Before my husband and I left Illinois a year ago, we gave away carloads of possessions to local charities. If you’ve moved recently, you know what I mean. Ancillary furniture, dishes, clothes and knickknacks. We resolved there was no point in carrying all of these extra items seventeen hundred miles west only to deposit them in a dusty, $200-per-month storage closet. Especially when they might be of use to other families in other homes in the same metropolitan area.

But there was something of more personal, intrinsic value I couldn’t part with—my voluminous supply of family photos, complete with glimpses back in time to less complicated places and meaningful moments in Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Texas. All of them came with us to Arizona.

Even after raiding my photo repository for three memoirs I’ve written, some images have slipped under my radar. They are stored loosely in shoeboxes or glued to yellowing scrapbooks my parents left behind. Others I’ve accumulated in albums from my own six decades. Now all of them are stacked in our master bedroom closet or in my father’s World War II army trunk near the foot of our bed.

My intent—over time—is to scan and digitize the bulk of them. But if I do that, I won’t have the experience I had today. Reaching up to the top shelf of my closet, leafing through a stack of old photos, and discovering an image I forgot I had: this remarkably clear (though somewhat tattered) snapshot of my grandparents’ farmhouse in Huntersville, North Carolina.

As luck would have it, this circa-1940s photo was nowhere to be found three years ago when I was writing From Fertile Ground. I scoured every corner of my Illinois home to find the most iconic black-and-white images of the farm my granddad bought from a man named J.R. McCurdy in 1945.

But this old gem slipped through the cracks only to resurface today and shed new light on a blazing afternoon in the Sonoran Desert. It was a happy reminder of the tired but magical refuge I knew twenty years later in the 1960s, where my sister and I chased peacocks in July for a chance to bring home a colorful tail feather or two and a new batch of summer memories.

In 1923, Helen—after Dorothy—was the second most popular name given to infant girls. But the Helen I knew, born that year on July 26 in High Point, North Carolina, was second to none. Helen Matilda Ferrell was my resilient mother. This would have been her ninety-fifth birthday.

After a Depression-era childhood filled with hardship and family responsibilities, Helen left the Tar Heel State at twenty-two. In 1945, she landed a government job in post-WWII St. Louis, where she lived most of the next six decades. In 1948, she met my father, Walter Johnson, at Westminster Ballroom. They married later that year after a brief courtship.

The ensuing decade was a relatively quiet time. By 1957, Helen and Walter were proud parents of two healthy children—my sister and me. But the 1960s, like the social upheaval in our country, were turbulent years for our family. Walter suffered a heart attack in 1962 that left him alive but reeling and unable to work consistently. Helen found a full-time job to sustain us.

I know my mother felt alone under the weight of the grind for the next twenty-five years. I watched her muster the strength to raise two children, mark time in a disintegrating marriage, and teeter above it all with no safety net. Finally, Helen took a deep breath in 1987. She retired to a more peaceful, contented life at sixty-three.

Over the next twenty-five years, Helen penned and mailed a thousand or more cards and letters to me. Kind but forceful, I almost had to hold them at arm’s length to keep the contents from smothering me like the kudzu vines that constrained the trees and plant life in rural North Carolina. But time gives us greater appreciation and perspective. I now understand my mother’s letters were her narrative, her legacy of wisdom. I’ve kept them close at hand, stored in a box near my desk.

When Helen died of congestive heart failure on January 26, 2013 in Wheaton, Illinois, I didn’t know the full moon beaming on the horizon would be the last light I would see before two foggy-headed years swallowed me whole. I often felt alone in the darkness, though my husband and a circle of close friends stood with me. I forged along in the vacuum of Helen’s existence.

I hoped Helen’s letters would provide clues for me to move ahead without her physical presence. So in 2014, after retiring from my own demanding career in the communication business, I began to sift through her scribblings—strewn across my living room floor—like a desperate miner panning for gold nuggets.

Slowly, a few answers emerged. Remnants of Helen, the ultimate survivor, permeated the pages she authored at the desk of her St. Louis retirement. Her life lessons—and a mountain of diary entries her father left behind from his Spartan mid-twentieth-century life in rural North Carolina—prompted me to retrace my southern roots in 2015. A year later, with glimmers of Helen guiding me, I completed and published my first book, From Fertile Ground, a three-generation memoir about all three of our lives.

Two more years have passed. Though the loss of my mother persists, it has subsided with the rise and fall of each passing full moon. Helen didn’t witness the life I’ve unearthed as a late-blooming author, my precarious existence following a heart attack a year ago, or the personalized definition of retirement my husband and I are shaping near the sands of the Sonoran Desert. But perhaps none of these eventualities would have surprised her.

Certainly, my mother’s voice and encouragement endure with each passing day. Late in her life, as her maladies mounted, she kept her even keel and a dish of her favorite candies, Werther’s original caramels, nearby to relieve her dry mouth. With a sly smile, she reminded me that “the best way to stay healthy is to get a chronic disease and then take care of it.”

It’s comforting knowing that whenever I need to access a page of my mother’s philosophy to get through a difficult moment, I have a path to follow, which—over time—I’ve integrated into my life along with a ready supply of Werther’s hard candies.

The splice of Helen’s handwriting you see here, taken from a 2008 thank-you note to me right after her eighty-fifth birthday celebration, is physical proof of the remarkable woman I knew. In Helen’s words, some things, like a fulfilling retirement, are “worth waiting for.”

And some people are most definitely worth remembering too.

July 12, 2017 was a blistering afternoon in Scottsdale, Arizona. A year ago I was certain of one thing as my husband and I arrived at our new home, emerged from our stacked Sonata and stepped into the 107-degree heat. I was thankful. No matter the temperature, I had survived a mild heart attack on our way west. We were ready to turn the page in the desert.

For the next few weeks, we stayed inside mostly. Away from the sun. I unpacked a few boxes. Somehow I also found the energy to paint a wall in our condo after we had a new thermostat installed. But Tom did all of the heavy lifting. I sat and observed. I remember watching him clean our hummingbird feeder. He filled it with sugar water and hung it outside our kitchen window. Under the eaves.

Within a few days, a few ruby-throated hummingbirds zoomed in and landed. They found their newest source of neighborhood nourishment. It was comforting to see them hover nearby. They lingered there with us.

Over the past year, our hummingbird friends have become a mainstay. I’ll bet Tom has refilled the feeder with sweet nectar at least twenty times. This week we’ve seen heavy monsoon rains on a few afternoons. Yesterday I captured this image of one of our friends hanging out under our eaves. After the storm.

 

 

 

Looking for an inspiring true story to read this summer? Enter this Goodreads giveaway before July 31 for a chance to win one of 100 free Kindle copies of my latest book, An Unobstructed View.

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/281981-an-unobstructed-view-a-personal-journey-from-illinois-to-arizona

My husband Tom and I are just hours away from celebrating our shared sixty-first birthday in Scottsdale, Arizona. It’s been a remarkable and synchronistic year.

July 6, 2017 began with a surprise. It was me lying on a gurney. Tom stood by me. Calling my sons. Squeezing my hand. Assuring me that the doctors and nurses at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis (less than ten miles from my boyhood home) would take good care of me. I had just suffered a mild heart attack on our way west as we were driving to our new home in Arizona.

I will never forget that crazy day in muggy St. Louis. Craning my neck to steal a tear-stained hug from an anonymous and kind nurse. Telling her I was a writer. Explaining that I would share this experience to ease the pain for some other poor soul. Doing so would help me heal. It would be my salvation. The story became my third book: An Unobstructed View.

A year has passed, but my St. Louis synchronicity continues. The Major League Baseball schedule makers decided to send the St. Louis Cardinals to Arizona in early July–exactly one year after my brush with destiny. They paired my beloved team from the bleacher seats of my 1960s with the Arizona Diamondbacks in my new hometown in an Independence Day contest in the desert.

Needless to say, Tom and I bought two bleacher tickets for last night’s game. Before we found our seats, I snapped this synchronistic selfie of the two of us … with me, wearing my weathered Cardinals cap. Several hours later, the Redbirds escaped with a sloppy 8-4 victory.

But, in the scheme of life, the sweetest triumph of all happened for me a year ago on July 6, 2017 in St. Louis. That’s when I was reborn with my husband by my side. It happened in the city that first welcomed me.

 

 

When I woke up this morning, I panicked because it’s July 1st. Pride month had come and gone without me writing a word about it. But then I quickly regained my equilibrium. There is no expiration date on Pride. I’m proud of being gay 365 days a year.

That doesn’t mean I don’t feel anxiety and trepidation on a regular basis. I do. Especially in a world where the relentless news cycle reminds me that love and respect seem to be running in short supply for those who are different and disenfranchised. That’s probably what prompted me to spend $38 on this “LOVE IS LOVE” t-shirt, which my husband and I saw hanging in a window at a Banana Republic store in Chicago a few weeks ago.

Anyway, for my own peace of mind right now, I need to acknowledge and focus on the positive experiences in my life. Moments when I feel respect and pride. One of them occurred here in Arizona just a few nights ago.

I sing with the Phoenix Metropolitan Men’s Chorus. We are a diverse group of talented gay men of all ages, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds. The Arizona Diamondbacks invited us to sing the national anthem at Pride Night before the start of the June 29 Dbacks game with the San Francisco Giants at Chase Field in Phoenix.

Before the game, as we exercised our vocal chords and gathered to make our way into the ballpark, courteous members of the Dbacks’ staff worked to locate a wheelchair for one of our members who needed assistance. He’s a beloved, longtime member of the chorus who has recovered from a stroke and returned to sing again. Once the wheelchair arrived, we were on our way. We wound up and down long corridors underneath the ballpark. Ultimately, we were escorted onto the outfield in front of four microphones. That’s when I gazed up at the crowd. I was surrounded by my chorus mates and some twenty thousand fans. A few minutes later, the public address announcer introduced us.

Time stood still. We sang beautifully. The fans cheered. We were thrilled. I was proud.

Love is love.

Last year, I had the opportunity to meet Joyce Maynard, renowned author of sixteen books of fiction and non-fiction. Most notably the bestselling memoir At Home in the World. She was a guest lecturer at a writer’s workshop I attended in Tucson. I vividly remember one piece of advice Joyce gave the group: That as writers it was up to us to tell the forbidden story.

As a memoir writer, I believe every bit of what Joyce had to say. I strive to keep her gem of literary gumption at the forefront of what I produce. Telling the truth with personal passion. Exploring every emotion with honesty. Delivering authenticity in everything I write and publish. Anything less would be misleading and manipulative.

On the final night of the workshop, Joyce stood in front of the group and read a chapter from her latest book, The Best of Us. It’s the story of the love she shared with her husband Jim and their profound journey before, during and after his battle with pancreatic cancer shattered their lives. I was fortunate to be one of fifty or so other writers in the room that night. All of us were captivated by the poetic poignancy of Joyce’s chosen words and the gift of hearing her tell her story in her own voice with her own inflections.

This past week I finally had the time to read The Best of Us cover to cover on my flight from Phoenix to Chicago and back. The book is a testament to the power of love and loss. An ode to capturing the fleeting, indelible moments (both sweet and bitter) that come with only the most rare once-in-lifetime relationships.

Thank you, Joyce, for telling your personal forbidden stories. For sparing no details about the loves and losses in your life. You give all writers something beautiful, truthful, grand and glorious to aspire to.

My husband and I sold our suburban Chicago home and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona nearly a year ago. We hadn’t been back to the Windy City. Until last week, that is.

I’ll admit it. I was anxious about the trip. Primarily because I had encountered and survived a health scare on the way west. The experience changed and shook me to such a degree. I just wasn’t sure what it would feel like to spend a week in Illinois again. So much of my time in the past twelve months has been devoted to getting well, building a new life in the desert southwest, and reflecting on my previous home in Mount Prospect. (Incidentally, all of that led me to draft, reconfigure, rewrite, complete and publish my latest book, An Unobstructed View, a few weeks before my return to the Midwest.)

Naturally, I needed and wanted to see and hug loved ones again, who still live in the Land of Lincoln: my younger son, my sister, my sister-in-law. Not to mention close friends and neighbors. All of them kind. Concerned about our welfare. But living far away from us now. Seventeen hundred miles east. They were the impetus and motivation for our return. I knew that being with them again and feeling their love would remind me just how deep my Illinois roots still run. That I would always hold a special place in my heart for my thirty-seven years living in the Chicago area. Just as I do for the first two decades of my life in Missouri.

Anyway, last week, I felt the Illinois love again … without all the responsibilities of jobs and homeownership of my previous Illinois existence. Though we didn’t have the time to visit with everyone we wanted to see, our first trip back included the moments that mattered most: relaxing days and nights with friends in our old Mount Prospect neighborhood; a surprise invitation from the new owners of our previous home to step in and admire their freshly painted interior; quiet meals in the suburbs with our sisters and a dear friend who officiated our wedding; a musical evening in Chicago at St. James Cathedral watching and listening to our Windy City Performing Arts friends perform “My Life: A Mixtape”; a Father’s Day brunch on the north side with my son that extended into a fun afternoon of World Cup watching; and dinner with a close friend along the Chicago River on our last night in town.

That final stop is where my husband captured this photo of me. Watching the water traffic float by. Admiring the vibrant city that used to be my home.

Now the circle is complete.

A year ago, everything seemed to be running like clockwork. I had begun to write my third book. My husband and I had found a buyer for our suburban Chicago home. We were making final preparations for our cross-country move to Arizona and our sixtieth birthday celebration. Both were only a month away.

But I should have known better. Life had taught me there was nothing certain about any journey. I had already navigated the ups and downs of my St. Louis childhood, struggled along as a single dad, shed illusions of a straight existence in favor of an authentic life, and retraced the path of my mother’s life from fertile ground. Yet, I didn’t expect the journey I was about to embark upon with my husband–waving goodbye to one home and resurfacing in another–would prove to be as circuitous.

Needless to say, we encountered an unexpected detour on our way west. Everything changed. I struggled but eventually rediscovered my rhythm and began to write again. An Unobstructed View was born just a few days ago. I received the first copy of my new book in my mail this week. I held it in my hand and breathed deep, thankful for the gift of life and the power of perseverance.

What have I learned? Keep calm and write on.

 

I’m a firm believer that we each have at least one meaningful memoir–vivid stories about our lives, our loves, our losses, our dreams and our realities–in us.

In fact, I’ve written and published two memoirs: From Fertile Ground in 2016 and Tales of a Rollercoaster Operator in 2017. (This photo of my Johnson family members about to board the S.S. Admiral in St. Louis in the summer of 1954 appears in my second book with the up-and-down stories of my Missouri childhood.)

In the summer of 2018, I will complete and release my third memoir, An Unobstructed View. As I’ve written my stories, I’ve learned what it takes to create a compelling memoir. If you’re like me and have a deep desire to share your story with the world, I’ve assembled these ten tips to help you along the way.

1. Find your flow. Begin by carving out a little time each day to journal. Jot down whatever comes to mind. Write about a person, place or memory that has special meaning in your life. Over time, your writing will become a habit that gains momentum.
2. Scour your memorabilia. Go through old photos, letters and newspaper clippings you’ve kept. Set aside the most relevant ones that align with your passion. Refer to these to fuel your writing.
3. Set the stage. Establish your point of view. Describe what your story is about and why it’s important to you. Take the time to paint a picture of the location/setting of your memoir and describe the arc of your story.
4. Write what you feel. Go beyond reporting what you know. The details are important, but not as much as how you were affected by the occurrences that appear in your story. Tell your reader how you feel. Describe your experience—how the positive, negative and unusual happenings in your story touched your life.
5. Tell your story. Talk about your truths. Share anecdotes and relevant details that support what you have to say. Be authentic. If you do, your reader will want to follow you on your journey.
6. Follow the story. As you write your story, the process may take you to new places (literally and figuratively). Do your best to remain open to possibilities that may unfold (i.e., traveling back to a familiar place to retrace your steps) so that your writing captures the essence of a life’s journey filled with both expected outcomes and some surprises.
7. Pace yourself. Memoirs are personal stories. As a result, you are likely to encounter strong emotions on your writing journey. Give yourself the time you need. When it feels like too much, take a break for a day or two. When you do, you will come back to your work refreshed.
8. Share your work sparingly. As you write your story, you may be tempted to share it with well-intentioned family members and friends. Be careful. This is your story. While you are in the drafting stage, hold tight to your writing convictions with little outside influence.
9. Decide how it ends. There is no prescribed conclusion or resolution to your story. You get to decide where and how it ends. A good rule of thumb is to find a event, place or moment that moves the reader with insights into what you’ve learned along the way.
10. Find a good editor. Once you have completed the draft of your memoir, you may decide you want to try to publish your work. If you do, you will want to find a reliable editor. There are lots of good resources to help you. For instance, Writer’s Market is a thorough reference that lists editors and literary agents who are more inclined to consider memoir submissions. If you prefer, you also have the option of self-publishing your work. In either case, a skilled editor is essential to help you develop and polish your manuscript.