Christmas Letter 2025

With the odd nip and tuck, here’s what went out in red envelopes this year.

The Annual Greeting

I was gonna be granny of the groom! Miles and Holly were to wed on September 6, and I had been holding the date since forever. The couple’s color palette was green with a touch of orange and dress code was “floral formal.” I started shopping. When I couldn’t decide between two lovely dresses, I bought both. A gorgeous, hand-painted scarf found on Etsy came all the way from Romania. Fantastic footwear, too: pale pink Keds, styled like Mary Janes, with crystals on the toes. I reserved my room at the wedding venue, booked airfare, rented a car. Ping was set for doggie sleep-away.

It was all systems go until it wasn’t. August 24 I was feeling pretty crappy, and my cousin Helen texted me that there was Covid in the nursing facility where she and I had been visiting her father. My test was positive. Cancel the hair appointment and kennel. Cancel travel plans. Cancel it all.

The “I do’s” were vowed without me and I was crushed to miss them. Now I need somewhere to wear my dresses and sparkling shoes.

Loss Happens

This year as in the past, joys are the silver lining of sorrows.

My brother Jim died May 2 from a stroke at the age of 69. Many of you know that Jim had separated himself from various of his friends and family—myself among them. The gathering, however, was a chance to reconnect with wonderful people, many of whom I hadn’t seen since the 1970s. His sons hosted us at a church in Ashfield, Massachusetts, the town he once called home. Songs and remembrances celebrated that often inexplicable—and always loved—man.

Which brings me back to Helen’s father. Ping and I spent Christmas 2024 with that family and it was a hoot. 2025 had barely begun, though, when David called me from a hospital. He had thyroid cancer. The prognosis was grim and the next eight months was a rollercoaster of hope and discouragement. His Helen, her brother Calvin, and David’s partner, Theresa, were utterly magnificent caretakers. I pitched in when I could, spending a few days at his home to administer meds, chauffeuring Helen to Cape Cod and various facilities. And, yes, he contracted Covid as well. His battle was determined. We lost him, however, on September 11, at 70.

Old Friends and Family Doings

Before all that, in April, I had driven down to Maryland for a celebration of the life of the great writer, and my Dan’s best friend, John Barth (1930-2024). It was a fine literary morning. I swapped stories with a couple of Jack’s kids and encountered people Dan and I only ever seemed to run into at Johns Hopkins’ events. The trip included time with my Tattooed Boy and his girlfriend, artist-friends; a meal with a tall beauty at Lithuanian Hall; and a days-long hang a hostess with the mostest.

My Tattooed Boy, by the way, is now the owner a a beautiful townhome. Huzzah! He’ll be hosting Christmas this year.

Later in April it was off to at Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, to celebrate the opening of the Alice Dodge Wallace Center for the Performing Arts. Students were thrilled that our esteemed alumna Jane Fonda ’55 addressed the gathering and carved out time for them. Accommodations were provided by ALSC then, and again in October for  the installation of the new Head of School, Dr. Karen Lassey. Campus is a happening place!

In August, ALSC came East for a few days of tourism and one or two gin-and-tonics. We checked out the Vincent van Gogh exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, sailed the harbor from Piers Park here in Eastie, and drove north into the wilds of Ipswich to tour elegant Castle Hill. Then it was the Boston Tea Party museum—both entertaining and educational—and the Mapparium at the Christian Science Mother Church. Hadn’t been there since about 1972. Installed in 1935, it’s an echoing, illuminated glass globe you walk through, and a lesson in geo-politics unto itself.

Bean Town

Boston is a visitor magnet. One of the Jennifer relations swings through on route from her home in Los Angeles to her mom in Maine. Miles was here on a business meeting in June. The Tall Lithuanian came for a conference in November.

Sometimes Ping and I go touristing on our own. There’s always First Night, of course, and strolls through parks that constitute the Emerald Necklace. One day, we ferried from East Boston to Charlestown, checked out the new sculpture in the Navy Yard, and walked up to the Bunker Hill monument. Another weekend we strolled from Long Wharf, by the Aquarium, past Government Center to King’s Chapel to see Unbound, a memorial to the African Americans enslaved by that historic church’s clergy and members. History can be more capacious and complete than we might have once thought.

Our picture is quite elegant this year; I was lured into a studio by a deal for people and their dogs. Come to think of it, my last “formal” portrait was taken in the fall of 1968 for my senior yearbook. Have I changed much? Well, my hair was a bit darker then.

My Writing and a Poet

Looking ahead, I am hopeful that by January 2026, From the Depths: Dyslexia, Bipolar Disorder and the Triumph of Art will be in print. It’s a biography of my friend, the painter Gary Horn, and a monograph on his art. In anticipation of the project, we set up an Instagram account—@ggraythorn. Looks rather like a gallery. Gary selects the works and provides the images; I write the notes. We’re up to 84 posts as of today. That’s in addition to my usual logorrhea on this blog.

I’ve been in East Boston long enough to move into my second election cycle as a Precinct 1 inspector at Samuel Adams Elementary School. The mayoral and council preliminaries were in September and the final contests on November 4. Both days were low-key. I hope for more traffic in 2026. Elections remind me what a troubling year it has been and how much we depend on the rituals of democracy. This poem seems fitting for the moment.

Let Them Not Say (2017) by Jane Hirshfield (b. 1953)

Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say: they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something:

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.

All good things in 2026!