Beauty and progress come in all shapes and sizes. Not everyone is destined to be a palm–growing tall, straight, evenly, predictably, linearly.
More often, due to no fault of our own, we manage like a mesquite–traveling sideways, ambling away to grow and explore life in bold directions.
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.
***
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.
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.
***
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Nature’s mid-century palms rose early without caffeine’s jolt. The quartet whisked breakfast into curls of golden cotton candy best consumed in a wondrous hush.
Perched on sprinkled pavement and slanted roofs, a mix of mourning doves, misplaced pigeons, and I marveled at December’s delight beyond distant flurries.
***
To enjoy more of my poetry, buy my latest book–A Path I Might Have Missed–on Amazon.
Today in the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving. It is easy to become consumed by the preparations for this holiday. To focus on the feast we will consume, while many in the world aren’t as fortunate.
But there is greater meaning–in our bodies, hearts, and minds–when we pause and recount what makes life satisfying beyond the things that adorn our days.
I am thankful every day for the love of family past and present, friends and neighbors near and far, good health and the ability to write and sing, gorgeous trees and furry critters that grace our lives, and most definitely the world Tom and I have discovered and created together inside and outside our Arizona home.
Wherever you live, thank you for joining me on this journey. I am thankful for the ability to connect with you–for this opportunity to share my voice through words, images, ideas and memories–every day.
Grief is a strange, but reliable, motivator.
With Thanksgiving 2013 approaching, Tom and I knew we needed to change things up after my mother’s slow-and-painful exit the previous January. We decided to escape our suburban Chicago home.
In the wake of our significant loss, we wanted to create a new tradition and plan a week-long Thanksgiving holiday in the desert (in our cozy Scottsdale condo) with my twenty-something sons Kirk and Nick, and Nick’s girlfriend Stephanie.
Early November came. Each of us cleared our schedules. About ten days before our flight from Chicago to Phoenix, Tom developed pneumonia. He was hospitalized for a few days, but insisted he would be well enough to make the trip.
Remarkably, Tom recovered enough for his doctor to clear us for take-off. When we landed at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix just west of the Papago buttes, I felt relief.
Over the next few days, Tom’s health continued to improve. We even climbed a portion of “A” Mountain in Tempe near the ASU (Arizona State University) campus.
On Thanksgiving Day 2013, Tom, Nick, Stephanie, Kirk and I dined outside under an orange tree on the patio of Mission Palms hotel, also in Tempe.
In those cool-but-sun-soaked moments–still a year before Tom and I would marry and four before we would move to Arizona permanently–I realized that the space created by my mother’s passing would mean more than a horizon shrouded in tears.
It would mean new possibilities … new chapters … for all of us.
The longer, hotter summer of 2023 in the Valley of the Sun claimed countless trees and plants–not to mention hundreds of human lives.
Now that November has settled in, we are reminded that cooler mornings and evenings–with warm, sunny afternoons sandwiched in between–actually exist in central Arizona from October through May. This is why we live here.
Unlike most of the United States, fall is a time of renewal in the Sonoran Desert. It is more like spring with an autumnal twist–minus the crunch of rotting leaves underfoot.
We desert rats can now focus on revitalizing our gardens and spirits. Perhaps a Barbara Karst or Torch Glow bougainvillea here–or a crested cactus there–to dress up the back patio in time for Thanksgiving.
Whatever your potting preference, it is growing season despite the advancing darkness. While old plants and trees lick their wounds, new ones pose with the promise of buds to endure winter–a foreign concept for most of the Northern Hemisphere reconciled to the shiver of ice and cold.
In October 2019, I puttered in my garden as I often do.
I had already begun to assemble tongue-in-cheek and serious stories about life in the Grand Canyon State. But I needed a creative hook to link the essays and my desert fantasies to the wide-open experience of living in Arizona.
Strangely, sagging citrus tree branches provided the stimulus for my book title. While they impeded our sidewalk, identifying the obstacle cleared a path in my brain. Tom stood by as seven words flew from my mouth and tumbled into the arid Arizona air: “I Think I’ll Prune the Lemon Tree.”
***
Nearly four years have passed. In early 2021, I completed and published my book. Folks near and far have told me how much they’ve enjoyed reading it.
Of course, I hope more will discover it and find meaning in the essays, including those I wrote about living in a global community we never imagined–a place I call Coronaville.
This afternoon I found myself in the same space outside my front door, examining the same tree, realizing it needed another haircut. I grabbed the loppers, pulled on my gardening gloves, and pruned only the most problematic branches that hung low.
Sadly, there were a few lemon casualties that fell to the earth looking more like green limes than the fully matured lemons they might have become in December.
Still, I think I did a good thing for Tom and me … and our neighbors and delivery people, who pass daily on the sidewalk of our mid-twentieth-century condo community and go about their lives under the radar.
And the lemon tree? It’s now shapelier than before and has inspired me to write yet another story about the possibilities at play in nature.
Nearly half drained, September–in the valley of fiery light where tiny lizards scurry–cues the hiss of early morning sprinklers.
They spray precious droplets that pool, surround, and saturate parched succulents, palms, and citrus trees.
The latter wonder if the fruits of their labors will prove less luscious when snowbirds return to snatch and gather golden orbs from sagging January branches.
***
To read more of my poetry, purchase A Path I Might Have Missed on Amazon.
Whenever the opportunity presents itself, I enjoy talking about the discipline of writing. Honestly, it doesn’t happen that often. But when it does, it’s generally in the course of an ordinary day.
For instance, last Friday–on the way out the door of the gym I frequent–I stopped to talk with the manager. He asked me about my latest writing project for the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus.
“It’s fun,” I told him. But then I went on to explain that creating a full-blown musical libretto is also draining. Such is the case for anything that pushes us beyond our comfort zones.
What does writing a libretto feel like? Well, I’ve never been a clothing designer or tailor. But it’s as if I’m sorting through a world of potential fabrics … selecting the right one … weaving it into a fictionalized story with smart dialogue and an emotional arc … and stitching it to music (which the chorus’ artistic director has selected).
Back near the entrance to the gym, another person joined the conversation. It morphed quickly into a discussion about the motivations and pitfalls of writing. She–a technical writer, who has dreamed about writing a childrens’ book–asked me about my creative commitment and impulses.
That’s when I felt my energy swell as I became creative mentor and cheerleader on the fly. I told her writing is like any discipline–exercise, yoga, boxing, for instance.
I told her I write something nearly every day. That–strangely–after my mother died ten years ago, a new door opened. I decided to take a leap. To write stories that were important to me, not some corporation.
Along the way–I told her–I discovered my true calling as an independent writer. It’s something I’m passionate about, though sometimes the creative process can be lonely.
I told her you have to make it a priority. You have to make the time for it. I told her that the childrens’ book she wanted to write was inside her, waiting to be written.
As I left the gym and walked to my car in the heat of the desert sun, I felt happy … content in the knowledge that I had encouraged one other person to step beyond their creative comfort zone.
***
In this world of raging fires, heat waves, social upheaval, and constant noise produced by snake oil salesmen, I believe the best thing we can do is to put down our phones and turn off our TVs more often.
To take back our lives. To talk with one another face to face–or at least voice to voice. To offer encouragement when opportunities present themselves. To write and read more books and poetry. To make time and room for practices and people who make our hearts sing.
If we do, maybe we can begin to restitch the underlying fabric of our society … one thread at a time.
Mark Johnson Stories 