Category: Family

Labor of Love

· 4 Comments ·

My parents labored through much of their forty-five years of marriage. In that sense, it is fitting that their wedding anniversary–September 4–often coincides with Labor Day, as it does this year.

Despite their differences, struggles, and heartaches, by the late 1980s Mom and Dad seemed more content whenever I drove from Chicago to visit them in St. Louis.

Mom had retired from her stressful government job. She spent more time in her beloved garden. Dad’s mental illness had quieted. He found solace, reading his Daily Word in their wing-backed chair.

Ironically, this more even footing in their relationship appeared as their physical frailties–and risk of falling–became more obvious.

They went to church together. They cultivated deeper friendships with neighbors. They dined regularly at nearby Grone’s Cafeteria. Life was much simpler.

Comparatively, Tom and I are far more active in our “retirement” than my parents ever were. But we have discovered a similar contentment. There are fewer demands on us. We spend more time on the things we enjoy with the people–friends and family–who mean the most to us.

Today–on what would have been Helen and Walter Johnson’s 75th wedding anniversary–the two people holding hands in this photo are the ones I choose to remember.

But, even during the troubles and heavy lifting of their younger years, I’m grateful for the many things they taught me. How to respect the elderly. How to save for a rainy day. How to be kind to neighbors and care for animals. How to put people before material things. How to be a loyal friend. How to work hard and earn my keep. How to show compassion.

Most important of all, how to love my family, warts and all.

Certainly, by watching Helen and Walter struggle, I learned lessons about how to endure in a world that can often feel unendurable. That may feel like a strange way to pay tribute to my parents on their diamond wedding anniversary. But it’s honest and true.

Though Dad has been gone thirty years and Mom ten, the love I feel for them endures.

In the summer of 1988, Helen and Walter Johnson enjoyed their suburban St. Louis backyard. Mom was 65; Dad was 74.

One Hundred Years, One Hundred Words

· 14 Comments ·

It’s a daunting task, trying to capture a full life–in this case, my mother’s–in one hundred words (and a dozen pictures). But, today, on the one hundredth anniversary of her birth, this is how I choose to remember Helen Matilda Ferrell Johnson, beyond our story that sprang From Fertile Ground.

***

Born July 26, 1923; High Point, North Carolina.

Child of the Depression.

Dutiful daughter. Responsible older sister.

Fine furniture lover.

1945. St. Louis, Missouri, bound.

Patient wife. Long fuse. Quick temper.

Attentive mother. Hard worker.

Loyal friend. Compassionate trailblazer.

Unintended, unidentified feminist.

Reliable next-door neighbor.

Proud mother. Devoted grandmother.

Smart saver and investor.

Advocate for the disabled and needy.

Southern storyteller. Avid letter writer.

Rock and shell hunter.

Animal advocate. Grateful green thumb.

Observant camera bug. Crafty potter.

Contented retiree. Resilient fighter.

Northern Illinois octogenarian.

Wise realist. Chair rocker.

Fading sunset lover.

Gone January 26, 2013; Wheaton, Illinois.

Full moon.

Helen Ferrell at age six in 1929.
Helen walking with younger sister Frances in the 1930s.
Helen arriving in St. Louis by train outside Union Station in 1945.
Helen in Texas in the 1950s.
Helen and Walter Johnson in Texas on her twenty-sixth birthday.
Helen outside their Texas apartment in the early 1950s.
The Johnson family in 1959 in St. Louis.
Helen and Maggie in Mount Prospect, Illinois; New Year’s Day 1999.
Helen singing Waltzing Matilda on her eightieth birthday in Geneva, Illinois.
Helen the gardener in the early 2000s.
Helen showing off her manicured nails in Wheaton, Illinois in 2011.
Mark and Helen in January 2013, a few weeks before she passed.

Send Away … Get Away … Give Away

· 6 Comments ·

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long. Especially because over the past ten years I’ve written extensively about my family, my lineage, and our propensity to seek, find, and carve our own paths. Plus, our impulses to leave behind a trail of our own observations. All of that runs through my DNA.

At any rate, last week I finally bought an Ancestry DNA kit. I opened the cardboard box. Read the directions. Spit my saliva into the provided vial. Put a cap on it. Closed up the box. I sent it away in the mail. I expect to receive the results via email in six to eight weeks.

From my mother’s branch of the family tree, I know I am Scots Irish; from my father’s family, German, Swedish, Norwegian, and French lineage. But maybe there will be a surprise or two.

This additional family research is also prompted by my mother’s one hundredth birthday–coming next week on July 26–and the personal reflection that comes with this significant milestone.

Meanwhile, with nineteen days of 110-plus temperatures under our belts here in the Valley of the Sun, Tom and I are poised for an escape to celebrate Mom’s birthday.

We’re planning a three-day, mountain getaway to Flagstaff, Arizona, where–at an altitude of 7,000 feet–we will be (blissfully) twenty-five degrees cooler than Scottsdale.

Because my mother’s life story (and my associated grief) has served as a catalyst for my writing, I’m offering my first book as a Goodreads Giveaway through July 26th. One hundred readers (chosen randomly) will receive a free download of my book.

Simply enter by July 26. If you’re a lucky recipient of my book, you’ll be notified right after. Then, find a quiet corner away from the heat (I think it’s hot everywhere right now) and get lost in my three-generation story of love, loss, and our family’s passion for writing.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and would appreciate your rating/review online.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

From Fertile Ground by Mark Johnson

From Fertile Ground

by Mark Johnson

Giveaway ends July 26, 2023.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Walking the Shore

· 3 Comments ·

My aunt, Frances Ferrell Rogers Christenbury, passed away on July 8, 2023, at age ninety-one.

She was the younger sister of Helen Ferrell Johnson, my mother, who died ten years ago.

I wrote the following poem on July 9, 2023, as a tribute to Frances, Helen and their devoted sisterhood.

***

Through high points and hardships,

We blazed new trails and distinct paths.

One of us stayed. One of us flew away,

But both of us grew and endured.

With capable hands, we shaped red clay.

We loved our families and neighbors.

We welcomed creatures great and small.

We nurtured magnolias and gardenias,

Through early frosts and hard winters.

Now the light sleeping and heavy lifting are put to rest.

We feel the ebb and flow of the tide together,

Walking the shore with the wind but without a care,

Embracing cool waves as they wash over our bare feet.

Revealing the truth of our favorite shells to keep.

Helen and Frances–walking a South Carolina shoreline and searching for shells–sometime in the 1990s.

***

If you’d like to read more of my poetry, you’ll find my latest book, A Path I Might Have Missed, on Amazon.

July’s Serendipity

· 8 Comments ·

I received a sad text message on July 2 from Lu, my cousin’s wife in North Carolina. She told me Frances, my beloved ninety-one-year-old aunt, is in her final stages of life, suffering with the effects of Alzheimer’s.

Frances is my mother’s smart and sassy younger sister–the only one remaining from that generation of my Ferrell family. Her passing–whenever it occurs–will mark the end of a significant chapter in my life … one I wrote about in From Fertile Ground after my mother’s death ten years ago.

When I last visited Frances in September 2015, I sat beside her on the couch of her Davidson, North Carolina living room. It was an important and healing moment for both of us. The loss of her only sister and my only mother was still relatively fresh.

I realized then that returning to North Carolina (where my mother was born) was my way of putting to rest Helen Ferrell Johnson’s earliest life experiences–and some of mine, which included Frances, her sons, warm summer days, and barefoot adventures exploring my grandparents’ Huntersville, North Carolina farm in the 1960s.

Now–just a day away from my sixty-sixth birthday and three weeks from what would have been my mother’s 100th–the knock of grief in July appears once again on the other side of the door.

It ushers me back to July 6, 1974, (my seventeenth birthday) when I stood beside Frances at my grandmother’s (her mother’s) funeral.

We leaned into one another that day in the Asbury Methodist Church cemetery in Huntersville. I needed to feel her love and reassurance, just as I would in September of 2015.

Back in July 2023, my wish is that my aunt’s transition moves swiftly.

In my mind and heart, Frances Ferrell Rogers Christenbury (forever the first child born in High Point, North Carolina, on New Year’s Day 1932) will always be that spunky adventurer.

Frances loved me for who I am … saw and accepted the handwriting on my gay wall before most of the rest of my family … brought joy to my frolicking on the farm … and ordered extra copies of From Fertile Ground to share.

I think it was because reading it helped her heal after the loss of Helen. More than that, because it tells the story of our family’s survival across the generations.

One that will live forever on the pages with Frances and the fertile ground of grief.

Write. Share. Live. Loudly.

· 4 Comments ·

This is a momentous post for me–number 400 written and shared over the past five-plus years here.

As we begin June — Pride month — the topic of this one is more consequential than most.

Since May 2018, I’ve posted a long-and-winding stream of diverse stories about the Scottsdale-Arizona community I inhabit and about my life … as an independent writer, avid gardener, animal lover, critical thinker, loyal son, non-traditional father, and fortunate husband.

This openness is something I’ve learned and earned. More than sixty years ago, I was a shy child. I hid behind my mother and sucked my thumb for reassurance.

On a subconscious level, I must have felt I needed protection … for being different … though it would be decades before I would understand and embrace my gayness.

In the early 1990s (after my divorce from Jean and before I met my husband Tom), I felt lost and afraid. I certainly didn’t imagine I would one day sing on a stage with dozens of other gay men in Chicago … and then again in Phoenix.

Or that my husband and older son Nick (also living in Arizona) would watch and smile from the audience.

Much less, that I would write lyrics for the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus or develop dialogue for a palette of LGBTQ characters–a libretto, of sorts–for a concert in June 2023, titled Born to Be Brave.

This latest thrilling endeavor will premiere June 3 (2 pm and 7 pm shows) and then again June 4 (2 pm) at Tempe Center for the Arts.

All of this leads me to the point of this post.

In 2023–in a country where some would prefer not to say or hear the word gay or work to pass legislation to remove books from shelves written by gay authors–it is more important for all of us to live openly and loudly.

Moving back into the closet is simply not a viable or healthy option.

In that spirit, I am sharing two photos with this post. They contain images of my family members (past and present) and a sampling of the most important aspects of my authentic life.

For the concert this weekend, each of us (about seventy members of the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus) will wear a stole that drapes around our necks with such images … images that tell the stories of our lives for all the world to see.

Yes, in June or any month, all of us have much to be proud of. With the help of inspirational music, compassion from friends and neighbors, and the safe haven of our community, we’ve come a long way.

There’s no turning back.

The Magic of a Letter (with a Touch of Grief)

· 6 Comments ·

More than a week has passed, but my brain still swims in joy, appreciation, and disbelief.

It’s the understandable side effect of receiving a handwritten, personal letter from Carol Burnett earlier this month.

In it, she thanked me for sending I Think I’ll Prune the Lemon Tree to her as a gift for her birthday.

It’s my book of Arizona stories and St. Louis flashbacks, which includes a chapter on The Carol Burnett Show and the positive impact the program had on our family in the 1970s.

There is one other significant and unexpected side effect, which Carol’s letter has prompted: a touch of grief.

If you follow my blog or have read any of my books, you know that my mother–Helen Johnson–was the consummate letter writer.

From the late 1980s (when Mom retired) until 2010, she sent me more than a thousand letters laced with love and wisdom.

Some of them appear in From Fertile Ground. It is a three-generation writer’s mosaic about love, loss, and grief. I wrote and published the book a few years after my mother died in 2013.

Helen didn’t quite make it to ninety, the milestone Carol Burnett transcended recently. She came up six months short.

So, when Carol’s letter arrived in the mail it cued a few pangs of sadness and a familiar pleasure. One that has been missing from my life … missing from all of our lives … for a long time. That is the personal, human, and lasting connection produced by a handwritten letter.

With all of this as background, yesterday I pulled out the large blue plastic container that holds all of my mother’s letters–sent to Tom, Nick, Kirk, and me over the years. I have them classified by year.

I began to leaf through her 2003 correspondence. That was the year she turned eighty, on July 26, 2003, to be precise. My sister Diane and I hosted a big party for Mom that summer in Geneva, Illinois.

Family and friends traveled from near and far to attend Helen Johnson’s birthday dinner at the Mill Race Inn. We celebrated her first eighty years. Afterwards, we crossed a bridge over the Fox River to continue the party at the Herrington Inn, where many of our guests were staying.

At one point, a gentleman playing violin walked through the lobby. He asked my mother if she would like him to play Waltzing Matilda, her favorite song. (Matilda was her middle name.)

Mom’s eyes sparkled with glee as he stood over her. He slid the bow across the strings, and I watched her spirit soar. In short order, she began to sing … “Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, you’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me.”

Ordinarily, my mother didn’t enjoy being the center of attention. But, looking back, that moment in a posh hotel on the banks of the Fox River surrounded by loved ones may have been the happiest and most spontaneous moment of Helen Matilda Ferrell Johnson’s life.

If you’ve been doing the math as you read this story, you know that my mother’s 100th birthday is approaching. It’s just two months away. One of the best ways I can celebrate the memories of her is to read her letters, which she mailed to me.

In this one from May 26, 2003–twenty years ago–she recounted for Nick (my older son) and me that she and my dad bought their first new car (a black, four-door Plymouth) in Texas in February 1951.

I must have just told her about Nick’s first car, a used Toyota Camry, which his mom and I had just helped him buy when he was nineteen.

Whether a letter comes from a legend of stage and screen like Carol Burnett or someone who lived a more ordinary (yet still remarkable) life like my extraordinary mother, the words and the movement of the pen on the physical page speak directly from one heart to another … far exceeding the temporary status of a text, email, or phone call.

That’s the context and beauty–the magic, really–of an authentic, handwritten letter.

Heart Heroes and Survivors

· 4 Comments ·

There was a moment on Saturday morning–about two thirds of the way through the Phoenix Heart Walk with my husband Tom, friend Todd, son Nick and his girlfriend Anastasia by my side–when I spotted this young man holding a homemade sign.

His presence and the message along the three-mile route touched me. I stopped to take his picture, hugged him, and thanked him for being there and sharing his heartfelt message.

I don’t really consider myself a heart “hero”, though our Heart Walk 2023 team I “coached” and dubbed “Friends for Life” did raise more than $2,000 in the fight against heart disease and stroke.

Thankful “survivor” feels like a better fit. Especially when I look back on that day nearly six years ago when Tom and I endured our most difficult and frightening moments individually and as a couple.

It was July 6, 2017, our collective sixtieth birthday. After feeling breathless on a humid summer day, I found myself lying on a gurney in the bowels of Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

After suffering a mild heart attack, I waited impatiently for two teams of heart specialists–actual heart heroes–to remove a blockage in the left side of my heart and insert two stents.

Fortunately, since that tumultuous day I have been able to transform my health. With a little luck, thirty fewer pounds to carry, and a lot of hard work, support, and exercise, I’ve lived longer, written more stories, and created a whole new existence in the Valley of the Sun. You can read all about our journey in An Unobstructed View.

Certainly, I’ve come a long way since 2017. Far enough that on Saturday, March 25, 2023–after completing the Phoenix Heart Walk and crossing the finish line–I stood with family and friends on the streets of Phoenix and breathed deep.

Along with the thousands of others in attendance, we “heart heroes” celebrated and embraced a sunnier, more hopeful day.

Me preparing to cross the finish line at the Phoenix Heart Walk.
Heart Heroes/Survivors: Todd, me, Tom, Nick, and Anastasia

“Are You Guys Brothers?”

· 6 Comments ·

Tom and I get this question a few times a month–sometimes more often. In Arizona, Illinois, or anywhere in between.

We could be at the check-out counter of a grocery store, a restaurant as we wait to be seated, or on the treadmill at the gym we frequent in Scottsdale as we were on Monday.

That’s when a friendly man, wearing a San Francisco Giants ball cap, popped the question. (No, he didn’t ask me to marry him.)

In 2023, I generally smile and respond as I did Monday with “No, we aren’t, though we get that question a lot.” And the conversation ends there.

Depending on my mood–and how much I choose to share my personal story (after all, I am a memoir writer)–I have often gone on to say, “Tom and I are married.” Or “Tom and I are partners.” Or “Tom and I have been together for more than twenty-five years.”

Along the way, we have never received any open backlash concerning our relationship (nor should we). Quite the opposite. We have made more friends of all kinds because of our openness and comfort in our skins. (By the way, it took me decades to get here and I’m not going back.)

With time and reflection, I’ve realized that the question is more of an observation in the world of people we contact who aren’t able to classify the intimacy or closeness they identify between two men standing before them.

Or maybe it’s an acknowledgment on a less significant level that we have picked up some mannerisms from one another that two brothers might have in common. However, we really don’t look alike.

At any rate, I will continue to live my open life as a gay man–proudly–in my community. I will continue writing about my experiences–positive and negative–as a gay man, a husband, a father of two adult sons, a neighbor, a friend.

I will continue singing on stage with the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus. As I write this, I have just completed drafting a script about five fictionalized characters living in the Phoenix LGBTQ community in 2023. Their dialogue will be the glue that ties together the music of our next concert: “Born To Be Brave”, June 3 and 4 at Tempe Center for the Arts.

I feel it is my duty to demonstrate that two men–a gay, married couple–don’t have to be blood brothers to love each other.

Especially in a country where some want to remove the books of gay authors from the shelves. Or try to erase the checkered history of our country on race relations because the truth is threatening to some. Or ban drag shows, because they view them as recruitment activities for current or future generations.

Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now. But Tom and I aren’t brothers. We’re a gay couple living happily in 2023, and there are lots of us out in the world.

We’re making significant contributions. Loving our families. Loving our neighbors. Loving our friends. Loving the legacy, which we are leaving for future generations of children who need to know the truth about the past and the present. That there are all kinds of people in the world loving each other. And that’s just as it should be.

A Better Place

· 6 Comments ·

“Dogs have no idea how wonderful they are. They walk all around us and make the world a better place.”

***

On a chilly, but sunny, Thursday morning in Scottsdale, Arizona, this was Yumi’s thought of the day.

How serendipitous that our instructor should choose these two sentences as inspiration for Tom, me and six others on February 2, 2023, as we stood on our mats and began our weekly seventy-five-minute journey into yoga.

On Ground Hog Day fifteen years ago our basset hound Maggie crossed over the Rainbow Bridge.

When it’s your pet, you never forget the highs and lows long after the calendar pages have come and gone.

The frolics with Kirk, Nick, Tom, and me in the lush green of our backyard … the comfort of her velveteen elongated ears as I stroked her coat … the gnaws and crunches of rawhide bones and petite carrots as she gobbled up another evening snack, after racing to welcome us home at the kitchen door.

Then along came that sad-and-snowy suburban Chicago morning in 2008 when our dog endured another–particularly horrible– seizure.

After the shaking had stopped, she looked up at me with resignation from the tile of our kitchen floor without the energy or inclination to lick the maple syrup off a breakfast plate.

Soon after, Tom and I scooped her into our sedan, arrived at our vet’s office, and whispered goodbye to her as she sprawled on a blanket on the floor.

***

Today, seventeen hundred miles and a lifetime away from the northern Illinois home she patrolled and dominated, I recall the “glue” and comic relief our dog provided (through her warm fur, misshapen front legs, and bellowing howl).

She was the antidote for our non-traditional family: two men (in a loving relationship just doing our best to coexist in a less enlightened world) with my two sons zooming in and out of our life as they grew.

Our dog simply demanded our constant attention and stood by our sides witnessing it all.

It was the love and companionship of Maggie and the litany of her daily adventures–walks, feedings, treats, medicines, rabbits, squirrels, accidents in the hall, and countless cuddles–that magically connected us all.

Certainly, from 1998 to 2008, our dog made our world a better place.