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The prompt: Sit down for 10 minutes, with a timer, and say good-bye to the old year and hello to the new one.

I do this exercise every year. This morning, on the eve of the winter solstice, I sat down and wrote the following. It was a little past 7:30 am and the sky was still dark. A few minutes into the exercise, I was interrupted by the doorbell--it was Patrick's driver; Miguel; Patrick was already in the ambulance that takes him to dialysis three times a week. He had forgotten his earphones. I found the earphones and handed them to Miguel. "He was in tears this morning," I said. "Somebody stole his wedding ring from a locker at the clinic." Miguel left, and I returned to my writing. The timer went off, and I wrote for another few minutes, justifying the extra time because of the interruption.

Good-bye, 2023

This is how I am already remembering this year. It was:

The year I got my French driver’s license. I was 69.

The year I went to Normandy with my sister. We walked along the beach, picking up stones, past a sign that said, “Don’t take the stones.” She met my baby granddaughter for the first time.

The year I drove around the back roads of North Randolph with my brother and Jill, trying to get lost. We got lost somewhere north of Bunny Harvey’s house.

The year I met one of my Zoom students in person and we had lunch together at the Depot. We had only ever seen each other on a screen before that. He drove all the way from South Hero to meet me.

The year I heard a bad sound and I rushed to the living room and my husband said, “They stole my wedding ring.”

The year Bill and Betsy died.

The year I did everything you are supposed to do to lower your blood pressure and it worked.

The year Romain showed us the caves where the miners used to stay when they were working in the forest.

The year we asked our friends and family to come visit us in France because we could no longer travel.

The year we found out there are no beds for travelers on dialysis who want to visit the state of Vermont. But we are Vermonters, I said to the lady on the phone.

The year I illustrated a children’s book. What do you want to be when you grow up?, people used to ask me. A writer and illustrator of children’s books, I said. I said it with great confidence. The confidence came in large part from my mother. I may have read the words “Illustrated by” on the cover of a book, or multiple books, and wondered what they meant. Surely, my mother is the person who told me about illustrators, what they were. Surely, she is the person who told me I could be one.

This was the year I started privately calling myself a “book artist.” On very little evidence so far. There is the cloth book I made for my granddaughter, and a couple of other books. But one can dream. One must dream, if one is ever to accomplish anything. I came up with the notion of a book artist as I was questioning my own intentions. It seemed that I was devoting more and more time to fewer and fewer endeavors. Writing books not for the multitudes but for individuals, the way I used to write books and staple them together, or tie them with yarn, and give them to my mother, who held onto them for the rest of her life. Once again, I was devoting gobs of time to making books that seemed to have no commercial value whatsoever. Their value seemed to have an inverse relationship to the number of people who might pick them up and study them. The smaller their intended audience, the greater their value, at least on a per capita basis. The economics of being a book artist are such that one must have an independent income, because making books can take up an enormous amount of time and energy. Fortunately, I have an independent income. It is called Social Security.

—December 21, 2023