2009 ... New Year's resolutions ... and looking back

Holidays are always the most difficult time of the year for me. No family close and even though I've lived in Kentucky for nearly 10 years now, it will never truly feel like "home" to me. I can hardly bear to listen to the song "Home for the Holidays" during the Christmas season, it is something that won't happen for me.

The holidays I remember the best were the ones that included my parents, grandparents and close family friends. Those memories, of course, lead to others and I find myself thinking "I wish I'd had a chance to tell them ...."

That phrase is often finished by " .... thank you for doing this for me." Almost never for something purchased and given as a gift but a gifts of time and attention.

I tended to be more of a "Daddy's girl" perhaps in part because as an only child, I was the "extra help" and the help was most often needed outside. So many of my interests were more in line with my father's ... geology, mining, arrowheads, rockhounding ... and I was horseback doing ranch work from the time I was able to get on and steer a horse in the right direction.

There were many times after I was an adult with children that my mother watched the children while Dad and I "worked". But the time I remember most ... appreciated most ... and most often wonder if I thanked her for ... was her keeping both kids while my Dad and I went on a 4-day trip back to the area in Montana where they met and were married.

She would have loved to go as well, seeing places she had wonderful memories of, places they had been together, still a few people they had known then. But she stayed home and kept the two grandchildren so I could go. I have wonderful memories of that trip, even some tangible evidence of it, one of the few keepsakes that I still have. We placer mined in a creek where Dad had mined as a young man and I have a small gold nugget we found together.

Did I ever remember to thank her for making this memory possible? or did I just bubble over telling her how much fun I had and everything I got to see?

Looking back, the things I regret are the things I did not do ... acts of kindness that I failed to see and do at the time ... actual words of thanks I neglected to say ...

So my New Year's resolution for 2009 is not about getting more organized, or getting more work accomplished, or projects I want to complete.

It is to remember to thank those who do things I appreciate ... to make the effort to say "Thank you ... I appreciate your help, your thoughtfulness, your time".