Rhonda Slack, in Memorium

 Rhonda Lynn Slack

November 4, 1973 - January 11, 2025

Cousins. They are the best of all worlds. The people who share your memories and family ties but with just enough distance to avoid a lot of the drama of daily life. Today I lost one of the best. Younger by ten years which was enough to let me babysit her as a child, old enough to become a good friend as we grew up. She was a fighter, an artist, the strongest and most loving woman. I adored you since before you were born, Rhonda Slack

 I loved her so much from before she was born. I remember helping Norma pick out snoopy patterned cloth to make maternity tops out of when she was pregnant and picking up all the straight pins out of the shag carpeting when she dropped them while sewing them. I remember the first time I held her and living with her dad, her brother and her  in the summer to babysit her and Steven and a couple more cousins. 

From early childhood she loved horses and was a creative force. She painted a portrait of my seven parrots when she was in high school and became a master artist in her chosen medium of leather work. She crafted chaps and saddles and was an inspiration for her dedication to making each piece the best it could be. 

I will never forget her coming to the hospice room with her then husband, and her tiny son, in Christmas of 1996 to cheer my family and laugh over old memories and let my Dad smile at the baby boy even as he lay dying of esophageal cancer. She was calm and kind and willing to spend time just being there. She dropped her busy life many times to come visit when I made it back to Wyoming and just sit at a picnic table and share memories and hopes while our sons played or fished. She brought hugs and laughter to my mom’s memorial service and so much love.  And again she was 100% there. She always was there for the ones she loved.

She loved her son with an intensity from the moment he was born and raised him to be a great man and a good friend to her, and ultimately her rock and shelter as she fought against the bile duct cancer that took her life but never her love. 

I can’t say anything that will make this less trite but she really was a light in a world that needed her laughter and warmth and her strength. She was a blessing and I am so lucky to have had her in my life. 

So, I kept “swimming” or, one painting a day.

 Twelve months, one painting a day and not quite sure where I’m going after this. I started on copier paper with a big pallet from Walmart with a water filling brush that I was given as a Christmas gift, then I changed to cold press 9 x 12 inch paper in a pad from Walmart and bought some finer brushes at Ross. My big goal was just to stop avoiding ever starting because I knew the finished product wouldn’t look like the image in my mind,  plus I didn’t want to add another thing to my craft pile in the storage room I’ve been ignoring for years. So I kept it inexpensive and quick, mostly about an hour a day.

Over the year I gave away a few paintings, sold a set of 4 to a Mexican restaurant, and won four ribbons in the county fair. Looking back some of my favorites are still from the first few months and I don’t think I can actually judge my progress fairly. The first pictures I often traced of my iPad to get proportions right but I no longer need to do that. My weaknesses are more evident to me than my strengths but it has been good for my mental health anyway. The very first was the killer whales based of a boxed painting kit I saw advertised and the last was using photos from the Denver aquarium that were posted on the page of photos free for artists use. Also of course, Dory’s quote that keeps me from giving up some days.

Christmas Letter 2024

Merry Christmas 2024

and Happy New Year 2025

Christmas 🎄 🤞🎆 

Martin Luther King Jr. "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope"

Dear Family and Friends,

I almost decided not to write one of these this year. It’s been a year that flew by and yet it’s also been filled with so many things, good things yes, but often I’ve been too distracted or depressed to appreciate the good things. It isn’t a year with actual tragedies like several recent years. I have the same number of people in my family as I did when the year began, and still it felt heavy and cold and loneliness was my most common companion. Living is hard, yet I love my life. Enough feeling down bad and crying. 

 So one thing I have done consistently this year is paint with the watercolor set my granddaughter, Daisy gave me for Christmas. It was a challenge to myself to not just stick it in a box of my other craft materials with the intention of getting to it later. I’ve never done much watercolor before, and my days of constant art classes ended in 1986 with a weaving lab that I ran while in college in Ashland. But I gave up that job when Greg and I decided to go to China as exchange students. 

I also have been feeling better, still undiagnosed but some meds have reduced the symptoms enough that I can stay awake and not having as many muscle spasms means I’ve done things like shorter, 7 hour or less road trips, and attending plays and concerts again. I also take a lot of breaks on the road  to move around, so like with the painting, I paint every day maybe an hour total but usually in ten minute stages. And I’ve been volunteering in the granddaughters’ classes at times. But it exhausts me enough to know I really couldn’t teach even a half day anymore. I used to read books, even write books, but now I tend to start them and then abandon them. My concentration is also more short term and more visual like photography and art and less wordy. Writing this letter is really hard and I rarely write actual Facebook posts but just share pictures and other people’s posts  

I have been blessed by helping at the very beginning as people came together to create a “stiff Person Syndrome, and related disorders support group.”  I have friends there who understand what I’m experiencing. Even though I haven’t gotten a definite diagnosis, the symptoms we share are so close that they have suggestions for things that really do help, and encouragement when I get exhausted assuring everyone I’m “fine” even though my fine is so much less ok than it used to be.  

Greg, I guess he’s still doing good. He seems tired but liking the things he does. His friend who conducted the community chorale got sick and retired and no one else stepped up, so now Greg conducts three community singing groups, and is starting to plan a chorale trip to Europe for 2026. He also is still teaching full time at the prison. Our oldest granddaughter is in both the kids choir and the youth choir as well as having played basketball and soccer and started in band with playing trombone and in a chess club. She loves working with her grandpa on music. So anyway, he’s maintained the hundred pound weight loss all year, goes biking and swimming for exercise and goes camping, mushroom hunting, out on a friend’s boat and on road trips for fun. Emerson and Greg took Daisy to the San Francisco area to amusement parks and The Great Wolf Lodge at the end of June. That was one trip I knew I couldn’t handle physically. Lately Greg has been working on the not fun task of replacing the ancient plumbing in our house. We had our 40th wedding anniversary on May 21st.  

Emerson and Austin are hard at work on the same jobs they have had for years now. Plus Austin and Tricia are raising chickens and a gorgeous garden and going hunting   And all the grandkids are in the grade school years between first and fifth grade, so that is both fun and exhausting. Emerson took on coaching Daisy’s soccer team and that turned out great, both he and the team grew a lot and plan to be together again next season.  I see the girls the most because they are in the same school, go to the same assemblies and activities a lot. My grandson is in a different grade school so when I’m really missing him I have to get out of the daily routine and go find him but he is worth it. He usually lights up when he sees me and gives me a brief hug, but pays me lots of quick smiles and giggles. He’s non verbal but pretty good at communicating nonetheless. He teaches me to be patient and appreciate every smile or glance or high five  

Everyone who knows me knows I wanted Kamala to win and am very nervous about the future. So that said, I’ve never hoped to be wrong more than I do now. I have “seen the past and love today” so I haven’t lost all hope yet. May we all have a happy and safe 2025. 

Gratitude a Day part 5

 11/24/23

#NaNoWriMo 

What challenge are you Thankful for?

In 2008 I heard about the challenge to write a rough, sloppy unedited first draft of a novel in thirty days. And I had been writing since I was in second grade so it sounded fun. It kind of was fun, but it also

was exhausting and November always feels stressful to me anyway. I did do the 1,667 words a day to meet their 50,000 word goal, but the struggle to pick it up again and write the next 40,000 words that made it in, sure didn’t start on December First, or after New Years. But forward 15 years. I have finished 4 novels, three picture books and some private collections of letters I’ve written over the last 40 years. I haven’t made a ton of money, but I’ve managed to pay a bill every now and then. Best of all, it’s been fun to give author talks at schools, to speak to book clubs, and to read the books with classrooms of third to fifth grade students. 

National Novel Writing Month. My favorite challenge 

11/25/23

What moment this week are you most grateful for?

My husband’s birthday was on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. He and I got to talk to family and friends on the phone. Our Granddaughter told him Happy Birthday and my brother sang him a birthday song he heard loud 3,000 miles away. 

Our youngest son and oldest granddaughter came with us for a drive up the coast. We walked on the docks and watched the sun set and the moon rise over a beautiful beach. We ate pizza and ice cream and fudge and played air hockey in the game room. 

We missed a lot of people over this week and the fact so many celebrated his birthday was a good reminder that when we feel alone we really are not. 

11/26/23

What form of expression are you most grateful for?

Every year for 42 years now, I have sat down and thought about the friends and family, far and near, still here, expecting babies, missing from this earth. All of them. And while my current family and friends gather to play boardgames I sit listening to the laughter and write out addresses after having tried to sum up the past year in a letter and single photo card. 

11/27/23

What small thing that you use daily are you most grateful for?

Honestly the one thing that I am always aware is an amazing gift is being able to turn a tap and have running, hot or cold water, clean and safe to drink, abundant enough to fill washing machines and wading pools and take daily baths or showers. 

It’s a luxury my grandmother didn’t have in her house, and one my great grandmother only had via a hand pump and a reservoir on the side of her stove. It’s one I’ve done enough long camping or power outages to know I can live without, but I sure do love living with it.

11/28/23

What small thing that happened today are you grateful for?

Sometimes, in spite of forcing yourself to stop and look at all the negatives in comparison to the good things, when you can see that the scale tips heavily to the side of being blessed, it isn’t enough to keep me from feeling overwhelmed and depressed. It’s hard to keep from the dark thoughts and the fears and loneliness even in a crowd. November is often like that and this one has been especially difficult. So many days when getting up and forcing myself to take a shower is harder than it should be. But music is a lifeline. And my family often leaves sounding stressed, goes to choir and comes back singing and laughing. 

Today the movies did that for us. We went to see the third Trolls movie. The first two were energetic, musical and very positive. This one also served to energize me and I came home happier than I left, singing and teasing Daisy and greeting the dog. Movies are hard for me though, sitting without moving, or standing more than 20 minutes both trigger muscle spasms and pain. The theater was not crowded but still there were plenty of other people, so I held Greg’s hand, gritted my teeth until it felt like they would shatter and screamed silently, kicking my feet around to make my nerves think I was moving. And then the soundtrack would catch me up and carry me, like the pain meds never really do. 

11/29/23

What friend/family member are you grateful for?

Ok, I’m grateful for all my friends and family members, Duh! 

That said, of course it mostly comes back to Greg. I was such an insecure, hopeful girl when I met him. Finally away from the cliques and bullies of Cody Schools but not yet believing or trusting offers of friendship. He was steady and gentle and dependable. He let me freak out and scream, let me cry and swear I hated him, let me repeatedly push him away, without leaving. When I didn’t trust him, he just stayed true and waited for me to realize it. Then when he wanted to introduce me to his family I was terrified. They were 327 miles away, and he was the baby of six kids, and I just knew that going to stay at his parents house when everyone came home would mean they’d all see what a loser I was and then he’d see it too. He, on the other hand, assured me that if he loved me, they’d love me. Well, it wasn’t quite as fast as he assumed, but it was far more instant than I’d expected. His Mom was hesitant but became my other mom and his ten year old nephew leaped into my arms and fell asleep with his head on my lap as we watched movies. Soon I knew that my mom would keep Greg and kick me out if I was stupid enough to break up with him.  I knew this because she told me so in pretty much those exact words. And I haven’t ever stopped being grateful that he entered my life in the Fall of 1981 and is still here. No one makes me happier, or madder or more of any emotion - in short, he is tangled in who I have become because he makes me more me. 

11/30/23

What talent or skill do you have that you are grateful for?

Well, Day thirty of this challenge. Without sounding vain, I hope, there are many skills that come easily to me, but while I enjoy them, painting and weaving and drawing and writing, reading and singing, and telling stories, all of them, they are things I’m interested in, until I figure out how they work. But I get to a basic understanding and ability and get interested in something else. It’s like Greg is a singer, a vocal music director. But also can teach band. He isn’t an instrument player really, but he understands how they all work and can tell a student how to improve, but never really took the time to master one. With so many things I can judge if it’s good or Great, but I don’t do the great stuff myself. It took me awhile to realize my particular skill that I love is teaching. I love to find the ways to relate to kids and light their enthusiasm and help them see where they can grow. I love when learning is creative and makes huge messes. I love that kids love me and show me the stuff they can barely contain their enthusiasm for, whether it’s art or snakes, or likely something I have to start learning about to help me teach them. 

I love when one of them leans over and whispers, “you keep me safe.” I can’t always. But I sure try.