As I look out on my new neighborhood in Apache Junction, Arizona, I’m grateful for all that I have and enjoy! A beautiful view of the mountains and desert sunrises and sunsets gives me comfort and peace.

I have emerged from the winters of my grief over losing my sweet and kind husband of 34 years, Jesse Hillman, who died in December 2022 after a long illness. I still tell him I love him every day.

Part of coming out of the winter of my soul is because I’m with my beautiful daughters, Sara and Lea, and granddaughter Fiona daily. We find so many ways to laugh at ourselves and at the world in general. Being southerners, we understand eccentric people!

I love the quote from Julia Sugarbaker in “Designing Women,” when she said, “I’m saying this is the South, and we’re proud of our crazy people. We don’t hide them up in the attic. We bring ’em right down to the living room and show ’em off. See, Phyllis, no one in the South ever asks if you have crazy people in your family.”

Dixie Carter played that role to perfection in “Designing Women.” She was such a lovely person, and little segue here, she was a good friend of my brother, Murray Armstrong, who was a coach at the University of Memphis for 48 years. When he passed, she sent me the sweetest note. I knew Miss Dixie when I was an editor at The Jackson Sun in Jackson, Tennessee. Hal Holbrook and Miss Dixie lived in Huntingdon, Tennessee, just up the road from Jackson, and had donated and helped create the Dixie Carter Performing Arts Center. In that role as major benefactors and also in their many roles in the theater, TV and movies, I had interviewed both of them numerous times.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve always been involved somehow in the arts — in theater, dance, in painting, jewelry design and in fine wordsmithing — I enjoy the eccentric people of the art world. And I don’t care if I’m called eccentric, too. I like the badge. Who wants to be normal anyway? And what is normal? Who defines that? OK. Enough on that side road philosophical trip.

I joined the Mesa Art League, and I’ve discovered a whole group of people who are like me! Imagine that! New friends who love the arts as I do! And as a book publisher, I’m meeting new authors and talking with people who’ve traveled some intriguing life journeys. I love fine words because wordcrafting is also an art. Words are a palette of colors that paint on the pages we read.

So in this holiday season, I’m grateful. I’m putting up my Christmas tree today, and I’m going to celebrate the lights with my girls and my granddaughter. Later, I’ll have a glass of wine and toast my sweetheart, who lives always in my dreams!