No, those aren’t the names of three of Santa’s reindeer that will pull his sleigh tomorrow night.
But if you were one of more than 100 singers, dancers, and musicians on stage–or any of the 900-plus jubilant audience members who attended three sold-out shows–you felt sparkle, magic, joy and a lot more positivity, lush music, spectacular solos, and elfin storytelling pulse through your bloodstream at the Herberger Theatre (Stage West) in Phoenix over the weekend.
What you see here is the culmination of Recycle the Fruitcake, just breaths away from the end of act one of Lights, Camera, Elves!
I think it’s fair to say this number brought the house down in laughter, music, and mayhem.
Squint and look to the far right. That’s me wearing a giant gingerbread man costume. (My chorus pal Ezra played the other gingerbread man on the left side of the frame.)
Billy and Michael (two other dancers and chorus members) helped me perform a quick-change backstage.
They inflated my costume in about thirty seconds, so that I could return to bounce on the apron of the stage.
I waved my arms like a seven-year-old … not the sixty-seven-year-old guy I am … for twenty seconds. It was exhilarating and as close to skydiving as I will ever get.
Moments before I marched across the stage–arms extended carrying an enormous tin of toxic fruitcake, wearing a full-body orange hazmat suit, and teasing the dancers and the audience–“cause you never really know where fruitcakes might have been.”
Today–the day after our final holiday performance and an exuberant and playful cast party around Dale’s and Jim’s rainbow Christmas tree–I give thanks to the entire experience.
Even a slightly pulled right calf muscle didn’t deter me from hitting the gym with Tom at 9 a.m. and looking ahead to a quiet Scottsdale Christmas Eve with him … followed by a low-key Christmas Day with my older son Nick and his family.
Because as Derik (another second tenor, who played our Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus Santa) proclaimed near the end of our performance with a pink garland wrapped around his neck and the twinkle of Darlene’s piano keys over his shoulder …
“The magic of Christmas isn’t just in the gifts or decorations. It’s in the stories we share, and the music that brings us together.”
See you here in 2025 for more stories and more music.
What I share here always comes from my heart and the firing (sometimes misfiring) synapses of my brain.
Lately, I have been drawn to writing more poetry. It helps me to process the pain–personal and national–which I have been wearing like a cape that shrouds my best impulses and intentions.
Today, as Christmas and the end of the year approach, I am taking a different path.
Before I take the stage next weekend for my holiday concert with the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus, I want to reflect on bright-and-shiny moments–present and past–which have been tempered by devastating-and-unavoidable losses in 2024.
***
Tom and I are among the dwindling few, who continue to send Christmas cards in the mail to our closest friends and loved ones.
It’s something that brings both of us joy, and in my book that means it’s something worth doing–no matter what other Americans do.
I know that practice places us in the minority (rather like the disastrous outcome of our presidential election), but I don’t care.
Since childhood, I have always identified as “different” or–more specifically–as an outsider. Maybe it was my brain’s subconscious attempt at preparing me for the obstacles I would face as a gay man.
At any rate, conformity is for the faint of heart. It takes courage to stand by your differences, and I have a feeling I will need to muster a boatload of courage as we head into 2025.
Maybe that approaching storm is why I have taken comfort recently in an old Christmas memory.
For several years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, before Dad had his first heart attack, he took Diane (my sister) and me in our old, green Plymouth to search for our family Christmas tree.
We didn’t have much money, so he usually drove us to a tree lot adjacent to a Site filling station. Strangely, I remember the price of gas was 29 cents a gallon on the sign that swayed in winter’s wind.
Dad was a tall man–six feet, two inches. One day I would reach that same stature, but going back sixty-five years, I was a little tyke with a wool stocking cap covering my crew cut.
Dad wanted to select a natural tree (usually balsam, because they were cheaper than Scotch Pine) that was at least his height, so when it was placed in a tree stand all of us (he, Mom, Diane, and I) could gaze up at the beauty of its lights, ornaments, and tinsel hanging on every branch.
In the cold and damp St. Louis air, it usually took us several rounds up and down the aisles of the tree lot to find the best shaped tree. But we always found one to our liking and–with heavy twine–somehow tied it to the roof of our sedan.
When we got home on December 4 or 5, our family practice was to cut a small notch off the bottom of the tree trunk, then deposit it into a metal bucket of water to keep it fresh.
Inevitably, the water in the bucket froze, but with a little heat from the Midwestern sun, around the middle of December we were able to pry it out of the bucket, screw it into our stand, and decorate our family Christmas tree in our living room.
***
Back to reality. We lost a few friends in 2024. Peggy’s passing in mid-November is the most recent.
I was touched and honored when Glenn–our dear friend, neighbor and one of the kindest and most dependable people I know–asked me to write his wife’s obituary.
Peggy’s memorial service last week was a beautiful reflection on her meaningful life as a teacher, wife, mother, grandmother, animal-lover, and upstanding citizen. I will miss her.
In general, I am aware of the “shrinkage” (and greater vulnerability) that comes with age–the loss of friends and family one by one, the institutions that close their doors, the connections that fray (literal or otherwise), the visits to the dentist to replace crowns and teeth that wear down and require repairs.
I experienced all of those in 2024. But there were inspiring moments, too.
Tom and I traveled to Minneapolis in July for the quadrennial GALA chorus festival. The singing, listening, bonding, and carousing with other LGBTQ friends and chorus members filled our cups and our hearts.
It was also a privilege to share England and Scotland with my husband in late September. That week-long tour–from London, to Bath, to Lake Windermere, to Shakespeare’s home, to Liverpool, and the cobblestone streets of Edinburgh–was our tenth wedding anniversary gift to each other.
And 2024 was the year I began to teach again. I had fun in October and November coaching a dozen aspiring and diverse writers in my first memoir writing workshop at the Scottsdale Public Library. I will do it again in January 2025 with a new batch of students.
***
It feels like the best way to end this meandering post is on a high note. So, why not share a photo of the pre-lit artificial Christmas tree Tom and I decorated and adore in our Arizona home?
On Christmas Eve, we will sit together in front of our tree, open our presents, and give thanks for the love we share and the diverse branches of family and friends in our lives who adorn our world.
For me, one of those branches is sharing ideas and stories with all of you.
My mother loved fruitcake. I think making and eating it reminded her of her Carolina roots.
As a teenager and young adult, I remember seeing her and many of my older relatives consume fruitcake.
The thought of munching that dark, rich, moist, nutty, fruity, and rummy consistency repulsed me.
Anyway, she liked having fruitcake around during the holidays. I didn’t.
In the early 1980s, when Jean (my ex) and I lived in the Chicago suburbs, Mom hadn’t caught on to my fruitcake aversion.
Every December, she ordered a rather expensive variety of fruitcake, made by the Trappist monks of the Assumption Abbey, and had it delivered to us.
(Assumption Abbey is a monastery tucked in the foothills of the Missouri Ozarks.)
Jean and I didn’t have the heart to tell Mom to stop sending us fruitcakes. So, every year, we received another tin of it, which sat unopened on the bottom shelf of our refrigerator.
We never found a way to recycle or share it with others, because no one else we knew liked fruitcake either.
Inevitably, year after year–sometime in May, June, or July long after the last presents were unwrapped–Jean or I extricated the fruitcake from the back of our fridge and dumped it in the garbage.
***
If you follow my blog, you know I sing second tenor with a gay chorus–to be precise, the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus (PHXGMC)–and have written several librettos for PHXGMC.
For the uninitiated, we are a joyous, talented, and rambunctious LGBTQ-plus organization, comprised of more than one hundred singers and musicians (who also wear multiple hats as artistic consultants, dancers, actors, writers, marketers, costume designers, stagehands, sound technicians, and lighting crew).
At times, the switching of hats from one day, week, or number to the next is a dizzying process. But when you volunteer for an arts’ organization you believe in, it comes with the territory.
As I write this, we are entering the heavy lifting phase of Lights, Camera, Elves!, our holiday show coming December 21 and 22 to the Herberger Theatre in Phoenix.
Anyway, as I swam laps on Tuesday and considered what to write this week, thoughts of my mother’s love of fruitcake and a coincidental plotline in our concert popped into my head.
You see, like my mother, Rudy–a character in our concert–adores fruitcake. He can’t get enough of it, and that obsession leads him into trouble and a terrible trap.
In fact, Act One ends with a hysterical, rousing number–Recycle the Fruitcake.
In the mix, I should back up and tell you that Scott, our choreographer, has asked me to play a bit role in the fruitcake number.
For about 15 seconds, I’ll be crossing the stage wearing an orange hazmat suit, while carrying a toxic fruitcake in this holiday tin. Meanwhile, the chorus will be singing this lyrical line:
“A fruitcake can be wide, a fruitcake can be thin, a fruitcake can be toxic, so they keep it in a tin. So, when you get a fruitcake, never let it touch your skin, ’cause you never really know where fruitcakes might have been.”
Brandon and Mike (two other chorus members) and I had loads of fun co-creating the libretto for Lights, Camera, Elves! … and we are coaching the cast as they prepare for our performances.
The show is a story of redemption, featuring Santa’s love for holiday movies, a misfit security guard named Rudy, and three recalled-and-mischievous elves (Spike, Ginger, and Eddie) … all told against the backdrop of gorgeous and fun holiday music.
We’re excited, because we are expecting full houses for all three of our holiday shows.
Though my mother has been gone for nearly twelve years and was never able to see me perform in any of the fifteen holiday concerts I’ve appeared in since 2010, I know she would have loved the spirit and beautiful music in this show … along with my creative impulse to recycle my fruitcake memories.
We all endure specific days–or months–that test our best intentions and weigh on our psyches. January is that month for me.
Long before Tom’s father died January 14, 2012, and my mother followed January 26, 2013, the first month of the year represented a period of Midwestern malaise, forced hibernation, and cold, lingering darkness.
Of course, I live in a warmer, brighter climate now (despite freezing temperatures the past few mornings). I am thankful for that, especially as Tom shares images of his sister and brother-in-law snow blowing and shoveling outside their suburban Chicago home.
Since my mother’s death nearly eleven years ago, the years have passed with a gauzy flutter like pages of a book swept away by a winter’s squall.
Yet January’s weary sensations–grief masked in a cocktail of Christmas memories, vanilla lip balm, and her last graceful smiles during breathing treatments designed to ease her congestive heart failure–appear on cue.
Last weekend, Tom and I packed away our Christmas decorations and recounted cherished memories of quiet holiday moments together and the adrenalin rush of my holiday concert. Adjusting to the rise and fall of this season is always a bittersweet process.
But this week I was eager to recoup our less-cluttered space. To move ahead. To read and write new pages. To protect, nurture, and regain a more normal rhythm away from the madness of news that reminds me–frequently–just how fragile our democracy has become.
My mother and father–who survived the Battle of the Bulge in World War II–would be horrified.
In the depths of 2020, my husband and I began a tradition of buying bouquets of flowers to place in a vase in our living room. As the walls and woes of Covid and our political angst closed in, it gave us hope to see a splash of color on our coffee table.
Less than ten days into 2024, like each of you I have my dreams and doubts, wonders and worries.
But writing about this spray of lavender carnations Tom and I brought home (then displayed in a smoky-blue ceramic pitcher my mother left behind, and placed atop a Spring-like, bird-laden runner my sister gave us for Christmas) helps me breathe, reflect, and relax.
I take a blood thinner; therefore, I bruise easily.
So, for instance, if I’m putting away dishes in our cupboard after dinner and bump the top of my hand on the corner of the cabinet, I am sure to leave that mundane household experience with a souvenir–an immediate red patch that will last a few days in the afflicted area.
I haven’t always been ultra-self-conscious about the condition of my extremities. It’s only lately–in my sixties with thinner skin on my thinner body–that I’ve become aware of my aging hands and, of course, my mortality. They go hand in hand.
Since I’m a writer and rely on my fingers, wrists, and hands to write these sentences on my laptop, I’m fortunate not to have arthritis in my joints–in my hands.
My sister Diane seems to be the one in our family who has inherited that painful component of our mother’s DNA. Particularly in her hips, knees, and feet.
Diane is sixty-eight-years old. She doesn’t read what I write. We live seventeen hundred miles apart. She in Illinois. Me in Arizona.
Even so, I love my sister. I always have and will. Tom and I visited her and Steve (Diane’s husband) for an afternoon last October while we were in the Chicago area. In this age of Covid, we recounted all the things we are thankful for.
Diane will always be my only sibling, my only big sister. We talk and text occasionally. I worry about Diane’s physical wellness and longevity. We’re the only two remaining in our family of origin, since Mom passed away ten years ago.
Diane also is the only other person who remembers the nuances of our St. Louis childhood, our homelife (good, bad, and indifferent), our difficult plight as a family after Dad’s heart attack in 1962, our mother’s resolve in her fifties and fragility in her eighties, our mother’s aging hands.
I came across this photo of Mom’s folded hands from Christmas Eve 2008. That night, we gathered at Diane’s home in Illinois to celebrate the holiday and open gifts. Mom would live to share another four Christmases with us.
It’s a cropped image and not the clearest, but when I saw it, I was reminded of Mom’s age spots and blemishes that grew with the passage of time on her fair, loose, thin skin. The rough patches on her hard-working hands go back in time to her rural southern roots in High Point, North Carolina, and fifty years in St. Louis, Missouri, which I chronicle in From Fertile Ground.
In her final nine years living in northern Illinois, our mother had this habit of clutching a tissue in her palms. She often hid an auxiliary one in the arm of her blouse or sweater. If you look closely, you can see it peeking out of the sleeve of her heather-flecked turtleneck.
These are the little personal idiosyncrasies that only a sibling would remember. They don’t matter in the grander scheme of things, but they do when it’s your mother and you still love and miss her after ten years of living without her. And you realize that your own mortality creeps ever closer with every blogpost.
Sure, I stay active–mentally and physically–and will continue to mount the treadmill several times each week to keep my heart strong.
But there is no denying the evolving appearance of my spotted, aging hands. They are looking more like my mother’s every day.
In the early 1960s, the four of us–Dad, Mom, Diane, and I–preferred a natural Christmas tree.
In mid-December, we bundled up, drove to a local tree lot, and picked out a well-shaped balsam.
Money was tight, so our family’s philosophy was the cheaper the better.
One of the men at the lot usually helped Dad tie the tree to the top of our car.
Once we arrived back home, we sawed off a notch of the trunk.
Then, Dad placed the six-footer outside in a metal bucket filled with water to keep it fresh until we trimmed the tree.
In those days, these porcelain candy cane kids adorned the branches of our family Christmas in south suburban St. Louis.
Originally, there was a third sibling, but he or she broke in the years following and couldn’t be repaired.
Thankfully, these two have survived until now … traveling from Missouri to Illinois to Arizona.
This year, Tom and I nestled the remaining candy cane kids near the top of our artificial tree in the sunroom of our Scottsdale condo.
They remind us of the memory magic of Christmas, seen through the bright eyes of an exuberant child.
As 2022 draws to a close, thank you for following me on this journey.
No matter your age or whether you celebrate Christmas, my wish for you and me in 2023 is that we continue to nurture our imaginations and rekindle our sense of possibilities and wonder.
Because it is that spark–and the spirit of the candy cane kids in all of our lives–that helps us create the art to make the world a richer and more joyful place.
On Saturday and Sunday, I stood on stage at the Galvin Playhouse in Tempe, Arizona, with about forty fellow members of the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus.
From the tenor two section of the top riser, I was dressed in black pants and my snazzy, solid-red holiday sweater. I was ready to raise my voice, have fun, open my heart, and bear my soul for two large, enthusiastic audiences there to see and hear us perform our ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas show.
As you might expect, I was amped up. My energy and emotions were running high. On stage or not, the holiday season can spur a range of feelings–from joy, hope, and peace to sorrow–for each of us.
Often, the music we hear or create is the catalyst for our state of being. It reminds us of who we are, who we love, who we’ve lost, where we’ve been, where we are, and maybe even foretells where we’re going.
Like life, this was a holiday concert that included a little of everything: luscious chords, soaring solos, a tribute to Hannukah, hot men wearing sparkly vests, a surprise tap dance underneath the tree (in the ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas parody I wrote for the show), a caped gay superhero, a Christmas Can-Can not to be believed, sexy Santa Baby, assorted musical mash ups, and inspirational tunes.
The program was a delight to perform, and the crowds loved it. I felt thrilled and honored that about thirty family members and friends attended. One of them was Jeff.
Over the past three years, he and his husband Dave have become close friends for Tom and me. We’ve met for dinner frequently. Watched movies and played games together. Laughed and swam in their backyard pool. Shared funny stories from our past lives.
In March, Tom and I were honored to join Jeff and Dave and about thirty other friends to celebrate their fortieth anniversary. In October, they drove to Barnes & Noble in Mesa to be there for my book signing. Dave was a regular reader of my blog. He brought up my writing frequently. Each time, I was touched.
On Sunday morning, between the two holiday concerts, Jeff texted to tell Tom and me that Dave passed away Saturday night. He succumbed to complications of muscular dystrophy–a disease he lived with for many years. It confined him to a wheelchair, but–in the time I knew Dave–his disability never dampened his kind spirit, playful energy or warm smile.
I’m sad and stunned. I will miss my friend. On Sunday, as I sang Grown Up Christmas List on stage, I thought of Dave and all he must have endured. That song usually makes me cry anyway, but when I saw others in the audience tearing up, I fought hard to hold it together.
Of course, Jeff knows Tom and I are there for him as he grieves the loss of his long-time husband and loving companion. We will check in on him frequently.
This is just the latest personal reminder to sing and dance. Hug and kiss the ones you love. Fight hard for your convictions. Stand tall in the face of adversity. Raise your voice. And, if you are dealt a difficult hand, find a way to accept the unacceptable.
As a tribute to Dave, what follows is the full text of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (A Gay Love Story), which I wrote for the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus in July 2022.
It’s a parody, which Tony Crane and Tim Gorka (who played Uncle Gabe and Nephew Jay respectively) performed masterfully during our show in Tempe over the weekend.
Had he seen it, Dave would have laughed out loud and loved it.
Rest in peace, my friend.
***
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (A Gay Love Story)
Everybody’s waitin’ for the man with the bag, cause Christmas is comin’ again.
I’ll be singing this lyrical line with my Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus mates this Saturday and Sunday on stage in Tempe, Arizona at the Galvin Playhouse. (Go to http://www.phxgmc.org for tickets.)
“Man With The Bag” is a jazzy, Christmas mash-up, artfully arranged by David Maddux. It’s the second number of Act II, a mix of frolicking, silky, reflective, fun, inspiring, and sometimes-bawdy music in our “Twas the Night Before Christmas” show.
If I sound excited, I am. This will be my thirteenth consecutive holiday concert: seven with Windy City Gay Chorus in Chicago; six here in Phoenix.
Singing Christmas music in my fifties and sixties with two diverse community choruses of gay men has somehow rekindled the wonder and anticipation of my childhood.
Close your eyes and travel back in time. Music or not, you remember that giddy Christmas feeling.
For me, it happened annually with my sister Diane. Decades before the advent of fake news, we stood on opposite ends of our fake, cardboard fireplace in suburban St. Louis. No doubt, as we posed for this photo, Perry Como crooned a holiday tune on the hi-fi.
Anyway, in December 1962–yikes, sixty years ago–we were waitin’ for the man with the bag in the dining room of our modest brick home without an actual fireplace. But that didn’t deter our keen imaginations or exuberance. In fact, it nurtured them.
I don’t know what happened to that fabulous fireplace I leaned against years ago. I doubt that it survived to see 1970.
But Diane and I are still here. Yes, much older and definitely wiser. She lives in Wheaton, Illinois, with her husband; I live in Scottsdale, Arizona, with mine.
I mailed a small box of gifts to her recently, and her package will arrive here before Christmas. But it is the gifts of music and memory that I cherish today … and the thought of just the two of us–way back when–waitin’ for the man with the bag.
Sonoran Desert December days dazzle. Gone are dreary skies, icy gusts, swirling flurries, clanging Salvation Army bells, and busy Windy City sidewalk years wearing topcoats and backpacks. Still earlier, shedding St. Louis jackets and stocking caps. Hanging them on cloak room hooks before school started. Dreaming of holiday cupcakes and Santa’s flight trajectory.
Arizona’s anonymous set designer has replaced them. Sparkling sun burns off the chill of the morning. A neighbor’s pink rose blooms and brightens the walk. A flock of chirpy lovebirds dash away on cue like pent-up kids scampering out the door for recess. Playful palms shimmer and brush the sand from the sky. Granting the splendor of December revisited.
In the darkest days of the final year of the aughts, Helen diminished like the decade’s December light. But from her cozy corner apartment at Brighton Gardens in Wheaton, Illinois, she and her prized African violets persevered. Collectively, they captured remaining rays through two windows. One faced west. The other north.
It was independent living of sorts for those like my mother, who had fallen physically or slipped mentally. Helen had done both. Her descent prompted my sister Diane and me to move Mom and her favorite belongings from her two-bedroom condo into smaller and safer quarters ten months before.
As Christmas 2009 drew near, I was befuddled. What could I give my nature-and-poetry-loving mother that she didn’t already have? My inner monologue told me to write something for her. To bridge the gap from my mid-sixties matinee memory of Mom, Diane and me seated side-by-side in a St. Louis theater. Hypnotized by Doctor Zhivago and scenes of Yuri at a desk penning poetry in the icy rural castle of Varykino.
Perhaps with a little inspiration from Boris Pasternak, I knew what to do. Far from the snow-covered majesty and drama of Russian landscapes and revolutions, I composed and framed a poem for Helen from the relative flatness of my Illinois home.
On Christmas Eve, Tom and I carried it with us to our family holiday. On December 24, it was our tradition to gather at my sister’s home, where she, brother-in-law Steve, Mom, Tom and I would savor thin-crust pizza and thick eggnog, devour delectable desserts, and listen to our favorite Christmas music.
As the evening progressed, we retired to the living room for the main event: our annual, round-robin gift exchange. As the unopened presents dwindled, I leaned down, plucked my gift from the pile, and handed it to Mom on the other side of the circle.
Seated in her wing-back chair, she paused and looked up at me before unwinding red tissue paper. Slowly Mom revealed the contents and examined the rectangular-shaped object. She mustered five words of amazement as she pulled the gift closer within the limitations of her macular degeneration:
“You wrote me a poem.”
During the last three years of her life, Helen propped the poem on a table near the door of her apartment. Across the room from the chair where she read, watched TV and eventually received breathing treatments to ease her congestive heart failure in her last days. I saw it there each time I left. I think it gave both of us comfort in her final days.
After she died on January 26, 2013, Diane and I divided her remaining possessions and re-potted cuttings of her African violets to place on the window sills of our respective homes. Naturally, I kept the poem. When I finalized From Fertile Ground (the story of my journey after Helen’s demise) in 2015, I found the right place to insert it in the book.
In 2017, the poem came with Tom and me as we made our way in our indigo Sonata on our westward odyssey. Today, it resides on top of a wooden file cabinet in our sun room near the back door of our Scottsdale home. It’s a place Helen never visited, but one she would have loved.
***
You Everlasting
You are the comfort of nature.
Eternally pressed.
The first magnolia petal of spring.
The last gingko leaf of autumn.
The determined orchid that flourishes.
The lingering annual that endures.
Perennial.
You are high and low tide.
Remarkably present.
The hidden, tranquil meadow.
The crackle and thump of fresh melon.
The dancing firefly,
In a warm Carolina sky.
The soulful howl of a January hound,
Waiting by the gate.
Undeniable.
You are the simplest wisdom.
Gracefully proud.
The tender touch of summer days,
That melt but never fade.
The breaking dawn of blues and greens,
Forever in my memories.
The resilient path,
Carved and captured in my heart.
The polished gem of hopeful dreams.
Everlasting.
***
Ten years have passed since that tender Christmas Eve moment at my sister’s home. Mom will be gone seven years in January. The pain of her loss has softened considerably, though now it returns like an old familiar friend on holidays, birthdays and anniversaries to remind me how much I loved her.
Remarkably, a cutting of one of my mother’s African violets, which she nurtured during the last ten or more years of her life, continues to thrive with Tom and me near our southern-facing windows. Yesterday on winter solstice, it absorbed the heat of the Scottsdale sun. Its purple blooms on the shortest day of the year are evidence that sometimes … against all odds … life and love go on.
As Christmas 2019 approaches, perhaps you’re like me. Thankful for life today. Thankful for family and friends who bring joy. Thankful for the memories of those who’ve gone and the reminders they’ve left behind.
Perhaps this story of everlasting gratitude will give you comfort and strength as you prepare to celebrate with family and friends … as you remember those absent from your circle.
Mark Johnson Stories 