Christmas Letter, 2021

 

Greg and Dixie Goode

Crescent City, CA

2021 Holidays

 Merry Christmas, Happy Thanksgiving, delightful Birthday, Happy New Year! May you have something to celebrate and someone to love in 2022.

My something to celebrate and someone to love is still the same people. The last couple of years have been filled with their share of problems and worries, but every day has also been filled with people I love. My family and my friends are amazing to me and I think that they make every day Thanksgiving. 

This year all of my grandkids are back to in person in school, or preschool. The youngest in preschool, the middle in Kindergarten and the oldest in Second Grade. Of course the whole, in person or distance learning, to vaccinate or not, to enforce a mask mandate or not, is not just a political issue - but to the kids it is almost a non issue. They just want to feel secure and to have a predictable routine, and to have people around them who are friendly and caring. For them, school is school. They were too young to really remember it any way but how it is. 

Greg and I are still struggling with health issues, but the masking and hand sanitizers and distancing has made it one of the healthiest years ever as far as the bronchitis and ear infections, colds and flu that normally plague the families of school teachers. 

Greg managed to squeeze three surgeries into one insurance year, so hit his maximum out of pocket early with a knee replacement on June 30, a carpal tunnel surgery in early November and the other knee replacement scheduled for Dec. 16th.

The two he has had already were both successful and he is getting around so much better. 

I still don’t have a diagnosis but I do have an appointment with a UCSF motion disorder neurologist. Not until January 10, and this first one via zoom, so I don’t have to drive to San Francisco. That is a very good thing because it can take me ten hours or more, especially now when not moving causes stiffness and PAIN  The general issues I have all seem to circle around Parkinson’s type motion disorders. There is one I think it might be but I haven’t had it diagnosed yet, “Stiff Person Syndrome” which is a boring but descriptive name that makes most people laugh and say, “oh, I have that too.”

I move like the tin man, except when someone touches me, or I’m cold, or I haven’t moved in a long time, like 20 minutes. Then I startle, jump, shake and all my muscles spasm so hard that they injure my hip or my knee or my shoulder. I used to be able to hide the pain if Daisy climbed on my lap, or Greg reached to hand me a cup of coffee and I started to lean forward, but now it’s progressed to these spasms where my face twists, I scream and everything goes rigid and shakes. It feels ridiculous. 

Anyway, there are less and less things I am capable of doing, but the things I can do, I still consider myself blessed with. I have my grown up children and young grandchildren and my crazy partner who has always been my favorite and now I have an enforced abundance of time with my family by virtue of being unable to teach. Though I am depriving my students. I can just see the delight they could take in knowing that if they startled me, or even just approached in plain sight and put a hand on my arm, I’d twitch like a marionette. No snakes or bugs or tacs on my chair, required. 

I’m hoping that my referral to UCSF leads to answers which let me announce I’m doing much better by the next Holiday Letter you receive. I hope you also have a better year in 2022.  I hope we all find health and happiness in the coming year  

Much Love,

Dixie and Greg

Merry Christmas 2020

 Greg and Dixie Goode

Crescent City, CA 

Merry Christmas 2020 and We Wish You a Blessed and Happier 2021

Just listen to the sound of that! Happy New Year 2021!

There has been so much about 2020 that we will all be glad to see in hind sight. Most of us could not have predicted last Christmas, what we would experience before the next Christmas rolled around. It was a roller coaster of a year.

Before mid March, we were having a good year, Daisy was in Basketball on Saturdays and loving Kindergarten during the week. She is very social and loved the class full of kids as well as the teacher. I loved volunteering in the class and working with the same teacher who had been teaching Austin and then Emerson 20 years ago. The class loaded an incubator with chicken eggs and began to plan St. Patrick's Day activities. And then between Friday March 13, when things were quite normal, and Monday when schools were closed and Daisy has never returned to in person classes. I've enjoyed having her here with me, teaching her and working with her as she learns to read and write and do all kinds of math and science and creative things is fun, but we both miss other people.

Emerson got promoted to manager where he works at New Dawn, which is good, but just as hard on Daisy as on him, when he has to work double shifts or gets called to leave town, or has to have his day off interrupted to take a client to the hospital. He works in homes with handicapped people and with them out in the community at large, and since his job is essential, the state closing down for a pandemic hasn't effected his hours at all.

For Greg, his students at the prison were already doing college work and he was the intermediary between getting the work to them and getting it back to the colleges, so he changed to doing what he could from home, with limited at the prison time each week. Now he just got out of the college position which he wasn't too fond of, and back into a classroom of academic work. He much prefers the business of actually having student time.

Also for Greg, one of the joys of life is his music, and having to indefinitely close down his children's choir has been so very sad for him. I hope that he will be able to restart it once children are able to be vaccinated. He did throw himself into designing a choir t-shirt logo, and that fed the creative need briefly, but he still misses both his kid choir, and the local community choir he sings in.

My health hasn't improved, the more staying at home I do, the stiffer and more awkwardly I move, and the more basic abilities I see falling away. I did manage to see two neurologists this year. The cognitive specialist evaluated me with five hours of testing and declared that there were no problems there, which is a relief, but the motion specialist did a few simple tests, talked rudely to Greg and I, and said to come back in 4 months. I tried getting a referral to a different one, but they are few around here, and Portland says they have closed down to new patients living more than 100 miles away. I know I couldn't be teaching anymore, even if I wasn't staying at home with Daisy, so of course the schools are having such a substitute shortage that they bumped up the sub daily rate by $50 a day through the end of this year.

I'm trying to think of the highlights of 2020. There were some parts that were worth the struggle. The Grandkids of course are high on my list of worth it, so one of my favorite memories is the day Trisha and Austin were camping up at Dry Lake and invited us to meet them there. We got to walk around the lake, watch Austin and Gavin Kayaking, push Gavin in a huge swing and snuggle Trinity. We got lots of sunshine and flowers and hugs. Speaking of the Goode-Pitt branch of the family. They got new truck and a new camper (well both in nice, used but new to them, shape) and they got deer tags, and went camping and hunting. Trisha got a deer. Gavin is going back to in person school and so far the county hasn't had ay school to home Coronavirus transmission. Some people at the in person classes have tested positive but gotten it elsewhere so the school precautions seem effective. I think Daisy would do ok going back as well, but she does well on Zoom and I would be high risk if she brought it home.

Because the idea of her having a 6^th birthday party during lockdown, was so sad, a Redwood School teacher, who is also a fireman, brought a big firetruck to our house for Daisy's Birthday. Then for the summer we did sign her into swimming lessons and she made great progress. It was in the outdoor, chlorinated pool in Brookings with one teacher and three students, so there wasn't a very high risk, especially since all summer Del Norte and Curry Counties had almost no Covid cases. Sadly that is no longer true. 

This year, more even than most, Consider this letter as a paper hug. I wish I could hug you in person.

Virtually a New Year

Hello, And so here we are, from New Year 2020 to the New Year of the 20-21 school year has been a wild ride that I never would have predicted. I don't think the January me would even believe if she could read a letter describing the last 8 months.

My prediction or "closing" at the end of my New Year Post makes me want to either laugh or cry. 

"2020 looks like more swimming, acrobatics, soccer and basketball with the granddaughter. Praying for peace and health for you and for the world. Remember to look for the good in each day."

I don't have to tell you about the isolation and loss of income that has been the truth world wide under the Covid-19 pandemic. I don't need to think there are any Americans who haven't heard about the divisions between people of various races and political and religious views. It's stressful and heartbreaking to be sure. I love my country and I love our world. There is so much beauty that it makes my heart break to not be able to get into school and share it with my students, and get out of school and be able to share it with my grandkids.

I have three, three wonderful, deserving, grandchildren. One who lives with me so I see her every day, and two I've never seen enough of even pre lockdowns and this year without birthday parties and holiday celebrations I miss them beyond words.

I've also been dying. My Dr.'s haven't come out and said that, but honestly they have never seen anything close to my daily degeneration. I finally get to an appointment and don't look too bad. It takes energy to dress and drive there (often a couple hours drive) and nerves and hopes add adrenalin, and I function better, then get home and pay for it with three days as an invalid.  My brain and my husband's face tell me I'm dying. (every time I need to adjust my body in any position) but I hope I'm wrong. The love and trust in my granddaughters face tells me I need to be around to be her safe place. She has no idea how many times I've shielded her from the ravages of a meth addicted mom, and I don't want her to know. Life is scary enough just hearing the news in the background, as she tries to master learning via zoom. As a first grader, with a wonderful, but older teacher, she and her teacher are learning together and it's hard.

I don't want to complain. I know that living in a rural place, with low covid numbers and empty areas where we can get out snd play means we are among the lucky ones this year. I know that we have an old house but we have one, we have lost income but still have enough to get by, we have each other.

We Have Each Other.

Just Breathe that in.

Sending you love and the reminder that we are not done yet. Hang in there and I will too, even if it tears a couple finger nails loose to maintain the grip.
 

Happy New Year, I finally see 2020

I Hope You Had a Merry Christmas 2019 and We Wish You a Blessed and Happy 2020

Just listen to the sound of that! Happy New Year 2020!

I keep thinking, “now I have finally managed to see 2020, why am I still so grateful for my eyeglasses?” but things look quite as foggy and out of focus as they always have, or at least since I first got glasses back in 4^th grade. I’ve always been near sighted and this is very much how the year seems too. If I look at the distant pictures and news, everything is confusing and unclear, but when I focus on the close to me, every day life, things get clear and beautiful and filled with love.

Greg and I celebrated our 35^th wedding anniversary in May, just 12 days after our only grandson turned 3. Of course that brought a lot of nostalgia and the memories of people who were around when we married, but are gone from this world now. It’s unreal to me that this year our 36^th will equal as long as my Mom and Dad were married before he died. They would have loved my grandbabies and Brett’s. It’s just how my brain has always worked and sometimes it annoys Greg that anniversaries never go unthought of, and days and years since or until something are something I’m always aware of. I didn’t even consciously count it out, but I knew and was sadly aware that Epiphany Day in 2019 was the Day Greg was exactly as old as his oldest sister, April, on the day she died in the Grand Canyon. It feels so eerie to me that now April is younger than all the other 5 siblings. 

I have had trouble with my brain this last year. While the exact diagnosis of what is going on with my health has passed through from possible Fibromyalgia, to Rheumatoid arthritis, to Lupus, to Inclusion Body Myositis, and now the investigation seems to be looking more like Parkinson’s, and that is scary on it’s own, but more so knowing how my mom went through hallucinations and dementia, and a gradual freezing of her muscles in a Lewy Body Dementia which is closely related to Parkinson’s.

I keep finding that I can’t focus for long, I start books but never finish them unless I’m reading them to Daisy. I don’t really write anymore, although I’ve had a book partway finished for about 5 years. I couldn’t get started on this letter for the longest time, and I read very little so even the Christmas cards We received are sitting in a basket, unopened, waiting for me to find the energy to read them. I have been on Facebook and a photo a day project online, plus having two blogs I write, wrote but for quite a while now I mostly read what others post and reshare that if it interests me. Or share the pictures I take without writing much about them. On the photo project I used to write about each picture with several paragraphs and comment on other people’s pictures, but now sometimes I just put up three days photo’s with titles at one go, scroll through the other pictures without commenting and fall asleep in my chair.

We got a new van and the backup camera helps me still be able to drive safely, but sometimes I have to circle a block because I can’t turn my head enough to see the traffic coming from the other direction. And one scary moment, I was driving to pick up Daisy from daycare, like I had done hundreds of times, and there are two long streets in part of the route. Suddenly I knew where I was going, but nothing looked familiar, and I couldn’t tell which of the long streets I was on, so I had to pull over and park until my heart stopped racing and it passed. Then I was fine.

Austin and Trisha’s daughter Trinity turned one in August, and she is so happy, and smiley. It’s a delight to have her around. Gavin at three is wonderful, high energy and curious, and difficult for me to keep up with, but every time he turns to me for a hug I just melt. They have my heart so enamored with their children. I have always loved preschool children, but this grandmother connection is the purest joy.

Greg still likes working at the prison but they just changed his job, so instead of being a classroom teacher, he is going to start being the college co-ordinator. Helping inmates register for classes, getting the materials they need as it comes into the prison, and then verifying that the work is done and returned to the college. He doesn’t even grade it. He thinks it might make for longer feeling days, to not have the actual students but hasn’t begun in that position yet. He is still active in the community Chorale and has the Youth Choir that practices once a week, so the touch of music hasn’t quite left the family. Daisy loves to sing and always gets annoyed at grandpa for not inviting her up on stage at his concerts to sing a solo. At 5 she has to wait until 10 to audition. That doesn’t sit well. I tell her that when he was finally old enough to audition, her Dad didn’t get in the first time he auditioned and had to wait until he was 11.

Daisy started in the same room, with the same kindergarten teacher where both her Dad and Uncle Austin went to kindergarten. She has loved it every moment, but even though I hope I’m wrong, the Del Norte schools look to be heading into their first teacher strike, starting as early as Jan. 15^th 

Frozen 2 in Brookings, OR

Greg had inherited some money from his parents, and decided to use part of it to treat the family to an amusement park filled December. Austin and Trisha wisely chose to pass and maybe come when their two are older, and it was an exhausting trip, even without carrying toddlers and chasing three year olds. We had a great time but We still missed them.

We flew Medford, Oregon to Seattle, WA To John Wayne airport in Santa Ana. Daisy loved the planes and boats on this trip. We spent two days in Legoland and the Legoland hotel was amazingly designed with kids in every step. Enough that Daisy’s favorite part of Legoland was the dance party in the elevator every time you got on. There was even a whoopie cushion printed on the hall carpet that farted if you jumped on it. Also she loved the kid only peephole on the bedroom door and the fact that every night two small bags of legos were locked in the safe in each room, with a scavenger hunt around the motel leading the kids to the combination for the safe.

We did Disneyland for four days, well, I took one day off and stayed in bed in the motel, and Universal Studios for one and flew home on the 22nd but didn’t even get a tree. It felt like we had already done Christmas. Certainly the theme parks had overwhelmed themselves with decorations.

2020 looks like more swimming, acrobatics, soccer and basketball with the granddaughter. Praying for peace and health for you and for the world. Remember to look for the good in each day.

Dixie and Greg

Summer 2019

After 35 years together, my husband and I have a lot of the routines down as routine, and it's easy to go along thinking that summers will always mean the same thing. Teaching some summer school, doing some maintenance and driving back to Wyoming to visit the grandparents.  Somehow, even 7 years after the youngest child graduated high school, 5 year old granddaughter having led the way to tree grandkids so far, it took the death of our final parent, my Mom last November to really convince me that going to visit the grandparents has become being the grandparents.

 My husband has been in a new job for a year now and no longer gets summers off, and my health has deteriorated to the point where this summer I have been in a foggy state induced by trying various medications to see if my racing heart and high blood pressure and painful joints and muscles can be less disabling.  So fr I'm not sure which handicaps me more, the ailments or the treatment.

 but summer, I'm a summer baby who has always loved summer more than any season, and yet this summer even our coastal cool, feels like a steamy heat wave and I'm sweating an complaining at 68* and my cat died, leaving me with two parrots I've had for 30 years and am not sure I can keep cleaning their cages and feeding them.  I love them but they get ignored when I'm feeling too sick to stand and the granddaughter needs must come first  I don't want to sell them to someone who will quickly tire of their noise and mess and realize they don't make good pets, but if I could find a good parrot sanctuary, I might be giving them up.

 I have been reviewing my writing and writing something every day, and I think the medications are finally almost at the right balance.  I'm feeling better and hope it continues as the weather gets colder again.  My fear is that the warmth is really all that is soothing me at the moment

Don't talk about . . .but I am

Talking religion, politics and money

Feel free to answer any questions in the comments

Religion

1. What was the first “religious” story you remember being told? 

Probably Noah’s ark. 

2. Did you accept the same beliefs as the adults who raised you?

 Yes, kind of, my Dad never went to church with us, so as a young person I did go with mom and grandma and my brothers, although by high school I was in youth for Christ and my mom was not certain she still believed. She later returned to the church. Before she got dementia we went together on a mission trip to Guatemala and as we talked I realized she was much more open minded (yes, read “like me” if you choose) than I had thought. She believed in Christ with a blend of other wisdom from various cultures. 

3. Did you have a time when you were super religious or super anti religion? 

Was it a phase or did it become part of who you are now? From about 4th grade until I was in my mid twenties I very much believed the teachings of the Anderson Church of God, basically Nazarene, I thought we were right and everyone else was wrong, but that the others were hungry for the truth of Jesus, so if we told it they would welcome it. I was republican, anti abortion, and believed God never gave us more than we could handle and that if we had enough faith God would give us what we needed.
As it became clear that good people are given way more than they can handle, and perfectly fine, faith filled prayers still let babies be abandoned naked under bridges in Wyoming winters and wonderful people die in anguish. I became more convinced that the Bible was a big Santa Claus story made to calm the nervous children.
I found my way back to a bigger belief, that lets other people have their own journey. I still believe most of us are trying to reach the same destination, but some have leaky storm tossed rafts and some private jets. I believe love is more powerful than hate and in a perfect world I wouldn’t believed in abortion, but until there is food and family enough to care for every child who is here, I don’t believe in making more babies be born only to be unwanted, neglected or tortured. God can judge that.

4. Have you ever lived somewhere where yours was a minority faith? 

yes, when we were living in China, not long after the cultural revolution and just before Tian and Men square massacre.

5. Have you ever served in a church or on a mission and what part of that meant the most to you? 2002, I got to go to Santiago Atitilan in Guatemala. We were there to build cinder block houses, but it was in between projects, so after a couple days clearing stones from the lot and sawing rebar into set lengths, we were asked to work at the Mayan Grade School instead. Seeing my children and the Mayan children communicate without words and teach each other games and songs was the best at communicating to me that these children and mine are connected.

6. Does your religion still matter to you? 

If so, what is the most important part of it in your opinion? Yes it does, And if I’m wrong and never know it, I’ll be happier for having lived like it’s true anyway. I believe in a God of love, a God who wants us to love one another as we love ourselves. A God who wants us to say Yes to helping when we can and to sympathize when we can’t. 

Politics

1. What do you think is the most important thing a government needs to do? 

To give the people it represents the freedom to live their life and have their homes unfettered by most interference until the point where their freedom is used to hurt and abuse someone else’s. The my freedom ends where my neighbors begins idea. 

2. How important is it that your friends politics agree with yours?

 I love having friends who don’t think like me, who challenge my thinking and keep me awake.

3. Do you have a deal breaker issue that means you can’t be friends with someone due to their politics?
Of the big, most talked about issues, which are the three that will most likely get you to jump into the conversation? Kid’s rights I guess, maybe all my issues center around kids. The right to a free, public, meaningful education that prepares them for adulthood. The right to accessible, affordable, healthcare and food and housing. A basic level of living for the citizens. The right to protect their safety, to be held to standards before you can drive or own a gun, the right to know you can defend against a police force filled with white supremacists or against a public whipped up to an anti police frenzy if you are one of the many good Law Enforcement Officers, the right to know their highways and schools and public buildings are held to safety codes. 

4. Of the most important (to you) issues, have you done anything more than talk about it on social media? 

Maybe, hopefully. I work with kids, volunteer, donate plasma, write and try to help but probably less than I should

5. If you could convince everyone of one thing about Donald Trump, what would you want them to know for sure? 

I can’t stand him, so I’d say the one thing is that he’s really bad for America, he divides and manipulates and abuses and lies. But I guess I’d say it isn’t DT I need to convince them about at all. He’s just a symptom. I think we need to convince everyone to look for the helpers and to be one. 

Money

1. What is your biggest fear about your current finances? 

That it won’t be able to handle an unexpected emergency. 

2. What is something about how you have handled money in your life that you feel proud of?

 I’ve handled it with trust that it will work out, enough that I’ve been able to enjoy raising my kids and grandkids without too much panic.

3. What lesson about money would you most want your children to learn? 

That you don’t need as much as the ads make you think you do, that no matter how much money you have, you can be miserable, and the best things in life are free all around you. Yes, you have to earn a living, but then you have to live.
4. What would be the top five priorities you think government money should be used for?
World security, global environment protection and shared resources (being able to survive climate change)
Education
Healthcare (and mental health included in that)
Cooperation and care of public lands and highways and buildings

learning to adapt to change

5. If you had extra money, is there a charity or two that you think would be deserving of your help?
Habitat for humanities
World vision

6. Can you live as you normally do, on the money you have coming in from working each month, and if not do you dig into credit cards, or savings or borrow, or share expenses? 

Yes, mainly, but usually something like new tires or car repairs and a dental root canal can make us need to access a payment plan.

Not for Wimps

 When I bought this house 23 years ago, I was a young Mom of two busy preschool boys and looking for a good place for them to get outside and enjoy being children.  I was impressed with my wonderful, old but never elderly, neighbors who, in their early nineties still had more energy than my husband and I ever had.  Hr helped us out many times and was about as perfect a neighbor as one could hope for - and the closest he ever came to complaining to us was when he would sigh, "this getting old isn't for wimps!"

of course, as happens, the years flew past, and we lost our neighbors and the kids grew up and moved out, then one moved back in with his daughter and the fishing poles and legos were replaced by a flood of pink toys.

I started to feel the wear and tear of aging in my bones and tendons and in the little things that were suddenly huge aches to do, if I could still do them at all.

I'd cuss under my breath and remember, "It's not for wimps."

but then I started to look at people who were a lot older than me and who acted much younger, and I started to think, wait, I'm only 55, that isn't "old, old" yet I feel closer to 100 than my neighbors ever acted.  That's when I started trying to seek answers.

I've been to Dr. after Dr. and had biopsies, blood tests, scans and scopes. I've been paying off bill after bill.  Every appointment seems to result in further referrals to places where I will be charged more and know less.

I am never without pain, I've stopped buying shoes with laces because most days I can't bend to tie them. I only cut my toenails when I'm having an exceptionally good day, and I can't get out of the ben bag or the hot bath that used to be my two places of solace.  I can sleep, and usually do, often beating the 4 year old on total numbers spent unconscious each night.  

 But when people ask how I'm doing I usually smile and say, "Fine. How are you?"  I don't think they believe me anymore. I see them holding doors, offering to open jars, trying to be subtle about making sure I don't fall.  I guess in that way, I am still fine.  I sure am surrounded by good people.

 and Beauty.  I'm surrounded by beauty everywhere I go.

but when I google my symptoms and search medical sites, I see a bunch of other people just like me. Waiting five year for a diagnosis, and maybe hoping not to get one, because then you enter that scary realm of, pre-existing condition, and no one wanting to insure you. 

I wish I could wake up feeling strong again, but when I do get advice and suggestion, they so often are contradictory.  no one seems to know and I often go to bed wondering if this will be the night I just can't wake up again.  then I remember the grandkids, an I know, I have to keep searching for answers because I want to be here for them for years to come.