Now is the winter of our discontent

Living the last few days of 2022, I can't say I'm sorry to see this year end. 

 

Once, I never worried what the new year will hold but looked forward with anticipation. I still  do but there's a wee bit of trepidation. I'm living a life I never imagined - as a widow, going on four years, as a mother of children who grew up and have mostly flown the nest, living with a crazy and frightening level of inflation, the turbulent world where peace is a distant thought and concerns for the future exist, where each trip to any type of store brings sticker shock and where shortages exists on so many things in a nation I once thought plentiful.

January comes after the bright days and merriment of Christmas, a time when life shifts back from the sublime to the ordinary. The skies are often gray, temperatures are cold and there’s often precipitation. Remember that both “cold” and “snow” are both four letter words.

After days of frigid temperatures, sub zero wind chills, and some snow, temps have soared until it's almost springlike. Winter has just begun, though, so I don't trust the weather.

I once thought about January as a fresh beginning, a clean start and although I'll hang new calendars, I also worry who might depart this life. Both my husband and my father made their final exit in January. From an early age, I dreaded February because my grandparents, Granny and Pop, both died in February nine years apart. Granny passed on February 5, 1980 and her funeral took place on February 8, the day in 1971 that Pop died.

Recent years have had losses that hit hard. My mother died in May, 2022. Although she was in her eighties and her health was far from good, it was unexpected in the way it came. The first holiday season without her, all the more poignant because her birthday fell on Christmas, was difficult. Memories lurked everywhere, ready to pounce at unexpected moments.

 

 

My much loved Jack Russell terrier also died this year. I miss Jackson!

 

In 2021, my cousin, friend, and brother in spirit Bill Sontheimer died.

In 2020, my brother-in-law Randy Murphy died.

In the past decade, I lost my beloved aunt, Janet Puett.

Death took several good friends thanks to covid and other causes but I won't list them in fear I might leave someone off the list.

Some of my favorite parishioners at St. Canera died, leaving a space yet to be filled.

On this cold January day, the outlook seems as bleak and dreary as the view outside my window.

Before I bog down into sadness, however, I will change to the positive.

I may be all but broke at the moment but the writing goes well.

After a hiatus of several years due to job duties and my husband's failing health, in 2021 I had four new releases.

In 2022, there have been five - Return Of The Christmas Bride (ebook), By Any Other Name (ebook), The Puca's Forever Mate (first of the Faery Folk series with a new pen name) Where Dreams Come True (hardback, paperback, ebook, audio) and Scrooge and Marlee (hardback, paperback, ebook and audio).

So far for 2023, there are seven titles under contract. They are Scarred Santa, Gray's Good Samaritan, (both reprise titles with new publishers and upgraded content), At Face Value (stand alone novel), Tall Dark And Cherokee (standalone) and three new Faery Folk titles, The Lone Wolf of Kilkenny, The Last Love of the Leanan Sidhe, and The Bean SIdhe's Change of Heart.

 

I have submitted a work called The Cowboy's Last Chance and am working toward finding an agent or publisher for my Laredo series, a historical family saga that chronicles the lives, loves, triumphs and tragedies of the Wilson family in post Civil War Texas. There will be at least seven planned novels in the series, four are complete and I'm working on a fifth.

A new project is a short play and doing some editing as well as writing. I also have a baker's dozen new ideas, some of which I am already working on writing.

The title, now is the winter of our discontent comes from Shakespeare's Richard III. John Steinbeck also used it as a title for one of his novels.

Here is more of the quote, from the opening lines of Richard III, spoken by Gloucester on a London street:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

My wish is that 2023 be a glorious year for all, that both you and I will see peace, prosperity, health, and pleasant times.

As we ring out the old and ring in the new, let's lift our hearts in both song and prayer!

Wishing all the joy of Christmas

 It's three days to Christmas and an Arctic front has hit. Temperatures are plunging as freezing rain falls in advance of snow. Record cold is predicted with wind chills as low as in the minus 40's for the next few days.

 

I'm staying home, reading, writing, and maybe watching a movie or two.

But since it's almost Christmas, that's on my mind. This year is hard - it's the first without my mom who died at the end of May. Christmas was also her birthday so it's a double whammy.

But I still experience the joy of the season.

Here's a little story about a gift from my grandparents long ago, one I will never forget!

As a child, anticipating Christmas was a big deal. Although we didn’t put up a tree or decorate until mid-December, I prepared in advance by pouring over the pages of the Sears or JC Penney’s Christmas catalog for weeks, dreaming and wishing for some of the toys in those pages.

When I was eight, I longed for a new bike. I had outgrown the small sidewalk bike that my cousin Tom bought me at a yard sale, the bike that he and his sister taught me to ride with great patience. As Christmas approached, a bike topped my wish list but, on the day, despite a variety of gifts under the tree, there was no bicycle.

Although I got the coat – a blue floral print parka with a fur trimmed hood – I had wanted along with other items like Mystery Date, the lack of a bike disappointed me.

My Pop, who used his trusty Barlow knife to help cut ribbons and open packages every Christmas, consoled me and promised I would receive a bike next Christmas, when he said I would be big enough for the 26-inch model I coveted.

Since life has a way of throwing the unexpected at us, he died in February and so I thought my chance of a bike had ended with my grandfather’s death. My mom wasn’t thrilled about the idea of a bike since we lived on a busy street a few blocks from the hospital where I was born and one that city buses traveled on their daily rounds.

I almost didn’t hope but being a kid, I hoped a little that there would be a bicycle under the tree come Christmas morning. Granny spent the night with us that year, so she was present when we made our wild dash down the front stairs to see what gifts we’d received.

Midway down, I thought I saw – through a hallway and two rooms – the flash of handlebars and I whooped, picking up speed as I ran into the living room. A pair of bikes, one pink, one blue sat before the Christmas tree, each with a tag which read “From Granny and Pop.” Before I tore away that tag, my dad asked me if I’d read and understood, which I did.

Granny kept her husband’s promise. I became the happy owner of a pink Columbia bicycle complete with a white basket trimmed with flowers and a silver seat. My toes had to struggle to reach the pedals but eventually I mastered it and rode many a happy mile on that bike. I still have it, tucked away in a corner of my garage.

That bike represents more to me than a pleasant childhood memory. It stands for the love of my grandparents, for dreams that sometimes come true, and the world I knew as a child.

Love is the true gift of Christmas because God so loved the world, He sent His only Son to bring salvation and light to illuminate the darkness of this world.

Even in 2022, in a year that has been as dark in many ways as any I have known, the love of Christ remains a shining light in our lives.

My memories have grown more precious as the years pass, as the familiar faces who filled my childhood with their love have gone and new faces have come into my life. As I mark the second Christmas without my husband, I still rejoice that I had him at all and that together we made three beautiful children.

From my house and heart to yours, I wish you the joy of Christmas, the light of love and the chance to make memories to keep.

 

Granny and Pop