Tag: January

Twenty-Three Minutes Until Midnight

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January 1984 felt promising, but exceptionally cold, in the Chicago area.

Jean was due to deliver our first child on January 17. But that day–and several more–passed with no consequential developments. Just a few rounds of snowfall.

Late on January 23, Jean went into labor. When we arrived at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, the nurses examined her. They told us it would be several hours before our child was born.

Jean and I weren’t prepared for the day-and-night-long ordeal that followed. After twenty-three hours of labor, Dr. P pulled me aside.

At that point, he was worried that a traditional delivery would place Jean and our unborn child at risk. He recommended Plan B: an emergency C-section.

Jean was scared; I was worried about her welfare. I insisted on staying during the operation (masked up on the other side of a curtain, away from the medical staff, while they performed the procedure). The doctor agreed it was a good idea for me to be there for emotional support.

A short time later, at 11:37 p.m. on January 24–twenty-three minutes until midnight–our son Nick arrived intact. Jean was okay, too, but totally spent. We both breathed relief.

Our newborn son wailed as the nurses wrapped him in a blanket. His head was slightly misshapen from the birthing process, but they told us not to worry. They laid Nick across Jean’s chest. We had a healthy son.

Jean and Nick stayed at Lutheran General for a few days, which was protocol for the time. Several days later, we signed a few papers, and prepared to leave the hospital.

Jean cradled Nick in a wheelchair that morning. A nurse pushed them down the hall. I pressed the elevator button, carried flowers, and juggled a few possessions as the doors opened.

An older man already onboard smiled as we descended to the ground floor. He wished a good life for our newborn son.

We exited the building. I walked ahead in the cold to bring our car around while Jean and Nick waited with the nurse at the curb. The sun shimmered on a dusting of snow from the night before.

Day-old Nick and me at Lutheran General Hospital on the morning of January 25, 1984.

***

When Nick was born in 1984, I didn’t expect his mom and I would split eight years later. But we did in 1992, just three years after Kirk (his younger brother) was born.

In the aftermath, my sons spent Monday and Wednesday nights–and every other weekend–with me (Tuesday and Thursday nights with their mom) until they were teenagers when they each opted for a home base with Jean. Thanksgivings were with me; Christmases with her. Two vacations occurred every summer. One with her. One with me.

On “Dad nights and weekends” in the early 90s, my boys and I devoured pizza in our cramped apartment in Arlington Heights and on cold, gray days swam in the indoor pool. It was a cheap way to have fun and burn off energy.

During the school year, with their backpacks in tow, we grabbed donuts downstairs in the apartment lobby on the way out the door.

I dropped Nick off at Kids’ Corner (before-and-after-school program), then hustled Kirk off to preschool before I commuted into Chicago’s Loop for work.

Looking back, it was a tumultuous period of disarray, intimacy, and estrangement for all of us. Nonetheless, somehow, we survived. We found our rhythm as a family straddling two homes.

In 1996, I saved enough for a down payment on a modest three-bedroom home nearby. Nick, Kirk and I played catch in the backyard and tossed the football on the open field across the street.

That same year, I met Tom and introduced him to my sons. I know that Nick–particularly as a teenager–felt uncomfortable with having a dad who was different. But, in spite of it, he knew I loved him.

We weren’t your prototypical American family, but with time we found our stride and Nick and Kirk accepted Tom and me.

At first, our basset hound Maggie (we adopted her in 1998) was the comic-relief glue that adhered us.

With time, that connectivity broadened. We found more in common: birthday celebrations; grounding visits with their wise and supportive grandma in St. Louis; fun and thought-provoking movies with Tom and me in the Chicago suburbs.

Not long after Nick–and then Kirk–graduated from college, Maggie died. We all mourned her loss in 2008.

Tom and I knew at the time that our parents wouldn’t be far behind. The nest emptied quickly. They were all gone by 2015.

That same year, at age thirty-one, Nick asked if he could rent our Arizona condo while he looked for a job out west. He needed a change. He wanted to chart his own course, away from the cold, heavy responsibility of the Midwest.

Nick began a new life that January (two years before Tom and I made Scottsdale, Arizona, our permanent home) when he landed a job with a technology company in March.

Over the past nine years, I’ve watched my son’s confidence and self-esteem multiply. He has a good life here.

Of course, during that period, he’s changed jobs and apartments, discovered new loves and suffered a few losses.

But Nick is happier in the sunnier Southwest. And I’m happy that I get to see him occasionally.

After I suffered a heart attack in July 2017 on the way west, Nick helped Tom move some of our bulkier pieces of furniture.

It gave me solace seeing them bond more deeply as I struggled to regain my strength and equilibrium.

Life so far in 2024 is good for all of us. Kirk is planning to visit us in Scottsdale in March. He lives in Chicago and has found a rewarding life as a trauma counselor. He needs a warm escape now and then to stay sharp.

In spite of the vast distance, my younger son and I have managed to deepen our relationship and stay close. As Kirk quarantined in his Chicago apartment during Covid, Tom and I played Scrabble with him online and Zoomed from time to time.

We talk frequently now. Whenever we do, I realize how lucky I am to have two smart and compassionate sons who are contributing members of society.

A few weeks ago, Nick stopped by and watched Oppenheimer with Tom and me. On other occasions, we’ve shared ballgames and dinners or picked ripe citrus fruits off our condo community trees (Nick loves grapefruit).

Next week, Nick and his girlfriend Anastasia will join Tom and me for dinner to celebrate his birthday at a local Scottsdale restaurant he’s been wanting to try.

No doubt, we’ll raise a glass. We’ll toast his first forty years. We’ll recall Nick’s journey west to discover a warmer life of promise.

As a dad, I will always be there for my sons. I’m glad I stuck it out during those trying years in the 90s, because seeing them become who they are–full-fledged adults–is the most gratifying part of fatherhood.

I wonder where their lives will lead them next.

American Fiction

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I don’t usually write film reviews. I prefer to leave the nuances of critiquing movies to my cinephile husband. However, in this case, I will break the rules. You’ll understand why in just a moment.

In American Fiction, Jeffrey Wright plays Monk, a frustrated novelist who feels his books have been lost in the bluster of less literary works that fly off the shelves on the wings of tired stereotypes about the Black community.

Against the advice of his agent, he decides to prove his point by writing a one-dimensional, inflammatory book under a pen name.

He considers it garbage, but ironically the story wins immediate acclaim. He finds himself faced with the conundrum of accepting his financial windfall and hypocrisy or coming clean.

No spoilers here. You’ll have to see the movie to understand the permutations of his dilemma.

However, the story–written and directed by Cord Jefferson–is a dazzling bit of witty screen writing, laced with well-drawn, believable characters navigating painful personal traumas.

It’s been a long time since I was so entertained watching a movie. Tom and I laughed. Out loud. And so did the fifty or so others who sat around us in the theater at Camelview Theater at Fashion Square Mall in Scottsdale on Friday night.

I even shed a few tears, because there is a story thread about Monk’s mother–played by Leslie Uggams–that hit rather close to home.

But what resonated most for me was the brilliant way the film explored the world of a writer. We tell our stories, hoping our truths will land with readers.

We spill our guts (or those of our fictional characters) on the page but have no control over the tastes and proclivities of readers.

We do it because we love to write. It’s what we were meant to do. But secretly–or maybe not so much–we pine for our books to blaze a trail and rake in the royalties.

For those of us with dreams and scruples, we want our books to sell … but never want to sell out.

Janu-weary

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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.

Ripe with Possibilities

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We begin with a fresh slate.

As we embark on this even-numbered journey, the season reminds us that we get to decide what to keep. What to build upon. What to change or cherish.

It’s time to relinquish extra pounds, unhealthy habits, and heavy losses. To let them fall away so that we can focus on luscious fruits, ripe with possibilities.

***

Happy New Year! Join me on my 2024 blogging journey. Just fill out the information on my Contact Me page and I will add you to my subscriber list.

On January 1, 2024, I plucked ripe tangelos from one of our community trees in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Still Everlasting

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Love and loss are universal human conditions. If we feel the first, we can’t escape the grief associated with the second.

I wrote You Everlasting in December 2009. It was a gift for my eighty-six-year-old mother.

I remember the surprise and delight on her face that Christmas Eve, after she slowly unwrapped the framed contents in tissue paper cradled in her lap.

“You wrote me a poem,” she said quietly.

In 2016, three years after she passed, I published the poem in From Fertile Ground. It is a book inspired and informed by grief.

Today, on the tenth anniversary of Helen F. Johnson’s death, the time is right to share it again.

The imagery of flowers, trees, and animals comforts me. The verse provides much-needed continuity from her past existence to the reflections and influences that live on inside me.

The poem reminds me of that wise, nature-loving woman, who carved a resilient path for me to follow.

I still feel her presence today and can smile with the knowledge that, though she left on a frigid-in-Illinois, January morning in 2013, I carry the warm memories of her in my Arizona desert life in 2023.

Perhaps these words will prompt memories of your own loved ones, who are gone but never forgotten.

***

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.

In December 2008, one year before I gave her the poem, my mother enjoyed another holiday celebration with her family in Illinois.

Movie Mondays

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When Tom and I moved to Arizona in 2017, we were immediately impressed with the library system here in Scottsdale.

It consists of four library locations spread south to north through our community to cover the ever-expanding patronage of transplants from other places. Each is a book lover’s haven with artistic touches built into the architecture to reflect the landscape of the desert southwest.

Closest to us–the main facility–is Civic Center Library in Old Town Scottsdale. It’s a place my husband and I frequent to browse the stacks for something new or familiar to read. In the past, before Covid, it’s also where I participated in the Local Author Book Fairs.

What neither of us anticipated (until last fall) is that on a chilly-for-the-valley Monday–the twenty-third day in the twenty-third year of this millennium and five-and-a-half years since we called Arizona our permanent home–Tom would realize a lifelong dream there.

He would begin to lead a free, eight-week film series and discussion, stand in the Civic Center auditorium in front of sixty attendees (friends, acquaintances, neighbors, relative strangers, and film lovers) and share his deep knowledge and passion for iconic films from 1967-1977.

It’s an era characterized in the American film industry as the New Hollywood. A period of controversial, counterculture attitudes that would personally define and shape his love of film and its ability to combine art form with social statement.

But as I sat in the front row to watch Tom welcome library patrons and see the first installment of the series (A Decade Under the Influence, a provocative documentary chockful of film clips and interviews with directors, writers and actors from that era) it was Tom’s moment that mattered most.

He has always imagined the thrill of owning a small theatre. Of showing films from that era–and classics like the Best Years of Our Lives from our parents’ generation–to inform and entertain those who may or may not be familiar with them.

We don’t have the financial ability to do that. But we do have friends and connections in our community (thank you, Glenn). In this case, they aligned magically to put Tom in touch with library management and help make his dream bloom and grow in the desert.

During and after the program Monday evening, I could feel the buzz in the auditorium. Many came up to thank Tom for sharing his film expertise and personal anecdotes. Not to mention a handy dandy packet of fun facts and background information about the films, which Tom happily prepared and the library staff copied and distributed.

I expect that many of the sixty who attended will be back for the second film on January 30. They’ll certainly be there to see Bonnie and Clyde, the jarring, graphic, and spectacular film about the Barrow gang and Depression-era Texas.

I imagine they will also return to hear Tom’s film insights.

***

Note: If you live in the area and would like to attend, the film series runs from 3 to 6 p.m. on Monday nights until March 20, 2023, at the Civic Center Library, 3839 N. Drinkwater Blvd. Registration not required. Space is limited.

The program is a free eight-week class about original, creative films from the Hollywood renaissance. A look at how filmmaking evolved after relaxed censorship and rating systems gave filmmakers freedom to explore new subject matter and styles of cinematic expression. Discussions and screenings each week are led by Tom Samp. All films are recommended for mature audiences.

Schedule of Films: 

A Decade Under the Influence (January 23rd)

Bonnie and Clyde (January 30th)

The Graduate (February 6th)

Easy Rider (February 13th)

Midnight Cowboy (February 27th)

M*A*S*H (March 6th)

Five Easy Pieces (March 13th)

Annie Hall (March 20th) 

On Monday, January 23, 2023, Tom Samp welcomed attendees to the first installment of a free eight-week film series–The New Hollywood:1967-1977–at the Civic Center Library in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Aging Hands

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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.

Every Heart Tells a Story

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On March 25, 2023, I will participate in the Phoenix-area Heart Walk, sponsored by the American Heart Association.

If you follow my blog, you know I am a heart attack survivor. You may not know that both of my parents died of heart disease: Mom on January 26, 2013 (almost ten years ago); Dad on November 26, 1993 (nearly thirty years ago). Both Helen and Walter appear frequently in my published stories.

One of my favorite photos of Mom and Dad, celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday on July 26, 1949, at a restaurant in Texas.

Obviously, heart disease is personal for me and millions of American families. I hope you will consider making a donation to support ground-breaking research that keeps hearts beating and enables other unsuspecting victims of heart disease and stroke (like me) live longer and write new chapters.

As an added incentive, if you click the link below and donate $30 to the American Heart Association, I will sign and send any two of my books (your choice) to you. I’ll pay the postage and include two of my personalized bookmarks.

http://www2.heart.org/goto/Mark_Johnson_HeartWalk_2023

Thank you for your kindness and consideration. Every little bit helps.

Nearly Ten Years

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Nearly ten years have passed since she passed January 26, 2013.

As this seismic anniversary of my mother’s death approaches, I feel a degree of grief’s numbness reappearing.

The time is right for me to sprinkle this space with reflections on Helen F. Johnson’s life: how much I loved her; what I learned from her; and why I still miss her.

I watched my mother grow in wisdom and shrink in physical presence–simultaneously–in her final ten years.

In those poetic moments–especially 2004 to 2009 when we visited at her condo in Winfield, Illinois–the two observations felt incongruent as we sat side by side on a park bench reflecting on her love of family, nature, photography, and letter writing.

But they don’t anymore.

Now that I’ve surpassed the midpoint of my sixties–favoring the quietest moments of life over all the rest–I see and feel the same transformation happening within me.

I’m far more inclined to record the moments that happen around me, because–like her–I have the time and the interest. She has left me an invaluable gift: a recognizable path and impulse to emulate.

My life has changed immensely since she died. I’ve retired from corporate life, married Tom, moved across the country, survived a heart attack, lost forty pounds, written four books, endured Covid, and built a new life in the desert.

Yet, it is when Tom and I spend time with my sons Nick and Kirk–her only grandchildren–that I am most aware of how long she has been gone and how much she loved us all.

They were both in their twenties in 2013. Searching. Unsettled. Preparing to launch. On the cusp of new personal discoveries and adventures. Since that time, they’ve traveled, found new loves, new jobs, new homes.

Kirk is now nearly 34; Nick almost 39. How she–a lover of plants and trees–would have loved learning that her oldest grandson stopped by our condo last Friday to pluck grapefruits, oranges, lemons, and tangelos from our citrus trees.

Or that Nick coached a Boys and Girls Club basketball team last year.

Or that Kirk traveled to Vanuatu with the Peace Corps in 2014 and more recently has found his counseling stride in a small practice in Chicago … helping patients who’ve experienced some sort of trauma.

Over this past weekend, Tom and I watched Milo and Miley (a friend’s two Shih Tzus) again.

The dogs are sweet, lovable characters. But I needed a little time to escape on Sunday to my thoughts and devices. So, I drove to Chaparral Park and walked around the lake for about an hour.

As I rounded a bend of pine trees which Tom and I love, I spotted an older man. He sat quiet, content, and alone on a park bench.

Seeing him reminded me of the moments my mother cherished in her eighties, pondering the world from a park bench. She could simply sit, enjoy the shade of the trees, read the newspaper or gaze at passersby.

Or she could wonder about the lives of her children and grandchildren … long after she was gone.

Fresh Batch

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New Year’s Day’s rhumba of rain and hail–with a rainbow sideshow in between–has left the Valley of the Sun soggy with champagne memories.

Enter a fresh batch of magnificent, cottony clouds to blot the skies over the Crosscut Canal and reveal January’s sparkling possibilities waiting on the horizon.