1. What did you do in 2025 that you’d never done before?
Heated my own house with wood. Stacked my own woodpile. Shoveled my own driveway.

Paid property taxes by check instead of through escrow.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Look, we’re all flying by the seat of our pants now, in one way or another. I have not chosen a word or even glanced sideways at a resolution since 2022.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No, but I’m entering the age range where that begins to shift again, and a fair few of my old Vermont friends are already grandparents. So.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

It wouldn’t be right to say I was close to Becky Jukkala—technically, we met in person only once, and I will be grateful for that evening of laughs and hugs forever. Becky raised one of the best friends I’ve ever had, though, and even before I met her, I thought, “This lady and my mom could go bowling.” I stand by this judgment and think of them both when I hear thunder from the heavens.

Lisa Howland’s extraordinary children announced her passing not very long after their last vacation together, about which she was all-caps excited. Lisa had been fighting cancer—and fighting like a rower—for some time, never losing her tremendous wit, her grace, or her outrageous insight. She taught me more than I could ever tell her, and my mom would’ve loved the snot out of her, too.

Three and a half weeks ago, we celebrated the life of my grandfather’s second wife, Marie Mohan Whipple, who died the day after she reached the age of 92. (Her first name was Olive, but nobody called her Olive.) Marie remembered Grandpa well from high school—quite a looker was our Jack Whipple, in his day, and quite curt with the pretty young lady who tried to catch his attention on the stairs before a basketball game. In 1998, when she did catch his attention, he told his kids he felt like he was 16 again, and who can argue with a love like that?

Well…we could, at the time—we were still pretty heartsick over my grandmother’s death, which Marie understood better than her new husband. She was kind and loving and faithful, and we’re grateful for the years we had with her, for the roles she took on for each of us.

I am grateful that my kids had a chance to meet her, that they brought her cookies in the hospital the week before she passed, and that they were there with the rest of us at the end. Death is part of life, and the goodbye is as important to witness and celebrate as the birthday parties, the Christmas dinners, and the wedding receptions. I am grateful that she became real for them before she was gone.

5. What places did you visit?

After the road trip of 2024, the children have mostly banned travel for a while. We went to the Great Escape, though, and that was a pretty big deal for me. (Also a very rough deal. Feeling incrementally better since moving home leads me to get ahead of myself, healthwise, and the Great Escape pushes all of my limits.)

6. What would you like to have in 2026 that has been lacking since, perhaps, the last time you managed to fill out this form?

I’d like my health to stabilize to the point where I can work part-time. I miss working, and I miss my vocation, if not necessarily certain parts of my career.

7. What dates from 2025 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Both kids decided to go back to in-person school after we settled in Vermont, so the first day of this school year was a Pretty Big Deal.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I bought a house in Vermont, which I could not have done without selling a house in California. The housing prices in my home state are fucking bananas, so I’m clocking this as a win, even with all the work we had to get done and still need to do on the house.

9. What was your biggest failure?

The way we had to manage our move because of my lack of capacity was traumatic and a lot of things went wrong.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I am still recovering from Long Covid, as my nervous and immune systems demonstrate almost daily. It took about six months, but a referral to Dartmouth Allergy has put me in line for meds that I’m hopeful will make a measurable difference. At the very least, they should kill the hives.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Town Day Camp for Alex for the entire summer. Also, a lot of contractor time for the house.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Did I mention my children both chose to go back to in-person school? My eldest is playing trombone in the middle school band and pulling a 100% in English/Language Arts; my youngest is writing stories again, singing in the school chorus, and has been cast as Melman in the spring production of Madagascar, Jr.

We celebrate ALL. THE. TIME.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Anyone still supporting the current administration in any way, shape, or form.

14. Where did most of your money go?

The house…and we’ll just leave this answer here for the foreseeable future. I own 1.65 acres free and clear and have a Robert Frost poem for a view, but the house was someone’s project and we’ll be working on it forever.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Dirt.

No, for real, hear me out… I come from farmers, and this property came with a very weird, unroofed enclosure that had been collecting and composting down leaves for years. One thing I miss most about California is the idiot-proof growing season, and this humus goes a long way toward mending that heartache.

16. What song will always remind you of 2025?

Probably Noah Kahan’s Stick Season and a bunch of AJR tunes Alex had on a loop all summer.

And Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, which I taught him to play on piano a few months ago.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? Both. Everything is very close to the surface right now.

b) thinner or fatter? A year of hypothyroid status has me uncomfortably heavy, as “working out” is no longer an option unless I want to pay the PEM tax.

c) richer or poorer? In the ways that matter most, richer. Financially…SSDI is a trip, but living a cash-only life is pretty refreshing.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

I wish I’d taken my aunt up on kayaking more than the one time I got out for a lazy paddle on Fern Lake. It’s really hard to get on the water without triggering my racing reflex, but the balance of control and release I found during my solo sculling years has been critical for recovery. I wish I’d reached for that more often.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Filling out pre-check forms for everyone’s appointments.

20. How did you spend Christmas in 2025?

We did a Yankee Swap with family, then spent Christmas Day and Eve at home, opening gifts and eating all the chocolate.

21. Did you fall in love in 2025?

Ayup. Have you seen Vermont? Always had a soft spot for earliest loves.

22. What was your favorite TV program?

All Creatures Great & Small, which could cure toxic masculinity but good.

23. What did you do for your birthday in 2025?

Tried to organize an open house for family, crashed hard into hives, and had to cancel.

24. What was the best book you read?

As I write this on December 28, I’ve completed my Storygraph Challenge—I’ve read or listened to 100 books this year, and a lot of them were good. (Some of them were horrible, but entertaining.) Historical fiction captured most of my attention, and I would highly recommend Sara Donati’s Waverly Place series. Following it with her Wilderness series is optional—they’re not as gripping as the WP stories, but if you happen to have grown up along the Canadian border, they feel like a more interesting version of what you were taught in elementary school. The brief cameo by Alexander Hamilton went a bit too far, I feel.

I did experience the most infuriating juxtaposition when I was listening to Kristin Hannah’s “The Four Winds.” In the second half of the story, it’s 1934, and Hannah puts the reader on the road from the dust bowl to California’s San Joaquin Valley, where “Okies” have replaced Mexican immigrants as the Others targeted by individuals and systems alike, even as the locals and businesses depend on their labor. The workers’ kids aren’t welcome in the local schools, the farms pay in scrip and charge 10% to cash the chits if you don’t want to use their overpriced store and lodging, and standing up to management gets you shot.

Meanwhile, Alex and I were working through Kelly Yang’s “Three Keys,” the continuing story of Mia Tang, a now-sixth grader in Anaheim, California. It’s 1994, and Pete Wilson’s Prop 187 threatens to “crack down” on immigration and kick undocumented kids out of schools. Mia’s family is protected by her dad’s green card, but her best friend’s family is not. As of last night’s reading, Lupe Garcia’s dad is in jail, her mom hasn’t made it back from a funeral in Mexico (coyotes have stolen her money and disappeared), and she’s staying with Mia’s family while they try to help.

“I remember that,” I told Alex, watching his eyes get wide. “That was my senior year of high school. When I started college in Fremont, my Meteorology teacher was Latino, and so were a lot of my classmates. What Mia just noticed about her classmates pronouncing their names differently—”Thomas” instead of “Tomás”…my professor said something similar, telling Roberto that he’d have to start going by Robbie.”

“Wait, this was real?” Alex asked.

Yeah, buddy. It was very, very real.

Spoiler: Prop 187 passed, but was later ruled unconstitutional because it violated the federal government’s right to regulate immigration.

It’s now the end of 2025 and we’re raising our kids in Donald Trump’s America, which has brought out the worst and most blatant white supremacy I’ve seen in my lifetime…and I lived in California before and after 187 passed. Immigration “officials” are breaking up families, ignoring actual immigration status, and imprisoning or deporting anyone who doesn’t present as white. Farmers here are going understaffed…to say nothing of the San Joaquin Valley.

Incidentally, the main character in Sara Donati’s Wilderness series, which begins not long after the American Revolution, is an overeducated white lady who moves to—you guessed it—the “wilderness,” where she opens the small town’s first school. She has to hold two sessions a day because half of the town’s white families won’t send their kids to learn in the same room as native and Black kids (free or enslaved).

We haven’t learned a goddamned thing.

25. What did you want and get?

A new home in my old state. Also, new tools.

26. What did you want and not get? 

A well-regulated central nervous system. We’re getting there, though.

27. What was your favorite film of this year?

Mostly, I enjoyed watching my kids experience movies this year. Grayson got into LOTR, and Alex got us to find a theater over the mountain that was showing The Minecraft Movie.

28. Did you make some new friends this year?

Yes! And very gratefully caught up with some old ones.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

It would have been nice to plan things more consistently. This challenge is part of my condition, but I resent it, nonetheless.

Fewer hives outbreaks would also have been awesome.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2025?

“What size am I today?”

31. What kept you sane? 

I am home.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Literally none of them, although I find myself hoping Taylor Swift gets her Happily Ever After. I don’t know that I’m a fan so much as a grown woman who, once upon a time, wanted to grow up to sing and dance onstage. I like that she’s made her dreams come true, and that she manages her wealth in the least obnoxious way of her time.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?

Enough USians thought that putting Donald Trump in the Oval Office was a good idea. The damage he and his administration are leaving in their wake will outlive me at this point; no matter what we do, it will take generations to clean up this mess.

34. Whom did you miss?

Quite a few folks, but I think the absence of my mom and grandmother hit me in a different way this year.

35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2025.

The kids and I learned to tap our maple trees and make our own syrup.

What’s this year’s word?

Community

Related:

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013