

“I want a career in which I can make a difference,” he told me.

He applied to graduate programs in public policy in the spring of 2020 when the country was in COVID lockdown. Ohio State’s hiring freeze extended to assistantships, knocking out Claude’s first choice, the John Glenn School of Public Affairs.

Maybe it was his AmeriCorps credentials, but Texas A&M’s George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service offered Claude a full ride with a generous stipend. In August 2020, he packed up his car, left his cats with me and drove to College Station.

Two years later, he was offered jobs by the federal and state governments. Choosing which to pick was something I could discuss, but my life’s experience held no blueprint for this. I suggested he discuss it with his grad school adviser.

Claude works for the EPA in Washington, D.C., a city we’ve always enjoyed visiting. His friend Neal finished his Ph.D. program and recently spent a long weekend with Claude in D.C. Both appear to have arrived at similar points in their careers.

Now almost 30, Claude was home for a visit when we went to Akron Family. He comfortably explained over breakfast how the federal EPA works with state and regional EPA offices, along with other federal agencies. He believes he’ll have a long career with the agency; it suits him.

Eight years ago, I told Claude I wished I had a crystal ball to show him where he would land. But, then again, doing so would have interfered with the maturity and wisdom he’s gained along his way. As I wrote in 2017, a successful life rarely follows a straight line to some prize, nor should it.

Now all I ask is that the next time Claude returns home, he retrieve his cats.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on September 17, 2023.

Parenting & Family

Farewell, Mr. Tressler

May 31, 2023July 28, 2026 whoopsiepiggle2 Comments

This past January, my longtime friend Jen, who is my regular traveling companion and has made several appearances in these columns, called to tell me her father would soon die.

Several years ago, Mr. Tressler was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s. And, yet, he seemed himself when Jen and I talked to him on the phone in May 2021 while we toured Iceland and again later that year when we went to Peru.

In January 2022, Jen, who lives in Philadelphia, spent two weeks with her parents’ at their home in Painesville, where they’ve lived since 1980. She, her dad and her eldest daughter came to Akron to shop at their favorite thrift store, Village Discount Outlet on Waterloo, and visit me.

Over lunch at my home, Mr. Tressler recounted various times over three decades that he and I had visited, both with and without Jen. I had forgotten several of these accounts until he shared them. That I was in his long-term memories when he was no longer able to write his own name was an honor unlike any other.

Jen’s job as a triage nurse for a medical practice at the University of Pennsylvania periodically allowed her to work remotely. Every month or two, she’d come to Ohio to spend a week helping her family take care of her dad while also spending increasingly precious time with him.

During one of her stays late last spring, I drove my youngest two kids to Painesville where we spent the afternoon and dinner with Jen and her family.

Mr. Tressler seemed unchanged from January and, again, we talked of many things. While dishing up bowls of ice cream, he showed me his significant collection of ice cream scoops. Upon learning I had none, he gave me one.

Two months later, Mr. Tressler’s Alzheimer’s specialists told the family he was beginning to decompensate and would soon need full-time care. Jen and I were shocked, but like Delphi oracles, the specialists were tragically correct.

When Jen called this past January, I asked if her mother would be OK if I visited Mr. Tressler at Kemper House, where he was living. Some families prefer their loved one with Alzheimer’s to be remembered as they were without the disease. And, too, some people with Alzheimer’s are agitated by visits.

Mrs. Tressler told Jen she welcomed my visit, but then, just two days later and before I could make the trip, Mr. Tressler died.

I first introduced readers to Jen when I wrote of the 14 months that she, her husband, Milan, and their four daughters circumnavigated the globe beginning in August 2015. This past fall, after their two eldest daughters had graduated from college and high school, the family again left the country, this time to tour Central America and South America for several months.

They were in Patagonia, at the southernmost tip of South America, when Mr. Tressler died. Returning in time for the funeral proved overly complicated and costly. On my drive to the funeral, Jen called and asked if I could do something neither of us would have thought of before the pandemic: Zoom her into her dad’s funeral.

Jen’s mother, siblings and their spouses sat in the first row of pews at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church in Concord. I sat behind them in the second row, holding my phone up so Jen could see and hear their parish priest perform the funeral rites.

Before he developed Alzheimer’s, Mr. Tressler could be described as gruff. He grew up in a working-class Ukrainian community in Reading, Pennsylvania, and married his sweetheart soon after they finished high school. He worked hard every day of his life and didn’t suffer nonsense. But he could also assess a person’s character with mystical accuracy. And if he found you measured up, you could forever count on him.

John and Elaine Tressler share a moment last fall. — Mrs. and Mr. Tressler share a moment last fall.

After Mr. Tressler’s death, Jen and her siblings learned of their father’s unadvertised history of generosity. The people he helped and how he helped them revealed a man who understood firsthand what it meant to have little and that being poor is not a character flaw.

The priest shared many stories of Mr. Tressler’s quiet largesse, including the time he arranged and paid for the dental work for the city worker who collected the family’s trash each week.

Far too many people past the age of 30 have experienced the vicissitudes of a friend or family member losing their memories, personalities and lives to Alzheimer’s disease.

But, as I have shared in previous columns, current Alzheimer’s research is promising. Studies around the world, including those focused on people with Down syndrome, look to yield preventative and corrective treatments in the coming years. That is something everyone can welcome.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, May 7, 2023.

Parenting & Family

New puppy is a fluffy bundle of joy and mischief

February 10, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

For 40 years I have lived with German shepherds and Shetland sheepdogs, unfussy working breeds. Usually I’ve had one of each, the protective temperament of the German shepherds complemented by the gladly obedient Shelties. 

I train my dogs to be well behaved, not to do tricks. They follow me wherever I go, inside and out, and ride in the car with me most days, weather permitting. My current Sheltie, the fourth I’ve owned, often keeps my feet warm when I write.

Perhaps I’m a bit boring having the same type of dogs for four decades, but the intelligence and steady personalities of German shepherds and Shelties suit me and my practical nature.

Recently I discovered that old dog owners can learn new things. 

In mid-December, someone gave me a delightful present: a 12-week-old Yorkipoo. Half Yorkshire terrier and half miniature poodle, this 5-pound creature has captured the  adoration of my family like Harry Styles in a stadium full of Gen Zers.

The names we’ve considered for our new boy include Steve, Roger, Frankie, Elroy, Odin. Someone suggested Hannibal and was promptly voted off the naming committee. 

I’ve taken to calling him Henry, which in French sounds a bit like “ornery,” an apt description for most puppies. Meanwhile, my 12-year-old son, Leif, insists upon calling him Ozzie.

When waiting for him to do his business in the January cold, I summon my best Eliza Doolittle and call out, ” ‘enry ‘iggins, go pee already!” Leif, on the other hand, hollers “Ozzieozzieozzie” when he wants the puppy to come. My 10-year-old daughter goes with the flow, calling him Henry when she’s near me and Ozzie around her brother.

It seems people have strong opinions about the names Henry and Ozzie. My neighbors say Ozzie will not do as it reminds them of Ozzy Osbourne. The groomer (who, after 23 years, has known all but my first two dogs) thinks Ozzie is an adorable name, which is what she writes on his appointment card.

After weeks of the Henry-Ozzie debate, we’ve decided he can have two names. Most pets have endearing nicknames and still manage to come when called.

Angus, my 6-year-old Sheltie, mostly ignores the puppy. That is, until I throw a toy. Angus races to the toy and makes it abundantly clear that only he may pick it up. Once he does, Henry barks at Angus, who soon drops the toy. Henry then grabs it and returns to me for another round of fun.

Unlike Angus, my German shepherd, Otto, is as smitten with the wee canine as we are. During more than one virtual meeting I’ve had to explain that the loud moans of pain are those of my 90-pound dog being tormented by a puppy so small that Otto could eat him in two bites but chooses not to. 

On our daily 2-mile walks, Otto glides with long-legged strides that make his speed look effortless. Right behind him, Henry’s short legs pump up and down like mini pistons as he cartoonishly tries to keep up.

Little Henry finds a big friend in Otto.

My eldest son, Claude, was home and worked remotely for two weeks over the holidays. Even more practical than me, we often refer to him as the family monk. So I was shocked (and delighted) when I found him regularly putting Henry on his chest under his sweater where the puppy would sleep while Claude sat in on conference calls and meetings.

Just before Christmas, Claude and I found $5 dog sweaters at Aldi’s. Later that night, he brought Henry to me all decked out in a sweater with “Fa-la-la-la-la” written on the back.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Claude, “but I want to buy this puppy more outfits and dress him up.”

We soon did just that. 

I’ve always thought of my Shelties as having big-dog personalities in smaller-sized bodies. I had no idea a far smaller dog could also come equipped with outsized personality and intelligence.

At Henry’s first appointment, my longtime vet and friend Julie Brown-Herold was not surprised by our latest addition to the family. Instead of asking why I decided to adopt my first smidge of a dog, she told me how wonderful all these poodle mixes are. 

“When our golden retriever died,” she said, “I didn’t want another big dog. Our kids are grown, we’re getting older, so we got a little poodle mix, too.”

Up until a month ago, I would never have dreamed of clearing out a dresser drawer for dog clothing. But that’s just what I did earlier this week. I also didn’t foresee buying a sling to carry my puppy around like I used to carry my human babies. 

While my dogs now come in large, medium and extra small, each holds an equal portion of our hearts.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, January 22, 2023.