Tag: Mothers

Looking Over My Shoulder

March 24, 2026 · 4 Comments ·

Back and forth from one end of the pool to the other on this hotter-than-average, magnificent March morning. March 24, 2026, from 9:00 to 9:30 a.m. to be precise. Thirty lengths in the deep end of Eldorado Pool in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Somehow, I wrangled my own lane today. I don’t mind sharing but always feel freer on unobstructed Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are fewer swim-class participants to contend with on those days and–now that the Cactus League baseball games have ended–some of the snowbirds have begun to flock home.

Breathing every eight or ten strokes, looking over my right shoulder, swimming south to north, I spy the blazing sun that threatens my sensitive skin and the wispy-white contrail of a commercial plane flying high above.

Serendipitously, the repetitive swimming motion reminds me what I want to write about today. It is the tenth anniversary of publishing my first book: From Fertile Ground.

On March 24, 2016, Barack Obama was president. I didn’t imagine the waves of what was to come: the growing political insanity, the dismantling of once-reliable American institutions, the general implosion of our democracy in one decade. Who could?

Back then, Tom and I were snowbirds–splitting time between our homes in Mount Prospect, Illinois, and Scottsdale, Arizona.

I wrote most of my inaugural book–a three-generation writer’s mosaic about love and loss in my family–from the suburban flatness of northern Illinois.

But working online–back and forth like a swimmer logging laps between my editor and book designer in Nashville, Tennessee, and me in Scottsdale–I made my final edits in the rugged western landscape of the Grand Canyon State.

I remember the pride of holding the first physical copy of my first book later that week. I know I cried. It was a release of joy and amazement. Most definitely, a seminal moment I shared with my husband.

Sadness crept in, too, because I had written the book to process my grief after my mother’s passing. In a physical sense, I wasn’t able to celebrate that literary moment with her.

But I also know that writing about her and her wisdom-filled letters, my father and his unrealized poetry, my grandfather and fifty-three years of diary entries, and the general sense of freedom I felt visiting my grandparents in the 1960s at their rambling North Carolina farm allowed me to create a healing path out of my grief.

It was–and still is–a story I was meant to write and publish. One I wanted to share with others navigating the devastation of grief.

In the past ten years since From Fertile Ground was born, writing has become that free, unbridled swimming lane that is purely mine. Welcome waves of water and creativity running from my mid-fifties to my late sixties.

Whenever I jump into my writing in the deep end of my emotions, I find a way back to the surface with a new story. Many of them have landed on the pages of my other five books: Tales of a Rollercoaster Operator in 2017; An Unobstructed View in 2018; I Think I’ll Prune the Lemon Tree in 2021; A Path I Might Have Missed in 2023; and Sixty-Something Days in 2025.

Of course, I take pride in that body of work and–more recently–find it tremendously gratifying to share what I have learned with other writers, who need an experienced coach … and a few practical ideas … to tell their own stories.

Today, I also pause and wonder–with a touch of sadness as I write this–how many more stories lie ahead for me. Though I still feel strong, capable, creative, and alive in these golden years swimming back and forth under the Arizona sun, I also feel more vulnerable.

Part of it is the process of aging. The other is the narrowing swim lanes of American society that constrain freedom and the expression of ideas.

Having said that, I choose to end this story on a positive note. Today, I choose to relish the goodness of my life with Tom in this rugged landscape. To give thanks for all the stories that have come from fertile ground over the past ten years … as well as those I have salvaged from the depths of the pool looking over my shoulder to beloved people and places that now live on the page.

Thirteen

January 26, 2026 · 9 Comments ·

It is inevitable that we will lose some of those we love along life’s journey. But all is not lost.

When seminal I’ll-Be-Seeing-You moments, birthdays, anniversaries, songs reappear, we can’t help but acknowledge them.

Over the years, I have chosen to pay tribute to those I love in my memoirs in significant ways. None more than my mother.

These three sentences appear in my first book, From Fertile Ground, which I wrote and published in 2016.

“She died in the wees hours of January 26, 2013, at age eighty-nine and a half. The air was arctic cold and the moon was full. Every time I see a full moon now or experience the change in seasons, I’m reminded of my mother’s undaunted spirit.”

On this — the thirteenth anniversary of her passing — I pause.

I give thanks for Helen Matilda Ferrell Johnson.

I remember her unconditional love, her letters, her wisdom, her level-headedness, her resiliency, her love of nature.

And I do my best to carry on.

I keep writing.

Rolling Out the Dough

December 24, 2025December 24, 2025 · 11 Comments ·

Back in the early 1960s, Mom plucked two mounds of dough out of our Philco refrigerator.

She plopped them on the kitchen counter to let them soften and warm to room temperature, then pulled her rolling pin out of the cupboard.

Diane and I took our places on either side of her, holding our primitive cookie cutters. Grey. Flimsy. Metal.

One was a simple star. The second, a classic Christmas tree. The third, a basic bell. The fourth, a reindeer in flight. The last one, a profile of Santa Claus carrying a pack of toys.

Further down the counter, two slightly bent cookie sheets waited, along with green and red sugar sprinkles we would soon shake above our freshly formed Christmas cookies.

But, in this gauzy 60s slice of life featuring baking, rolling out the dough had to come first.

Mom reached into her container of flour and tossed a handful on the counter. Then, dusted the wooden roller with the remains.

She leaned in with the rolling pin and pressed the dough. Back and forth with equal measures of love. The surface expanded with our hearts and imagination.

We took turns dipping the cutters into the flour, creating our shapes in the dough.

Then, we lifted them carefully with a spatula onto the cookie sheets, added the sprinkles, and slid them into the oven for eight to ten minutes.

While the first batch of cookies baked, Mom gathered the bits of dough that remained. She created a smaller ball and flattened it out with the roller. Together, we repeated the process.

It was 1961. I was four years old. Diane was seven. We felt loved, safe in the presence of our mother.

***

Earlier this week, I found one green Christmas cookie cutter in our kitchen drawer here in Arizona. It was a gift from our friend Jillian a few years ago, but I hadn’t made sugar cookies from scratch since those early days in suburban St. Louis with my long-gone mother.

Tom and I bought a wooden rolling pin, and I found an easy sugar cookie recipe online. I assembled the ingredients to make the dough: butter, sugar, flour, one egg, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a dash of salt.

I mixed it all together and let the dough settle in two large discs in the fridge overnight.

On Monday, I rolled out the dough, cut the cookies, and topped my Christmas trees with green and rainbow-colored sprinkles. Then, I slid several trays of cookies into the oven to bake.

Why this year? I don’t really know, except to say it’s been an awful period in our country even though I’m a survivor and somehow have reached new creative heights in my personal life in 2025: several memoir-writing workshops, two joyful holiday concerts, and another book.

And, of course, I still miss my mother. She’s been gone since January 2013, but the grief reappears with the holidays. I suppose I needed to feel her presence again.

I needed to rescue my past Christmas-cookie-cutting memory with Mom. To keep that sweet, simple goodness alive in the stillness of my kitchen. To shepherd it into my present Arizona life with Tom and breathe new life into that tradition.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Seven

May 4, 2025May 4, 2025 · 8 Comments ·

I began this blogging odyssey seven years ago today. That’s longer than I stayed in all but one of my jobs during my communication career, and the most obvious measure I can think of to show and tell you how important this is to me.

The crux of it is this. I continue to write here and trade comments with you, because it is the best way I know to express my individual voice at a malignant time in our country. I don’t want our voices to be denied.

But, from a purely literary standpoint, I write and publish my thoughts at least once a week to keep me sharp and centered–despite the rust that has gathered around my edges.

Tom and I gave this angel to my mother many Mays ago when she lived in Winfield, Illinois. It anchored the container garden on her balcony patio.

I remember how much she loved it.

When we moved to Arizona in 2017–four years after she passed–I knew I had to bring it west with us. I knew it needed to adorn our patio in Scottsdale.

So, the angel and her companion bird rest there on this Sunday morning … blowing wishes into the universe and hoping for a better day tomorrow.

Thank you for being my companion on this long-and-winding road.

Nostalgia

January 26, 2025January 26, 2025 · 2 Comments ·

Music is a great elixir for what ails you.

What ailed me for three years–2013 to 2016–was grief spawned by the loss of my mother.

Listening to Annie Lennox’ soaring voice–her Nostalgia--pulled me through and beckoned me to complete my first book From Fertile Ground.

You see, Annie’s rendition of twelve stirring and mostly southern-sometimes-smoldering tunes written in the 1930s and 1940s primed the pump of my southern sensory memories.

Sometime in 2015, I unearthed a tender memory of making homemade peach ice cream with my grandmother Georgia on the rickety porch of my grandparents’ North Carolina farm.

It was Annie who reminded me that I had Georgia on My Mind. Sherrell Richardson Ferrell, too–S.R. for short. He was my farming grandfather who left behind more than fifty years of diary entries.

Annie’s music, Georgia’s love, S.R.’s spartan stories (primitive blog entries really), and Helen’s litany of letters (she was my wise mother) gave me all the creative inspiration I needed to finish and publish my first book in 2016.

Why is this all relevant today? Because I have Helen on my mind. She died twelve years ago on January 26, 2013.

For the most part, my writing and the constant love and support from my husband Tom have helped soften the grief as the years continue to roll by.

Helen would have been happy for me on both counts. She suspected Tom and I would retire in Arizona one day.

However, I doubt she would have imagined the entirety of this literary chapter for me, which lately includes teaching memoir writing at our local library. (I’ve been asked to lead a third workshop in April.)

Or the growing community of loyal followers Tom has inspired with every immersive movie series he hosts (also at the Scottsdale Public Library). His next series–Movies That Matter: The 1970s (a tribute to six film directors)–begins tomorrow and continues on most Mondays until early April.

I firmly believe it is the arts and the artists–like Annie Lennox, even the less renowned ones like Mark Johnson and Tom Samp–who through their music, writing, painting, poetry, and true cultural perspectives will help pull us through this dark and uber-turbulent period in our once-proud country.

For now, that is the hope I cling to. Along with the memories of love and gratitude–the nostalgia–framed by indelible moments with family and friends past and present, who I love dearly.

Another Day, Another Story

January 26, 2024 · 6 Comments ·

After my mother died on this day in 2013 at age eighty-nine, my grief took root.

With a little time, a lot of reflecting and journaling, and the support of a small circle of family and friends, I found and nurtured my own path from the branches of despair.

By 2015, I had carved out a storyteller’s life Helen Johnson would have loved. Late that year, I flew to North Carolina to visit Frances, her only sister.

Spending time with Frances in the state where both were born–and revisiting childhood memories of my grandparents’ farm in Huntersville, NC–propelled my creativity.

In March of 2016, I completed and published my first book, From Fertile Ground. It is the story of my journey and grief.

If you’ve read this story about three writers (my grandfather, mother, and me) and their love of family, you know this isn’t really the cover.

Today I’ve superimposed this photo of Helen and Frances together (in my sister’s backyard in 2003 or 2004 in northern Illinois) to remember them both.

Why? Because Frances was the last physical vestige of that rural, 1960s world for me. When she died six months ago at age ninety-one, I metaphorically waved goodbye to those years of running amok barefoot on warm summer days in the Tar Heel State.

Of course, I will always have rich memories of my wise-and-frugal mother, who wrote countless letters, and my fun-loving aunt, who traveled the world in her retirement years. In their own ways, they inspired me to tell my story.

Today–as I remember them both–I can walk into the sunroom of the Scottsdale, Arizona condo where Tom and I now live. I can pull my book off the shelf and find this passage.

“What I knew before was that the farm was a place of discovery for me and the fertile ground there was a physical and psychological refuge from the hardships of our family drama in St. Louis. What I know now is that I would need to go back to North Carolina to come to terms with my grief and integrate my southern memories with my present-day, real-life adult existence.”

I can take solace in the fact that I’ve written about Helen and Frances–who they were, who they loved.

Though they are both gone, they live on the pages.

Janu-weary

January 9, 2024January 9, 2024 · 6 Comments ·

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.

Ten Things I’ve Learned This Year

December 26, 2023December 26, 2023 · 9 Comments ·

From time to time, it’s important to take stock of where we’ve been and how we’ve grown. In that spirit, as December’s light wanes, I look back over the fence at 2023.

Here are ten important things–in no particular order–I’ve learned (or been reminded of) this year. Each is connected to one or more blog posts I wrote in the past twelve months.

***

#1: Creative opportunities are rare butterflies; grab them when they appear.

#2: Music transforms the human heart with joy and hope.

#3: Cats are resourceful, cuddly, and conniving characters.

#4: Losing someone you love to suicide is devastating.

#5: Trees keep us rooted to the places we love most.

#6: Good poetry simply IS; no explanations are required.

#7: My husband is a sweet guy, who really knows his movies.

#8: Carol Burnett is a national treasure and a kind human being.

#9: You can’t replace your mother or father, but you can remember them fondly.

#10: We all need a sense of community to connect and nourish our souls.

***

Join me on my blogging adventure in 2024. Just fill out the information on my Contact Me page. I will be sure to add your email address to my subscriber list.

One Hundred Years, One Hundred Words

July 26, 2023July 26, 2023 · 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.

Send Away … Get Away … Give Away

July 19, 2023 · 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

Giveaway ends July 26, 2023.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

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