Celebrate

One of the most special things about Christmas is sharing it with family. Sharing it with old friends is the very next-best thing. I was picked up by such a friend this forenoon and driven to a family dinner at the home of some of her cousins near Osage, where we had both been invited.

I’m writing this on the evening of Dec. 27, 2025, with a heart full of gratitude and joyful memories of a wonderful day — and a tummy full of excellent, home-cooked holiday food. Some containers of that delicious selection are already chilling in my refrigerator. They were pressed upon me by the awesome cooks who prepared them, and by the gracious host and hostess who opened their home to me when I arrived with their cousin.

I helped her carry in some delicious home cooking she was contributing to the feast, but I was not allowed to prepare anything to share. That seems to be a sanction that fell on me with the arrival of my 80th birthday more than two months ago. I don’t mind cooking, but on the other hand, I’m finding I don’t mind not cooking.

Nonetheless, I felt guilty accepting the generous offerings they pressed on me as we departed and placing them in my refrigerator when my kind friend helped me carry them in from her car. Reminiscing now about the lovely day and the lively conversations among such dear friends, I’m wrapped in the warm feeling of being loved, cared for and, most of all, included in their family gathering.

Apparently, that is one more precious privilege my eight decades of living among these people have bestowed upon me — the “only child” in my family, with no relatives closer than cousins living in this town or nearby. Each experience like this reminds me to be ever more thankful for those cousins and for each of these dear friends who reach out and bless me in wonderful ways.

Contemplation of all this adds to my deeper, wider realization of the heart and soul of Wyoming, Weston County and Newcastle. I acknowledge that I am extremely prejudiced in favor of this dear old hometown address — and now actual home — and of the entire Cowboy State.

In the afterglow of Thanksgiving and Christmas, and with the anticipated soon arrival of the new year 2026, I’m prompted to stare up into this lovely moonlit, starlit night and give thanks for the privilege of calling Newcastle, Wyoming, my hometown. I love you, Newcastle.