You can see that it would be difficult for me to recall just where and how “The Annual Letter” became the topic for this issue, and just what it was intended to be when first proposed. I can, however, tell you what we wanted it to be by the time our conversation had rounded off. We were all somewhat amused, somewhat put off, by those once-mimeographed and now, more often, emailed group letters that are sent (probably in lieu of actually talking to people on a generously one-to-one basis throughout the year) at Christmas and the New Year. We were especially critical of the high quotient of self-praise they tend to shovel at the hapless reader, and their consequent lack of honest self-appraisal or accurate fact-checking. We imagined what would happen if someone were to send—or receive—a more honest letter, one that included all the failures a family could produce.

When we set the topic, we expected to receive a bevy of amusing satires of the self-aggrandizing letter and even more pretending to be the opposite (letters that, wittingly or not, reveal just how badly things had actually gone for the hapless members of some fictitious family). We did receive quite a few of both genres, and they are, indeed, fabulous and funny. We have printed a number of them here, and regret only that lack of room prevents us from including even more.

What we did not expect, though, was how difficult 2024 would prove to be in real life for so many, nor how tumultuously the year would end. From January 1 to November 25, 2024, there were, Wikipedia reports, a total of 7,818 wildfires in California alone, burning 1,045,204 acres. Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded eighteen named storms, of which 11 increased to hurricane strength (winds of 74 mph or greater), and five became major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or greater). And, according to the Gun Violence Archive, by December 7, there’d been 476 mass shootings across the U.S. (defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed or injured). Thirteen states adopted near total abortion bans after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision; the number of resulting maternal deaths that could have been prevented may be as low as 10 or as high as 26. Elsewhere in the world, 12,162 Ukrainian civilians were killed and another 26,919 injured in Russian attacks just between February and October; and, in the 12 months from October 2023 to October 2024, over 30,373 Palestinian and 1,706 Israeli civilians have reliably been reported killed in the Israel-Gaza war, including, in Gaza, at least 134 journalists, 120 academics, and 224 humanitarian aid workers. Nor did the U.S. political scene provide much of a respite from the strife and uncertainty. From the surprise announcement by the sitting president on July 21 that he would not run for re-election, to the equally shocking outcome of that election on November 5, there was little to uplift and much to worry about.

We did receive a few entries, all excellent, centering on those concerns in general, and on the election in particular, but decided, not without regret, that Short Takes is not the appropriate venue for them. The Persimmon Tree Forum was created specifically for readers who wish to share their perspectives and concerns about current events.

There is, however, a connection between the often calamitous public events of 2024 and the arch, deliciously ironic faux letters printed here. The outcome of the U.S. presidential election was determined by something that many of those who responded to exit polls kept calling “the economy,” by which they meant the prices they were paying for eggs, gas, rent, and new SUVs; in other words, despite everything truly important going on in the world, the choices of way too many voters were solidly based on their own wallets. Americans are, it turns out, still exactly what those self-congratulating, self-absorbed annual letters reveal them to be.   

This will be the second holiday season without you, Claude. I wanted to let you know how Al and I are doing. It’s been a rough road, but we are doing well overall. We miss you and are supporting each other as we grieve.

This past year has been full of changes and adventures.

I hired a contractor to rebuild the decks around the house, and oh, man! You would have been stunned to know how bad the rot was on those beams and joists. The job just finished up and we have new redwood decks, salvaging the decorative railings and a few usable beams. I had the house repainted in the same colors, and it looks like new. I am enjoying time on the deck, and fondly remember the afternoons we sat out there together.

I have gone through your things to declutter, and that’s been a tough process. I sold your collection of Automobile Quarterlies and slot car sets to gentlemen who were avid car aficionados like yourself and will treasure them.

Al won a second Northwest Regional Emmy this year; you would have been so proud of her! I still recall the look on your face when you held her first Emmy a year and a half ago.

Al and I flew to Indiana to stay with Cameron and experience the wonder of a total solar eclipse. I drove to Seattle in June to meet Al and Marin for the Emmy Gala and we drove back home together, then went to Tahoe for a boat ride and fancy dinner with Ben. For your birthday in August, Al and I went horseback riding on the Sonoma beaches in Bodega Bay, and on the anniversary of your passing in September, we spent the day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

And now for the difficult news: I was diagnosed with bladder cancer in October. I’ve had two surgeries to remove tumors and, if all goes well, will be starting immunotherapy in a month. This news has been tough to process for both me and our daughter, with all the memories of your cancer journey returning like ghosts from the past.

I wish you could be here for me as I go through this health crisis, just as I cared for you for the decades you were ill. I miss the warmth of your embrace, the gentle sound of your voice and the lilt of your laugh.

We will think of you as we unpack the boxes of ornaments, put up the tree, play our favorite Christmas CDs, and sip eggnog with brandy. This year’s ornament hasn’t been purchased yet, but we will find just the right one. We always do.

And on Christmas Eve, in those late magical hours when wishes are made and come true, I will be thinking of you and calling across time and space. If you are out there, let me know.

Holiday season again!  Emails and texts are all very well, but a letter once a year is an invitation for you to share your memories. Remember how we used to love it all, even when you were just “the baby” and didn’t quite understand what was going on? You helped make the paper chains, and Lindy dipped her tail in the glue you spilt.  Our fingers almost bled trying to peel chestnuts for the stuffing no one liked. But besides minor setbacks and trying to keep warm with no proper heating in our frigid English house, the whole day was sheer joy, even when Lily raised a surprise question.

First, at around 6 a.m. our Christmas stockings: tangerines, a toothbrush and Gibbs “solid dentifrice,” the pink toothpaste, lipstick for the almost-teens, nuts, pop gun, pen & pencil, notebook, a magic trick, sweeties, and orange-flavored chocolate.

We enjoyed everything our fingers found, even the goldfish food, though the goldfish had been flushed away weeks before and you had sobbed.

After turkey and Christmas pudding alight from brandy and filled with silver sixpences, came the highlight. Mum disappeared, then returned to growl “Ho! Ho! Ho!” wearing the ratty old red housecoat and a lopsided beard to give us our “big” presents from under the tree, its shabby fairy in her usual spot, a little less sparkly as the years went by.

Mum and Dad held two parties every Christmas day, after the mailman wobbled past on his bike and accepted a small bonus and an “I-don’t-mind-if-I-do” to warm him. Christian friends in the morning, Jewish friends in the evening; never recognized as discriminatory, maybe our parents didn’t even notice. Nor did we until we were all grown-up. They also welcomed bridge players in one group, tennis players in another, charities the family supported in a third, and our dad’s commuter friends and school parents (though no PTA back then).

At some point Lily, slightly bewildered, said, “But I thought we were Jewish … isn’t there another holiday for us around now?”

Mum and Dad looked at us, seeming more surprised than guilty. We were learning Hebrew at Sunday school, we lit Sabbath candles Friday evening. Nobody except the Irish maid attended the neighborhood Catholic church. So we found some birthday candles in place of Chanukah ones, and improvised a menorah with Plasticine. We felt very pleased with ourselves for being what Janice told us was called “ecumenical.”

Bikes and hammock in winter, photograph by Pam Martin

Christians believe that Jesus Christ came to save people. But, as revealed below, sometimes he could use a little help himself.

Last year I set out our Nativity scene at Christmas time. It included small statues of Mary, Joseph, infant Jesus, shepherds, and lambs. Unfortunately, the boxer in my home has a naughty habit of grabbing things from low counters and chomping on them, leaving big bite marks. To avoid this, I placed the Nativity figures on a high counter, with Jesus in front in his cradle.

Minutes later I heard the thump of the dog’s paws hitting the shelf. I ran into the room and caught her with the baby in her mouth. She dashed off in an effort to keep her prize, and I chased her. Because of the layout of the house, the animal could run through several rooms and end up at the starting point. The two of us raced around and around the circle, with her thinking it was a merry game and me shouting, “Give me Jesus!”

Luckily, I was able to pry Christ from the boxer’s jaws before she could chew on him.  He only needed a bath, to remove all the dog slobber.

This holiday season, as usual, I’ve been reflecting on what the year has brought, and what it has taken away. One surprise during my musings has been a resurfaced dream I had last summer. In it, I’d written you a letter saying what had never been said. Today, an inner voice counseled, “Write it now, before one of you dies.”

Because she is past forty and has her adoptive father’s last name, it’s unlikely you’ve ever discovered I have a daughter fathered by you. She has your brilliance and height, with a loving heart and spirit all her own. My husband and I are constantly delighted by her grace, compassion, and wildly imaginative creativity. She’s a mother of two, as well as a respected artist. At the beginning of the new year, she will be emigrating to her husband’s native country. We’ve talked of eventually following them.

Early on I decided not to deny your existence, yet I’ve told her only what I thought necessary. When she was small, I described my years with you as quick as a wink, and not a fun story. Later, I used adjectives like turbulent if she ever had questions about that time in my life. I never burdened her with details of your violence or infidelities, or your determination to reshape me to your specifications. I promised myself that the trauma of my history with you would extend no further than me, and end with my death.

I’ve sought to forgive myself for my naïve belief that your compulsion to control me was an influence I needed, so convinced was I of being less than you, of being fundamentally and innately wrong. I do wonder if you’ve acknowledged the damaging methods you practiced, or if you’ve spent time in contrition. Your midlife career as a pastor may have given you tools for that. Repentance is hard work.

When my daughter turned 21, I gave her the gift of choice by providing her with all your contact information. The possibility of a connection being formed between you has long been in her hands. When I was pregnant with her I legally changed my name. For clarity’s sake, I’ll sign with the name I was once known by. Goodbye, Walt, you’ll not hear from me again.

Weeds in river ice, photograph by Pam Martin

Early this morning before sunrise the ship, the Spirit of Shackleton, cruised along the winding Neumeiyer Channel, flanked by mountain ridges covered with snow. The sun did not win, the sky remained overcast.

We landed via zodiacs on Goudier Island, a boulder landing. Many Gentoo penguins, some looking sleepy and scruffy, waddled down to greet us. The United Kingdom set up Branfield House on the Antarctic Peninsula in 1944, as a secret wartime operation, a wintering station, but it became the home also of Gentoo penguins, who began to congregate and colonize the island. They made their homes underneath the crevices of the house.

Branfield House is an all-male operation, with bunk beds, an office, kitchen, workshop, radio and telecommunication rooms, and a bar. The house also boasts a small museum and a post office, the Port Lockroy, fondly called the Penguin Post Office.

I’m sending postcards; they may take four to six weeks to arrive. The post officer told us they will first be brought to Falkland Island via a cruise ship and then to the UK before they are sent to their respective destinations, a very circuitous voyage.

I squatted down outside the Penguin Post Office. A curious Gentoo chick came waddling up to peck at my waterproof pants and take a very gentle nip or two from my finger. Then it settled down among the rocks near me, making that its home.

The kayakers made a landing at Paradise Island. The water was calm, ice floes floated—a few occupied by leopard seals, all seemingly taking a siesta.

The weather was great for camping, so about 58 of us had an early dinner, picked up our tents and sleeping bags, and set off to a slice of snow-covered beach by the foothill of a steep rocky mountain. Off to the right, the Gentoo penguins were also settling for the night. Our arrival must have disturbed them; they were emitting plaintive cries.

My roommate, Rhiannon, and I picked a spot close to shore and quickly set up our tents. Dusk was falling with the reflections of the snow-covered rocky mountains in the inlet bathed in the pale pink sky.

In the tent, my body kept slipping off the pad, leaving my skin separated from the snow by just a thin plastic sheathing. It was cold.

I woke up around 4:17 a.m. to gaze at the sky, which was beginning to lighten. The penguins were still sleeping. I sat quietly on the rock, looking across the water at the lighted ship and listening to the occasional lapping of waves against the shore. Soon, it was time to break camp. That was done very efficiently; we were on the ship by 5 a.m., ready for an early breakfast.

The Gentoo penguins and I say goodbye for now.

“Remember, I need it by next Tuesday.”

“Huh?” I see her mouth moving, but with my ear pods in, my favorite music blasting, waiting for my best friend to call so we can do our algebra homework and talk about what happened today in school, I can’t hear the words.

“I said, I need it by next Tuesday,” she says, removing one of the ear pods and shouting in my ear. Somehow she thinks volume is needed even when her mouth is practically chewing my earlobe.

“Huh? What do you need by next Tuesday?”

“Doris, you’re almost a teenager, not a little girl anymore. Old enough to remember what I tell you.”

“Huh, okay, but what do you need by Tuesday?”

“Your contribution to the annual letter,” she says, her tone both excited about the letter and exasperated that she has to remind me.

Ever since she read that article in a parenting magazine and then talked about it in the moms’ group she’s been attending since I was born, she’s been on this kick about making sure I become independent before I go to college. She doesn’t want to be known as a helicopter parent, hovering, ever watchful, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice to field any concern, give unsolicited advice, mostly live her life through mine.  This is good news because, quite frankly, if she takes this seriously, then I won’t have to spend so much energy keeping lots of my life secret.

But, really, the annual letter. Why do we need to start my maturity with this? Why does she send one anyway? Why take that staged photo, all of us wearing matching tacky holiday sweaters…. penguins sledding, last year?

Crow dreaming, photograph by Pam Martin

Santa is not coming this year. He sends regrets and promises to see you next year for sure. Donder and Blitzen are not well (influenza.) Rudolph has taken to bad attitudes and severe incontinence (“age” is on him!). The little green elves stay deep in their “cups” and are therefore too drunk to help out in the workshop, let alone pack the sleigh (if there were anything to pack). Toyland is a mess what with the toy-makers on strike and at the height of rebellion. There are no toys anywhere on the North Pole. (I didn’t want to tell you this, but you need to know so you can find alternatives for the children.)

And Mrs. Claus has totally lost it. She is having an affair with one of the tooth fairies. Santa filed divorce papers yesterday and is seeing a “shrink” for debilitating pains on the right side of his brain. (His head always hurts.) The doctor diagnoses his condition as “emotional migraines.”  “Doc” also says there is no known cure, but Santa is strong-willed and determined. He shall overcome. He is already making plans for next Christmas. He’s deep in the throes of personnel management – firing and hiring replacement staff. He has locked Mrs. Claus out of Toyland and placed a restraining order on her new lover. Santa asks you to be patient. He knows you are disappointed but he promises to have all his i’s dotted and his t’s crossed before “tis the season” rolls ‘round again.

Thanks for understanding. Thanks for remaining “good.” Santa regrets this ‘down-time’ (through no fault of his own), but he will see you on the fly.

To be honest, we’re not feeling very festive. We are actually pretty f….d for the next four years. A couple of 75-year-old married lesbians, together for thirty years, screwed for the foreseeable future. Yes, we’ve used the f-word a dozen times so far. Like the twelve (12) days of Christmas, without the singing.

Fear (13) dominates our thoughts. A free (14) floating (15) fear (16) that fills (17) our waking hours and nighttime dreams. Why does the election outcome feel (18) like a personal assault? A rejection of our freedoms (19), our fragile (20) female (21) bodies, our increasingly finite (22) lives, by roughly seventy-five million voters across this vulnerable nation; one million for (23) each year since we took our first (24) mid-twentieth-century breath. Rejection by those who fervently (25) believe that under the reign of the flatulent (26), fraudulent (27), [f]ilandering (28), alleged felon (29), their lives will be immeasurably better.

The Shutterfly holiday card enclosed, created in the “before” times, is a cheery collage of our summer trip to New York City: standing outside the New York Times, smiling selfies at The Lion King, and the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s “Stories of Hope” wall with its watercolor tiles in 2,983 shades of blue, and the Virgil quote: No day shall erase you from the memory of time. 

How many lives will be erased in the next four (30) years: from (31) medically necessary abortions not granted, from (32) the deportation of innocent immigrants seeking asylum, from (33) school shootings, from (34) lack of healthcare access and decreasing help for (35) the homeless, indigent, and mentally ill, from (36) hate crimes against marginalized citizens, from (37) senseless global wars? Victims piling up like so many watercolor tiles.

Our thoughts turn surreal, set on a futuristic (38), flailing (39), frying (40) planet Earth, filled (41) with armies of space cowboy billionaires wielding X-weapons, whose persistent fantasy (42) is to one day flee (43) in jet-fueled (44) rockets and fly (45) to Mars or other viable magaverses, where it’s supposed to be fun (46), leaving the rest of us behind in the fallout (47), nuclear and otherwise; an evolutionary “survival of the richest fittest” (48) gone wrong.      

Time ticks down the f-word (49) clock.  And, we are feeling (50) blue.

Shed in snow, photograph by Pam Martin

“Guess what arrived in the mail today,” Dad announced. “Cousin Bob’s annual Christmas letter and family photo.”

I rolled my eyes.

The term “letter” was a misnomer. It was actually a newsletter, complete with columns and page numbers – a yearly update on the MacDonald family, written by Marion, the matriarch.

I never understood why Dad kept his cousin’s family news in a shoebox. One time, he arranged the photos on the mantle – twenty in total, spanning the years 2000 to 2019. The collection was striking: seven kids, posing for the camera in red and green tunics and stocking hats, flanked by a grinning Bob and Marion. Every year, the kids grew bigger, their haircuts changed, three got glasses, and their parents appeared to shrink. I scrutinized the images, wondering if the kids were happy. Thank goodness I wasn’t part of their family.

Dad sighed and said, “I wish we would do something like that.”

I snorted. Mom kicked me under the table, but I knew she was on my side.

The newsletters were entertaining, with phrases like “It’s been a whirlwind year!” and details about Bob’s job promotions, Marion’s culinary prowess, and the kids’ successes at school, on the soccer field, and on the tennis court. As a teenager, I felt a twinge of envy for their lifestyle. In contrast, my four brothers and I roamed the streets like wild animals without a home.

One December, I noticed an unfamiliar face in the photo – the new spouse of the oldest kid. Gradually, more in-laws began to appear in the pictures.

In a spirit of female solidarity, Mom and I decided to pen our own Christmas letter. Shrieking with laughter, tears rolling down our cheeks, we wrote:

Dad didn’t find our letter amusing.

One year, a daughter-in-law disappeared from the family photo. The following December, two of the kids were also missing. Marion did not mention their absences.

Another year, it was Cousin Bob who was absent. In the newsletter, Marion wrote that her husband had died of a heart attack. She appeared sad and frail in the photo.

In 2020, Dad received an email from the oldest MacDonald kid who wrote, “I’m sorry to report that our beloved mother lost her battle with breast cancer last week.”

My family and I hadn’t even realized she’d been ill. After that, the newsletters stopped coming.

Ember Days

by Mary Gilliland

Woolf’s pen runs dry, Tesla holes up, Lincoln emerges in yet another bardo, and the witnesses for peace include soldiers under duress, models transformed to artists, descendants of forced immigrants, survivors of hurricanes. Ember Days begins with ritual and ends with prayer as the poems tunnel through Wednesday’s jammed boulevards, Friday’s worthless cash, Saturday’s prodigal feet. “Gilliland is a poet of witness and spirituality, grappling with climate devastation while also interrogating world policies and politics.” — Best American Poetry “Gilliland waltzes smoothly between the cheeky and conversational and the lyrical.” — LitHub “I am spellbound by the largesse of vision and the beauty.” — Cynthia Hogue Mary Gilliland is the guest poetry editor in the winter 2022 issue of Persimmon Tree. Order from: https://www.codhill.com/product/ember-days/ Find out more at https://marygilliland.com/

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