Merry Christmas 2025

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas 2025 and Happy New Year 2026 

 

This was a year of changes for our extended family, but we are finding ourselves at the end of it with a lot to be thankful for. One big change that I might as well get out there first of all is that this will be the first Christmas letter I have written since December 1982 that isn’t from Greg as well as me.  Am I bitter and angry and filled with hate? Yes, sometimes, but do I still love him? Yes, all ways, always. All I will say about his choice to move out without telling anyone while I was at our oldest son’s birthday party is that it came as only a bit of a surprise.  He had already told me he still loved me but wasn’t in love with me anymore and that where he felt at home wasn’t my business. So the rest of his story isn’t mine anymore except that he still helps when I need it and still tries to be there for our sons and their families. And while he hurt me a lot, he gave me years of happiness too.

 

Everyone who knows me knows I was unhappy to see the return of Donald Trump to the White House and wasn’t cheerful heading into January anyway, and then having to deal with suddenly having a reason for the deep loneliness I was feeling made the first half of the year quickly become a time I’d rather die than repeat.

 

But then June 25, the 75^th anniversary of Mimi and Harvey’s wedding, as well as also the 75^th anniversary of Trisha’s grandparents wedding arrived with the first thing to celebrate in my year. 

 

I got a Daughter-In-Law and saw my firstborn looking happier than I had ever seen him.  And after their beautiful wedding life began to feel hopeful again

After the wedding Emerson and Daisy and I had several fun days at the Smith River and Daisy and I took a trip up the Oregon Coast to walk a labyrinth raked in the sand in Bandon. We visited Fern Canyon and Greg came along that day. 

 

We also went to the county fair while Emerson was working at a booth, so Daisy and I took a couple of her friends along and checked out the ribbons we had won from our paintings and her beadwork. They rode the carnival rides while I snapped photos and talked to friends and ate corn on the cob.

 

Fall arrived faster than I could believe and with it, middle school for Daisy, and property ownership for Emerson. He coached soccer for her team again, and she joined Greg’s kids choir again. I am still painting and have sold a dozen of the hundreds of watercolors I have completed. I I also published a book using my watercolors to illustrate a cookbook of the favorite recipes I learned from and created with friends and family.

 

I am Healthier feeling this year than any of the last seven years although I still don’t have a definitive diagnosis, I have become friends with severl people including Dr.’s who are working on establishing diagnostic criteria for many of the same symptoms and there has been much help both with ways to cope with the symptoms but also with the emotional pain and isolation of having a cronic condition. 

I can’t begin to foresee what will have come to pass in my life by this time next year, except that in one way or another, there will still be moments of beauty and happiness.

Merry Christmas and a hopeful New Year, my friends and family.  I love you.

 

 

Dixie

January is Almost Gone

Once upon a long time ago, I tried to keep a few simple New Year's Resolutions and I wrote them down. Then when I found my lists a decade later I realized the goals were always the same, and never successful.  Then I found an interesting article in one of my Mom's Good Housekeeping magazines while I was visiting back home in Wyoming.  The article said we were not unhappy because of the big issues in our life but because we ignored the little issues, and that ignoring those things took more energy than dealing with them.  It challenged us to find 100 annoyances that we just tolerated and list them.  It was easy that year, I went through my home, mentally and listed things like the pile where the mail accumulated, the broken light switch, the way the coffee pot timer didn't work, and then mentally moved to the cat, the stuck latch on my old red van, the cracked windshield, tun to the yard, and to my relationships.  Listing the 100 tiny details made me see that the cumulative effect was huge.

Angel and I just before she moved away

So over the year, we dealt with a lot of the issues, tore out old carpet, broke up and hauled away a dysfunctional hot tub, moved and cleaned in small steps and come net New Years, it was fun to put a star by each issue, some a decade old, that was no longer an issue.  That year I couldn't even think of 100 things but the new list had 60, and some were carry overs but that was OK.

The wood shed gets emptier 

Now, I still have the same goals I had then, be healthier, be less in debt, spend more time with family.  But I am so much happier and healthier mentally and even though I'm still overweight, I'm less so, and more active and have more friends.

old split rail fence along the Oregon Pioneer trail here

This month, I looked at those old lists and realized I've gotten out of the habit, as it became less necessary, but I tried again.  I realized I have learned, it does take a ton of energy to avoid the small jobs and the relief I feel when I have handled it is great, so I don't tolerate a 100 things anymore.  I'm still bad about putting off uncomfortable phone calls.  I still don't force myself to write my own books on days the words don't come easy, but I am happy.  When it doesn't snow I make artificial snow with my students and paint scenes of penguins.

We have no snow so I made fake snow with my class

posing some figurines in the artificial snow

No Snow, but the April flowers are blooming

hanging our penguin paintings

Sunrise happens just as I have to leave for work

My granddaughter and I

again, no snow but we improvise

The road home

When I am feeling low energy, I get up and tackle one of the things I've been procrastinating on.  It gives me enough energy to smile and say, I can work on something for ten minutes and stop whining about it for the rest of the year.  My house is still old, but we are comfortable here, and I am inviting friends and family in, even a book club of women with beautiful homes.  I might have to wipe down the folding chairs, but I can put some January Daffodils on the table and good food out to share.

Last 4 posts of Autobiographical Challenge

Becoming Men Collage

Life changes fast when your children are only a year apart. You have two babies and then you have none. You live at the grade school and then you never go back. Two high school students consume your life and then the house is empty.

Suddenly the boys are men, and unlike the teens I knew, are full of smiles and laughter and easy hugs. They have women in their lives and one has a child. Now I am dong other things than being a Mom, but being a Mom was the biggest joy of my life and watching the boys turn men, and my husband and I turn into grandparents has been amazing. Sometimes I feel too lucky, scared that everything I ever had on my bucket list has been accomplished so what comes next? I knew I needed new goals, “me goals” or I would turn reclusive and never be able to pry myself out of the house.

Well Hello, Baby

No matter what you think you want from your life or when you expect it to happen, there are some things that take you by surprise and demand their own timeline and insist on happening, not according to your plan but JUST RIGHT NOW.
Our babies were like that, not even close to when we planned to have children, so why would we expect our granddaughter to be any more cooperative. Daisy didn’t arrive on anyone’s schedule but her own. Yet like some of the best gifts that life gives you, her arrival, surprise that it was, filled us with joy and laughter and hope for the future. All those wonderful gifts that babies have been bringing to the world since time began came with this little girl.
It is nice to be reminded tht there is nothing in the world so important that it can’t be set aside for a moment, or a month or a year, while you ignore everything but the chance to make tiny lips smile and tiny eyes crinkle and tiny lungs burst into giggles. When time slows down, in that old, ordinary way, Life can be extraordinary.

Author Presentation

Here I am, in front of a classroom like I have been many times since becoming a student teacher, then a teacher, then a substitute teacher. Now a writer and story-teller. Now I am not telling kids that they have to pass a test to succeed in someone else’s definition. I am telling them that they can define what success is and reach for their own dreams. I am telling them that if the bullied and terrified girl can grow up and talk to rooms full of children, and if the shy, bookworm can turn those early crayon illustrated notebook “Novels” into published books, and convince school districts to use them to teach from, then they can also find a way to share the things they love with the world. I tell them they may never get rich doing what they love, and they may need another job to put food on the table and a roof over their head, but that they should never give up on doing the things that make them feel glad to be alive. I tell them that if you find something that delights you and makes you interested, other people will be interested and delight in it too. It’s all about recharging your energy so you have energy to help recharge our darkest days and let the rest of the world see how beautiful it can be just to share this big blue planet with each other.

Finding The New Trail

Well, when we first met, we were half the people that we are now. Finding someone I could love this much when I was just 18 is a pretty rare and amazing thing and I never take it for granted for a moment. We had so many dreams that we used to talk about as we carpooled to those first college classes back in 1982 and the strange thing is that all of those dreams have come true. We have raised two incredible young Men, we have travelled and taught and loved and fought and made up and kept going. Now we are back where we started, a couple on our own, in the uncharted waters, for us, of dealing with aging parents with weaker by the day, health issues and new grandchildren, and sons who didn’t see us as perfect parents and so have to learn to be their own guides now. We have had to go through another lonely Thanksgiving and Christmas even more depressing than the ones just after we got married. We had to go camping with just us, and find conversation through 3,000 mile road trips without anyone interrupting. We still have less stability than we should, we are in debt and not seeing a way to keep up on the maintenance that out old house and cars need. We have moments of being scared and lonely and wondering what the future holds, but every night when I drift off to sleep I still hear him breathing beside me, and that makes everything good. 

It's all in what you look for

So many things in life are really all about perspective - 

I live in a drafty, termite eaten old barn of a place - 

I have a wonderful, home filled with color and love

Both true statements

Bad House

 One of the saddest realities is that we never know when our lives are at their peak. Only after it is over and we have some kind of perspective do we realize how good we had it a day, a month, five years ago. Jonathan Carroll

I like to think that I have changed that, that I have been aware of the beauty and love and wonder around me, in the moments that I had it. and honestly that started for me, when my brother was born with Down's syndrome when I was 12 years old. I kept hearing proclamations of doom, 

"He'll never sit up" 

"Your family will be better off if they don't get attached to him." 

Even my optimistic Grandmother looked at him with tears and said "He'll have a tough row to hoe."

But I sat on the couch and rested his feet against my belly and his head by my knees and marveled at the way he laughed and met my eyes when I made silly faces, and I thought, even if his life is hard, and my life is miserable, it was worth being born just for this one happy, peaceful moment.

And both of us have had good, often wonderful lives.

Good House

 I love the best features of my house, and this could fool you into thinking it was all wonderful, but if you like the sunny side only, don't look at the pictures in the first collage

Great Yard

I couldn't show the Good and the Bad of our house and not show why we moved here in the first place, because of the 2 acres it sits on.

three good things
1. campfires with friends
2. Apples, plums, pears and blackberries for us and the deer and bear
3. sunflowers and dandelions and birds

When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It's all a matter of perspective.

Harvey Mackay

30 Year Anniversary

Back in the 1981 - 1982 school year, I was a freshman at a junior college in Powell, Wyoming, still living with my prints and riding the shuttle bus to school every day 30 miles each direction.  I was geeky and awkward and had never had a boyfriend, but this one guy caught my attention. He looked a lot like me, and for awhile every time I looked up I would see him walking bowlegged and lanky like a cowboy, across the campus.  Then in January as the second semester started he began catching the shuttle bus too.  An enterprising friend of mine found his name, and even better, found an ad he had placed in the Hot-Line looking for someone to carpool with for the evening classes, and his play practice.

So I called, and arranged to give him a lift home on the days I had a late class, but I was crushed that a woman answered his phone, with a cheery, "This is April!"

Later I was much happier to learn that April was his12 year older sister, and that he had moved in with her and her husband after a semester in the dorms.

We had our first date driving to see a friend of mine playing piano at Pahaska TeePee at the gate to Yellowstone Park.  As we entered the bar, Greg was carded, but the woman looked at his ID, looked at me, and waved me in, "You are obviously twins."  So 18 year old me, enjoyed the music and some food and soda, and wondered hat she thought about the twins who kept kissing every few minutes.

By October of 1982, we were living together, which made Greg's mom and Dad relax because Greg was the youngest of 6 kids and they had seen several divorces from young marriages already.  It made my Mom and Dad cry and disown me for awhile, and then invite us bcd for my brother Lance's birthday.  He was 6 and has Down's Syndrome and was Mom's excuse, I knew "Lance Misses you." meant they all did.

In May of 1984, we were still living in Powell but packing to move to the Black Hills Playhouse in Cuter State Park for Summer jobs before moving to Ashland Oregon to continue beyond Jr. college.

On May 20th we went to the movie, "Footloose" with a friend, the twin sister of the Piano player actually, and then we went home and finished packing. The next day, on a whim, we looked at each other as we hauled boxes to storage and decided to get married. We went in for the required blood test and paperwork and then went to get my parents and brothers. We told them, "get in the car if you want to come to our wedding, or we'll get witnesses for a drink at the Silver Dollar."

The wedding was quick at the Justice of the Peace and three hours later, after dinner at the Chinese Restaurant, Greg called his parents and when his Mom, said, "Don't get married. You're too young, when are you thinking about getting married anyway?"  He had to answer, "Three hours ago."

These are our fancy wedding clothes. I'm pretty sure I even had cobwebs in my hair from storing moving boxes into Mom and Dad's basement

Dad, Me, Greg and my Brother, Brett

The Bride and Groom and Grandma Grace

Us, at the cabin in Custer State Park where we lived and worked at Blackhills Playhouse

3 years later as students of Beijing Teacher's College  1987

Moving to Crescent City and the Redwoods as new teachers in 1989

Our family in 1996

and at the campground 25 years after getting married

But here we are, Tomorrow will be our 30th anniversary, and we have been Grandparents of Daisy Grace for 3 and 1/2 weeks.  We'll teach all day and his music kids will have a concert that evening. So it won't be anything but a normal day and yet, those are the best, the everyday, curl up beside him at the end of another day of work and smile because he is still my best friend, my biggest headache, and the reason I love being me.

2004 - I Am Happy

2004
Dixie, Greg
Austin and Emerson

Greg had put on a youth choir show about time
 and Dixie painted the 4 seasons on large sheets of canvas

page 1

Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2005


(the cartoon, stolen from a newspaper, says Star Trek:  The First Generation)

Hi,

    I am happy.  It might be crazy to be happy in this time, on this planet, or so the media would have us believe. But the media seems determined to focus on the bad and scary things in the world and everywhere I go, I see good and beautiful people.  In my little corner of the world, life is running over with blessings and things to be happy about.  And I love this time of year!  I love snuggling up with a hot cup of really strong coffee, in a cool room with my computer and starting to remember friends and family.  I love thinking back over the past year and anticipating the next month when nearly every day brings a Christmas card, maybe a photo or hand written note, maybe a thick, newsy form letter, always memories of those we love and think about often, yet some we never see anymore.
     I glance out my window at the reds and greens with which our two acres always greet the Season.  The Maple and Cherry trees are turning red.  he Apples have mostly fallen but still dot the green grass which is only now returning after the fry days of summer.  The little trees planted since we moved here eight years ago are not so little anymore, and some of the big trees are dead and attracting woodpeckers and flickers.  The monstrous redwood stumps from when this place was a logging camp are mostly drifted in behind blackberry vines and they too are turning red.  The scent of wood smoke is in the air and the sounds of the boys complaining about having to stack wood once again ring through the neighborhood.  Did you know two adolescent boys can move a whole cord of wood on fifteen minutes if they are turning it into a fort, but take an hour of whining before moving one wheelbarrow if it is only for the wood stove?

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     Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog, but he is the main character in a book I've actually managed to finish!  Now in the uncharted region of trying to sell it.  But money to no money, my children and I know for sure now that I'ma writer and we enjoy Duffy a lot.  So wish me luck and hide the laughter until I'm not looking, after all, lots of people buy lottery tickets and I don't know how my chances compare to them but I'm at least getting year of entertainment from the effort.

Duffy Barkley Is Not A Dog

     Greg is also following a dream, and it's a wonderful one which is unfolding rapidly and taking on a life of its own.  The Crescent City Youth Choir is in the middle of its third year.  Greg, and Amy Ross, another music teacher here, audition close to eighty kids each time, and take on about forty of them.  Then they work with these 4th - 12th grade children to produce an incredible blend of dancing, acting and singing.  Now they have the business angle to deal with since it's not a school choir, but they have an army of loyal volunteers to do everything from painting sets, to sewing costumes, to searching for business sponsors, to disciplining the kids for dragging the girls into the boys toilet or vice versa.  Emerson is hanging in there as a choir cast member in spite of the grueling schedule and his voice is maturing quite nicely.  Plus he loves to perform.  Austin decided he'd rather say "yes" to soccer, basketball, trombone, drum and horse riding lessons. He thought about quitting them until the horse ran away and threw him head first into a plywood wall.  That was "fun and now he loves it again.
     Austin is eleven and in the sixth grade.  That is as high as Pine Grove School goes, so he gets to be the big man on campus this year, which is a role he's been trying to fill his whole life.  He is a natural teacher and very gentle and encouraging of younger children.  In fact he still likes to play with toddlers and they love him.  With kids closer to his age he's also very good at helping them and he has several younger or handicapped friends.  Yet he also gets along well with his peers and adults.  He was alert and interested in other people from the day he was born and just naturally has maintained his gift of friendship.  He's also great at reading and math, so we won't mention spelling. He's artistic and loves crafts and painting as well as music and Drama. He's also about the best kid I've ever seen at mouthiness and arguing.  Everyone has the right to HIS opinion!  How I anticipate the teenage years!

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     Emerson is a ten year old, fifth grade student with a new found passion for cartooning.  Hide the blank paper or there isn't any left without boxes filled with space wars and various battles.  He also loves to sing, and ride horses, and reads at an 11th grade level.  He still lives as much inside his gameboy as in the real world.  He has been chosen to participate in the Humboldt State University GATE Academy in Arcata, in January.  He'll do interesting things like explore Native American money systems and see Chinese acrobats.  He's said for the past two tears that he's going to get to M.I.T. to go to college and invent a time machine.  (When I'm making him work, then He's not going to take me along to find out what dinosaurs actually look like, even if I beg.)

Super Santa Vs. Grinch by Emerson
"Happy Christmas" "or Not" "Marry Christmass Ho Ho Ho Ho hobo"

     Most of the highlights of 2004 for our family included lots of time together.  We had our 20th anniversary in May and Greg's still my best friend. Wow!  It's incredible the things we've put up with from the other and still enjoy each others company.  The boys don't quite see that they get an unbelievable amount of time from their parents with their schedules and ours lining up so well.  They mostly notice the nights Greg has long rehearsals or staff meetings and swear they never see him.  That reminds me!  In October we actually got to do one of the things on my, "I can't die until I do this, " list. (Greg says that means I have to put something new on the list.)  Judy Collins was singing in Grants Pass, Oregon and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It was  small, old movie theater with a balcony, where we saw her, and she was as lovely and talented as ever. and it was so small and personal.  We all loved it. Of course. I warned the boys ahead of time that I was only paying those prices if they loved the show. If they hated it they had to pay me back.  But Emerson has taken to putting on her C.D.s on his own now.  Now why did that remind me of her> Oh, yeah, because she started the concert with, "The Cat's in the Cradle with the Silver Spoon." and of course the boys identified and told Greg, "See Dad you should play with us more."

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Santa Cruz
No idea Emerson would live there later

     Speaking of playing.  We had a fun summer, camping a bit less than we wanted but really loving our trip to Howard Prairie Lake above Ashland, Oregon and the boat rides from our friends.  We also spent long afternoons on the sand and in the river at Jedediah Smith State Park in the Redwoods.  My birthday gift was a season pass to California State Parks.

Emerson had researched this mission

Our Hernandez Friends got married here

     We left Crescent City on June 21, School went until June 17, (which is earlier that this year when it goes until June 24,)  We went to he Santa Cruz Beach boardwalk where my boys rode their first old wooden roller coaster.  They thought they were going to de, but they loved it.  Then we continued south, checking out a few of the old Spanish missions which the boys had been studying.  We met Susan, Sal and Sammy at the Mission where Susan and Sal had gotten married, Buena Ventura.  They were down visiting family.  Then we went all the way South to San Diego where Mom and Lance flew in to join us and the Michiels drove don and we all stayed at Paradise Point, a resort only 1/4 of a mile from Sea World.

Emerson, Greg, Austin, Dixie and Uncle Lance
at Disneyland in July

Paradise Point

     We did the tourist thing until it nearly killed us but you know we loved it.  In San Diego we went to Old Town, to Sea World, to Coronado Beach and had a bonfire cookout by our room.  We watched fireworks from a tower and swam many times or soaked in the hot tubs.  Then we drove to Carlsbad and spent one day in Kid Heaven, known more commonly as Legoland.  Even the adults had fun but it was so totally perfect for the kids and their friends.  I especially enjoyed seeing the mini models of New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and Washington.  The boys especially enjoyed building and racing the perfect Lego cars which, yes, they could do at home.

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Aunt Dorothy and my Mom

     On June 28th we drove to Anaheim and ate dinner with my Dad's sister Dorothy.  She is a massive hit with A and E. Emerson says, "She's just like an Angel, or a Saint even." After all she loves baseball and knows how to talk to little boys [oops, excuse me.] young men.  We also got to go with her to an Angel's/Dodger's baseball game on July Third and the Angels slaughtered the Dodgers and the fireworks in the stadium were their special 4th of July display.  OOH  AAH  to the Max!  Lance was a bit scared of the height of our nosebleed section seats until they filled up around us and then he really loved the game.
     Of course we spent five days going to Disneyland and California Adventure.  Mom and Willie Mae Michiels both had their birthdays there and got some special attention from the character cast.  We saw and loved a stage production of Snow White, and really adored the "Soaring Over California" ride where you appear to be flying over the entire state in a hang glider.  Our feet hated Disneyland but the rest of us loved it.
     And that's not all.  We also saw knights jousting at Medieval Times, saw Mammoth and Giant Sloth and American Lion skeletons at the LaBrea Tar Pits, Swam at Huntington Beach where Emerson got tangled up in a Jelly fish and bore the burns for almost three months.  Then on the way home we stopped in San Francisco to do more Disney by watching the Broadway Musical Production of The Lion King.
    So now you know why we were broke the rest of the summer and eating hot dogs on the beach while we spent a month babysitting Sammy and a week babysitting Hannah. Actually we are still paying for that trip and get to stay home for Christmas.
     Then our poor neglected home has started to have temper tantrums.  The water pipe cracked and had to be dug up and replaced.  The Fridge died a slow death. For September we used it like a cooler, kept adding Ice.  The sink leaked behind the kitchen wall and that had to be cut out.  I hate money but that's OK because we never have it.  Think how nice this house could be, if I hated yo travel and actually, imagine, loved maintenance?

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     Life here is pretty much like the last several years.  I'm still substitute teaching, usually about half time.  We have some very good friends and most of them have kids so we trade off overnights every now and then instead of paying for babysitters.  Greg and I consider it a rare event to see a movie that isn't made for kids, but we saw a lot of them by choice even before we had kids.  This ton has really made us feel welcome and we have an extended surrogate family here but miss being closer to our real family.  It's always a toss-up as to whether we made the right choice about whether to move or whether to stay here but it usually feels pretty good.  I sometimes wish I could move everyone I love together to a new city, or an uninhabited world but then I meet a new friend, or an old friend suddenly drives me crazy, and I know it's a good life, filled with good people and I wish everyone could have the kind of love and happiness I do.

"Get in Bed or you won't get your flamethrower"
"OK"
By Austin

Coronado Beach

San Diego

Sea World

Disney

Legoland

Our Motel was the Castle

Mom's Birthday

Lunch in Pirates of the Caribbean 

California Adventure

Goofy's Kitchen

Mom and Lance

The Goofy Bunch

Huntington Beach