books – Dunn Now

The saddest part of the holiday season is packing up these gems.

Our Christmas tree is on its way out the door, all 7 feet of formerly sweet-smelling balsam. I am OK with it. I forget to water it after the first few giddy days, so it takes its prickly revenge on my hands in the first week of January as we heave it off the front porch on its way to the curb.

The ornaments are packed with just enough care to allow me to hope that they won’t shatter as their 25-year-old Rubbermaid bin gets shoved into the garage loft for another year.

The nativity scene is packed up with thoughts of how Ed’s mom started us on it the first Christmas we were married. Those sweet recollections are spiced with memories of the kids, at the height of their goofy teenage years, rearranging the figurines so they appeared to be high fiving each other with their prayerfully raised hands.

Our tree forest is stashed, too, packed with more care than the ornaments because it’s my second-favorite thing about our Christmas decorations. It started sprouting around a ceramic gingerbread house that was a gift early in our marriage. (Thanks, Karen K.!) It has since grown to 40 stems that spread all over the house, the prettiest part of our Christmas décor.

But not the best part.

That honor goes to the Christmas books – all 76 of them.

Our holiday library began the month after our first child’s birth. We dashed out after Ed’s last law school final, 7-week-old baby in tow, to buy a Christmas tree late in the afternoon of Dec. 23. With the tree tied to the roof of the car, we stopped in the neighboring lakeside community for a fried fish dinner. We also ducked into a now-long-gone 5&10 for reasons we have since forgotten. With cash bestowed as a baby gift by Ed’s maternal grandmother, we bought little Bridget a pink knit hat and a copy of The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore with illustrations by Arthur Rackham that first appeared in the 1930s.

Who knew what we were starting?

In the intervening 36 years, we accumulated Christmas books from friends and family. Then our personal “Santa” started adding a book every year. Along the way, as the kids got older lot of Christmas traditions lost their glow, as they do when children figure things out. But the growth of the library picked up steam.

Why did the collection of children’s books multiply faster when we no longer had age-appropriate kids? Because it was the one part of Christmas that mattered more to me than to anyone else. Among my generation and the ones that preceded us, holiday joy was typically orchestrated by women who somehow crammed the brewing of Christmas magic into days already brimming with childcare, family management, community involvement and professional careers. If we didn’t bake the cookies and deck the halls and buy the gifts, we felt we were leaving boxes unchecked, expectations unfulfilled. But one of the benefits of aging is caring far less about what other people think we should do. So, there are no cookies in my oven now. Fewer decorations hauled down from the loft. Fewer pots on the stove. Fewer gifts. But no less joy. And a lot more books.

You want classics? Come read The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, illustrated by P.J. Lynch, or Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck with illustrations by Mark Buehner.

You like commercial appeal? We’ve got Disney, Pooh and the Grinch.

Do you want to be sad? We’ve got The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell, illustrated by Paul Micich, such a tear-jerker that I only read it to the kids once, more than 30 years ago. Feel free to come borrow it. Please. You don’t even have to return it.

Want nature? Look at The Snow Tree by Caroline Repchuk, illustrated by Josephine Martin, or Pick a Pine Tree by Patricia Toht with illustrations by Jarvis.

Are stunning illustrations your thing? Come read Dasher and the Polar Bear by Matt Tavares or Bright Winter Night by Alli Brydon with enchanting artwork by Ashling Lindsay.

Do you just want a laugh? Let’s read Santa Jaws by Bridget Heos, illustrated by Galia Bernstein, together.

Looking for something else? Maybe an unlikely heroine in Mrs. Claus or a shepherd girl? A story about plucky orphans, Santa’s sister or an animal that needs a home? We have them all. And more.

It saddens me to tuck them away in January. But it’s a comfort to know they will be back in their baskets by the woodstove in less than 11 months.

This is what life looks like lately. There are are worse ways to spend my time.

A spectacular wipeout on black ice – not 10 feet from our front door –- set me off on a slower start to 2026 than I’d anticipated.

After spending 2024 rehabbing a genetic (I think) sacroiliac (SI) injury that has plagued me since I was 16, I went full-tilt in 2025 doing the active things I love: ran the Syracuse Half Marathon again, waded into the murky waters of Onondaga County’s Jamesville Reservoir for open-water swim practice, churned my way 1.2 miles through the even murkier waters of Sandusky Bay as part of a relay team in the Ohio 70.3 triathlon, had a blast hiking a 20-mile Mammoth March with dear friends, wandered in Lapland with my childhood bestie and wobbled 25 miles on a new road bike that had spent 2024 gathering dust as my SI joint healed.

Then in December, I fractured two vertebrae thanks to arena-slick ice lurking in our driveway under a half-inch of Central New York’s trademark lake-effect snow. There went the four races I’d signed up for in 2026. There went winter spin classes on the bike. There went an aggressive winter swim plan and my twice-weekly gym workouts. And both my part-time jobs.

And part of my retirement identity. I was the one who just turned 70 and never stopped moving.

Yes, it is temporary. People suffer much worse and more painful setbacks so whining is, perhaps, undue. But at this age, putting life on hold for 12 weeks feels like losing a significant chunk of whatever good time is left to me. My self-diagnosed attention deficit struggles with being still.

Within two days of my injury, books started piling up – some loaners, some gifts. My family and friends offered a long list of titles they had loved. By comparison, not a single person suggested a TV show or movie that I should watch to pass the time while my compressed thoracic vertebrae (T2 and T6 for the orthopedically minded among my readers) took their sweet time healing. My people know me well.

Then my friend Hattie made a suggestion that was one of the kindest compliments I’ve ever received: “Do what you do best. Write.” Thanks, Hattie!

So here I am. It’s time to get thoughts out of my head before it implodes. Writing my way out of confusion, anger and boredom is a habit that’s been with me as long as my SI joint has been a problem. I’ll inflict my words here on whomever cares to read them. If I’m brave enough, I’ll follow the advice of one of my sheroes, writer Anne Lamott: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better.”

So, my project for 2026 is to shove some life into this blog. I am putting my intention here to hold myself accountable.

Happy New Year, all. And avoid black ice!