Dear Family:
For a change since I dislike ruts, I thought I would ditto my Christmas letter to you. I hoping that it won’t be long; for who has time to read long letter at this time of the year?
I won’t be in California for Christmas. It was a sad decision to make but one I felt was right at the time. Christmas is children and seeing their wonderment Christmas Eve, and their joys on Christmas morning. But for this year I feel strongly that I should stay here with Grandma. Not that Grandma needs me. She is failing quite fast and really hardly realizes who comes to see her, but actually I know that Wanda and Lamont have carried the largest part, by far, of the burden of taking care of her. They had her for Thanksgiving, so I am going to get her Christmas Eve, if they will let me take her overnight, and I’ll bring her, along with Donna, to Provo, and keep her until Christmas afternoon and then take her back to the Nursing Home.
I’ll miss not being with you but there will be other Christmases.
Also, I just wanted to take a few minutes at this special time of the year and tell all of you once more how much I love and appreciate each one of you. When I see how ’un-close’ many other families are, and how they don’t seem to care whether they are together or not, it make me so thankful for my own family of four children, in-laws an grandchildren and also sisters and brother and their families. None of us are perfect, but in my biased state, I have to say that I think all of you are pretty special. Maybe I don’t always say the words of appreciation and love that I feel, but it is surely there.
My one wish for the New Year–and it isn’t a resolution because I always break those–would be that we all try to rise above our problems and enjoy the many beautiful things around us. Life was never meant to be easy, but the thing that can make it challenging and meaningful instead of drudgery and problems, is to be able to take time to enjoy small pleasures. An hour with one of the grandchildren (for me), the beautiful sunsets we have here in Utah Valley, even the snowy mountains, and especially when Timpanogas is white with snow and then the setting sun sends pink tones all over its crags and peaks, laughing at Archie Bunker, Chatting over the fence with my small, pink-cheeked neighbor boys who call out “Klea, I’m over here.”, my flowers in the summertime, and my fireplace in the winter. I am content.