We were in the kitchen this morning and Don looked at these masks that just happened to be drying on the kitchen table:
He said, “If that doesn’t sum up 2020, I don’t know what does.”
What a year. Mostly horrendous, heartbreaking, enraging, maddening, lonely, bewildering – I could go on but you get the picture. It’s been like nothing we’ve ever been through before.
In the midst of it, however, was goodness and kindness and heroism. Front line workers risking their lives to help others. Good deeds. People reaching out to each other in new ways. People standing in long lines and risking their health in the time of COVID in order to vote. We turned out in record numbers in order to vote a monster out of office.
Too many lives lost and many of those deaths never had to happen. Willful ignorance and selfishness on display as people refused to wear masks, stay isolated, or take one moment to think about someone other than themselves.
This has been a terrible year, one I cannot wait to say goodbye to.
I could spend paragraphs speaking to the nightmare that is the Orange Man and his administration but I’ve done that. You know how I feel.
But we’re getting through it, thank goodness.
I thank you all so much for your daily presence here. You’ve made an enormous difference in my life, especially this year. More than ever, our little community has been a source of solace and commiseration, of joy and laughter.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
May we move forward into 2021, knowing that change is coming, knowing that at some point we will all be vaccinated, that goodness will triumph. I only wish January 1st was also Inauguration Day.
Stay safe. Stay vigilant. Don’t relax your guard, my friends, as the next few months will be hard.
But do celebrate the end of this year and a better year ahead.
I may or may not post tomorrow. We’ll see.
Happy Thursday.
Happy New Year Claudia and Don!
Claudia and Don, Best wishes for a healthy, happy New Year!
Boys are at the beach today
They live at the Gulf
I chose to come here Dec 27 2017 after a month with them because youngest grand was still home schooled and wanted to help
She is almost sixteen and almost college like her sisters
Time to share Nana with little boys six and eight in Florida
I have lived in the south and one stays in air conditioning in summer as we stay in during the winter here. I have had Arthritis since age 20 and the pain just gets worse. 31st move for Nana….remember I don’t live for houses or things…I live for family and experiences…it was so freeing when we sold my house where I lived after moving back to Wv from S Carolina. Love this life… I admit I loved Ohio where we raised our kids…so 2021 come…vaccine…Nana will move and who knows where the next move will be????? Claudia you are a true blessing to me and have helped 2020 be better. (I will miss my family here so so much but with Allegiant Air tickets are not that much…I usually go four times a year before COVID…)
PS. Someone explain why people are not isolating…blogging about huge Christmas gatherings…just saying
Happy New Year and may we all celebrate goodness and the things we have learned in 2020, so we can make things better for everyone..
Take Care and Thank You,
Kaye
Park City, UT
What a beautiful, inspiring post. Thank you. Happy New Year to you and Don. Stay safe and healthy.
I would like to thank you for being a presence in my life, too! Since I’ve been reading your blog I’ve felt like we’ve been friends forever. I, too, can hardly wait for January 20th because we know things will start getting better after that.
Wishing you and Don a happy, healthy and safe new year. Cheers!
xoxoxo
Well said, as always! All the best, stay safe!
What a lovely post. Happy New Year Claudia and Don! xo
What a great post!! I am in London, Ontario Canada and we too are looking forward to January 20th along with you. May Don and yourself Claudia, have a better 2021!!
May we all find peace and health in the new year!
Marion Shaw
Thank you ,Claudia, for your lovely post.My very best wishes to you,Don and all in our community of blog friends. Happy New Year!xo
Claudia, my sister in law told me about your blog a few years ago and I get your e-mails every day. I have never commented before, but wanted to say, thank you so much for being the friend that I’m sure so many need during these times. I am lucky and do not have any loneliness whilst quarantining, but I’m sure many aren’t in my situation. Despite not suffering myself, as so many others are, it has still be wonderful to receive and read your e-mail every day. Happy New Year and thank you again, Ilona
Hope you have a lovely New Year’s Eve! Not a single exciting thing on tap here, but that is absolutely fine with us. We aren’t NYE celebrants in any year, so no changes or hardships being felt by us.
I will be very glad to get next week finished and in the books and will THEN look forward to Jan 20. The dread and fear is still creeping and spreading in my meager mind. I am trying, I really am.
Again,I am hoping that you and Don have a peaceful day today, and that you decide to take the day tomorrow!! You certainly deserve it! ♡
Happy New Year Claudia and Don. Thank you for all you do for us, and thank you to the lovely people that comment also, and bring so much to your community.
Happy New Year all!
Alice
Bonne année et bonne santé pour toi et Don en 2021 !
Thank you for helping to keep us sane during
these horrible times. Your blog is always a daily feast. So tired of all these rich
bloggers ignoring human cruelty surrounding them. That’s my rant and now onto
positivity and respect for all the essential workers and people who wear masks because they care about others.
Happy 2021 Don and Claudia, may it be full of love, laughter and wonder! 🇨🇦
Happy New Year to you two!
Happy New Year my friend, here’s to a spectacular 2021. xoxo
Happy New Year! I have been thinking of 20 things I’m grateful for in 2020 and it’s help me sum up the good that has happened. So much bad, but then I see the good. I’m ready to greet 2021 with enthusiasm and joy. Hugs!
Happy New Year to you both! I look forward to your post daily.
Wishing you and all your family a very happy and peaceful New Year, Jillxx
Just got our Christmas present . My son and his family mailed it weeks ago. We will open it tonight. I called to let him know we received it and he told me that this year along with some wrapped presents he has put in all the things he remembers of Christmas when he was a child. I am already tearing up. I feel anxious most of the time. I will not let the politics spoil this night. I intend having too much wine…eating snacks and maybe even staying awake till midnight. Happy New Year everyone. This has been a nightmare but I feel lucky to have found this blog. Thank you Claudia and Don. I wish you all the best.
Thank you for your final post of this year.
Wishing Claudia, Don and everyone who reads your blog all the very best for 2021!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you and Don. I am hopeful about 2021 and January 20th can’t come soon enough. My daughter, who works in a hospital, got her first dose of the Moderna vaccine on Monday. She had no side effects except a sore arm. She gets the second dose on 1/21. Just knowing that gives me hope also!
I’ll continue to enjoy reading your blog in the new year!
May 2021 bring us a renewed sense of hope and peace, swift vaccinations, and the joy of anticipating family reunions. Happy New Year to you and yours!
wishing you both quiet contentment and joy in the New Year!
2021. the coming of age. maybe it will bring an amazing difference.
we can always hope!
XO Happy New Year!
Hello there,
This is the last rainy day I will have in 2020. That said, I am hopeful for a leap forward in 21 even more so than if it were a leap year! I have been reading each day but not much to add so that’s how I am, checking in and moving on.
I am happy to be “old” and therefore not concerned with going out and celebrating this evening.
Happy New Year! to Claudia, Don and all readers of the blog!
Take care,
Kelly
claudia …
thank you so much for all you’ve shared here about your life and your heart in beautiful photos, relatable opinions and concerns, fun stories, interesting hobbies and always thoughtfulness, decency and kindness. and not just during one of the toughest years ever, but every day, every post. i don’t have a blog, but i know there’s a financial cost to it as well as your time and efforts. thanks for all of that.
thanks to don for sharing his music here, too.
and thanks to you and everyone who’s talked with me in the comments or not, offering prayers and kind wishes for my family and me, cheering me on and describing books i hope to read someday.
i pray for you, don, everyone else who stops by here and your families … may you all have a happy, healthy, safe new year full of happy reunions (when it’s safe), easier grocery shopping and fun outings that don’t require masks. if there’s ever anything i can do for you, please let me know.
love,
your friend kathy in iowa
Happy New Year🎉. I will be so glad on January 21st waking up and knowing we have competent and compassionate new president. Covid still will take awhile but at least we will have someone who cares about the citizens. Best to you and Don
While 2020 has been a year we will never forget for all the heartache that has been wrought for so many, two good things happened within our family. The marriage of my youngest son, and the engagement of my second born, both happy events. And, I’ve noticed something else. We’ve realized, that even though we are separated by an ocean, we’ve become closer as a family, and, I will always be thankful for that.
I wish you and Don a very Happy New Year, and many blessings in the coming year. Jan 20 can’t come soon enough for our country. I sincerely hope that we can become kinder to one another in the coming year.
We have no plans tonight, other than to stay up long enough to make sure that 2020 has indeed left!! ;) 🎉
Happy New Year to you and Don as well as all the Mockingbird Hill Family! I so look forward to our support and caring for each other extending into 2021 and many years beyond! Here’s to a much brighter future for us and our world!
Happy New Year! May this be the most boring one ever; I’m certainly not going to wish exciting or interesting on you, look what we got last time.
Wishing you a relaxed and happy day.
Lots of ‘big-gun’ fireworks going off (illegally) in my town here at 12:15 am on Jan 1. (My poor dog. Too much noise.) Somebody out there must feel like celebrating with the big booms. When I was younger, we weren’t nearly so sophisticated. The most we’d do as the clock struck ’12’ with the turn of the new year, was to walk up and down the streets of our neighborhood, banging on pots and pans.
But, just like ‘that’, we’re off to 2021. It’s here.
Thank you for allowing your readers to lay down thoughts and observations over this past year on MHC blog, Claudia; you’ve been so generous about it. You’ve also been able to capture all the feelings in just the right words with your thoughtful posts.
I wish the best for you and Don in the coming year. And for fellow readers/commenters here, too. Peace to us all!
I have so enjoyed your gentle, thoughtful pieces each day, from far away in Australia. I hope this year brings peace and unity to your country: it seems so fractured and divided right now. Keep safe and well.
Yes, this has been a horrible year for me. My daughter died suddenly in Nov 2019. It has been a time that I did not understand. How could this happen? Then having to be in lockdown. I gladly wear mask when out. There is so much I want to say but cannot. I enjoy my daily routine, coffee time with Claudia and Don.
Happy New Year!
to rose hester …
oh, dear … i am so sorry for your loss of your daughter! may you be comforted by happy memories and especially by God’s strength, love and His promises, including those of eternal life and heaven.
take good care of yourself. i hope this new year brings you ease, time to relax and lots of reasons to smile.
will be praying for you.
kathy in iowa
May all your wishes com true! Regula
2021 WE MADE IT…now a vaccine…fireworks woke me up at midnight here in Indy…friends and family texted at midnight…I couldn’t stay awake. Glad 2020 in the history books…one GOOD thing happened…I managed-despite the horrendous pain of Arthritis (since age 20) and Fibromyalgia and previous strokes…etc…Osteoporosis…to average over five miles per day…and over 12,000 steps per day. The first few months I measured with cell phone and when I hit five, I put it away…one of my grandgirls sent me Fitbit…so after April, more accurate. Not sure with the January pain if I will set goal for this year 4 miles or 5…we will see how it goes…At my age, this has been something I have tried to do for almost two years…started too late in 2019 to make it but this year yes….I walk outside…I go to trash and mailbox often…I walk to NYC videos on You Tube…I step around the apartment and in the hallways…HOPE all of YOU have a better year than last year…and let’s face it ladies, we have Claudia to keep us motivated.
… brendab, I am SO inspired by your ‘steps’ and that with your significant health conditions and everything going on in this past year that you could stay focused and get in that kind of ‘mileage’ for your body (of course the movement and activity is also very good for the mind, too); you’ve really inspired me here on the first day of the new year, as I’ve gotten too creaky shut up here at home in 2020 and not getting nearly enough exercise; thank you (‘if you don’t use it, you lose it!) …
(I ‘know’ the pain and disability of severe arthritis and osteoporosis as my mom suffered with rheumatoid arthritis in the last 25 years of her life, but she was SO helped with the right cocktail of prescription meds, a regular routine which included walking every day [when she was in her later 80s, it was indeed ‘walk the house’, point being SHE DID IT; in her 60s and 70s, she benefitted from the Easter Seals swimming pool for hot-water therapy [she didn’t swim, she just ‘walked’ the shallow end]; she enjoyed reading and crafting for as long as her fingers/hands would let her hold a book and pick up a paintbrush; she kept up her good spirits and lived within just two months of turning age 90; anyway, I applaud you, brendab, for hanging in there and doing all the right things for yourself [just like my brave mom; it DOES take courage, so BRAVO to you!].)
Thank you. After my first stroke in my 20’s, I knew I had to keep going…have had five.
I graduated college in my forties…my Master’s right before age 60…had to retire after 18 1/2 years teaching high school and university-in my sixties…I am getting ready for my 31st move…and have more in me. It is difficult to get around, but my family is so so so fantastic. I moved to Indy three years ago and will move to Florida as soon as we have a vaccine…splitting time between families. I also teach on Facetime daily to grands…and also a couple of other little children-friends of my family….take care…your mom sounds fantastic. I have lived longer than the women in my family-I also attribute that to being a vegetarian since 1992…take care…
A really tough year, but as I wrote in my “That’s a Wrap” post, laced with good things, even a little bit of joy. We grab onto whatever we can find where and when we can find it and hope against hope that 2021 will be very different. A bad fall on the ice last Wednesday was my way to send out the new year, even though it was a couple of days before. I’m hoping I can make it till Monday and maybe be improved by then so I don’t have to do another doc appointment. I have some pain pills and muscle relaxers left from the spasm in November so hopefully that will get me through.
Meanwhile, we got about four inches of snow that looks lovely — but no way I’m getting out to tackle it! Rick went north to ski for the day so it’s me, my ice, my heating pad and netflix! But — and it’s a big but — I’m alive and here! After 2020, talk about a big gift.
Your mask photo made me smile. A week or so ago I did a massive mask wash and they were all hanging over the shower curtain rod. Back in the long ago when we wore nylons everyday, those were hanging over the rod; today it’s masks. That’s 2020 for you!
Happy New Year, Claudia. You two both deserve it!