June is the start of triple-digit season in the Sonoran Desert.
When it reaches 110 degrees–as it has for the past several days–it really feels like you’ve stepped inside an oven alongside that batch of chocolate chip cookies you crave. Or maybe, you imagine, there is a blaze approaching just over the next butte.
Tom and I escaped the oven for a few days to visit friends in the mile-high altitude and pines of Prescott, Arizona.
Watching the acrobatics and listening to the distinctive calls of a wide array of birds–bluebirds, woodpeckers, finches, tanagers, nuthatches, hummingbirds, etc.–while sipping morning coffee with John and Carolyn on their front patio, was as rejuvenating as a day at the spa.
Now we are back home. There is a quiet, reflective component tied to the intense Sonoran heat. Early swims. Late walks. More time to read. Fewer people to navigate.
We’ll be here seven years next month. In the heat and stillness of that realization, we’ve carved out a good, artistic, and whole life among Arizona friends, buttes, and dazzling sunsets.
It’s a warm (hot) life I never imagined at 30, 40 or 50 years old–but still a pleasant surprise beyond the constant push and responsibility of my Midwestern bread-winning years.
I last visited my father’s grave at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in September 2021.
If there is such a thing as beauty to behold in a final resting place for those who served, it exists there just south of St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi River–fourteen hundred miles east of where I live and write today.
On this Memorial Day, I remember Dad–and the thousands of fallen soldiers gathered around him–with twelve lines I wrote on August 27, 1996 … almost three years after he died.
Late April’s breezy interlude and May’s certain pre-heating oven conspire to scare and sweep them from one escaping path to another. As they scatter and vanish into familiar cumulus clouds, space and silence walk with those who remain and remember.
In late March of 2015, we visited the Painted Desert in northeast Arizona.
Tom and I weren’t yet full-time residents of the Grand Canyon State. We were Illinoisans, traveling on I-40, passing through the desolation and grandeur of the American southwest.
Fortunately, when we saw the sign for the Painted Desert, we had the gumption to exit the highway and soak up the scenery.
I don’t know what I was thinking at the moment Tom snapped this photo. But I imagine the experience of gazing out over the majestic landscape of this geological gem inspired me to keep writing, keep exploring.
I was nearing the midpoint of constructing my first book, From Fertile Ground, trying to maintain my creative momentum and find an ending to my grief-induced story of three writers talking to each other across the generations.
A September 2015 trip to North Carolina would provide the inspiration I needed to cross the finish line.
In 2016–on another momentous late March day–my book went live. I remember the giddy feeling of amazement … holding it in my hands when it arrived in our mail in Arizona.
Somehow, buried in the fog of my mother’s passing, I had unearthed my story, discovered an avenue for my artistic passions, and found my voice.
Since that time, the first half of each year–with March as the centerpiece–has become a catalyst for my creativity. I have published all five of my books (and launched my website) spread across the months of January through May.
This year, March has presented me with a new opportunity, a new wrinkle … and a new voice. Let me explain.
Up until recently, my books have been available in paperback and Kindle formats, but not as audiobooks.
A few friends and family members have encouraged me to pursue this additional option, but the cost and the time required to “give voice” to even one of my books felt prohibitive.
However, recently I learned of a viable option through Amazon, whereby I could select a computer-generated “virtual voice” to tell one of my stories.
I was skeptical at first. The concept felt mechanical and scary. How could a computer-generated voice capture the emotion, description, and intent of my words?
But after doing some research and listening to various options, I found a voice that resonated with me.
It captures the essence of An Unobstructed View, the personal (but strangely universal) story of Tom’s and my circuitous journey–physical and metaphorical–to carve out a new life in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.
Thanks to computer technology, readers (or I shall I say listeners?) can now feel the sense of possibilities and uncertainties we experienced in 2017–remembering the seminal moments of our past Illinois life while forging ahead (on the other side of trauma) to create a home in Scottsdale.
I hope you’ll listen. Allow yourself to be transported through the theater of the mind. It’s a unique experience–possibly more powerful, like tuning in to someone else’s serendipitous story–to hear the words I composed spoken by a “virtual voice.”
At any rate, I know many people prefer to consume their books that way through their devices, through their ear buds, as they navigate the trail of life.
Now, one of mine is out there for you–and all the world–to hear.
In the gauzy evening of our disparate lives, we stand by our loved ones and convictions. We continue to grow strong in spite of our spiky imperfections and ominous shadows on horizons beyond us.
We are not always as close as we appear, but–because we grew from the same earth–we are never too far apart from the history we share as we reach higher toward distinct patches of blue.
At times, we wonder what binds us. But–with a nudge or two–we recite lines from the pages of our youth, we remember trailblazers before us, we whisper today’s dreams and tomorrow’s travels.
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.
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.
Mark Johnson Stories 