My Boxing Day 2025

28 December 2025

There’s no turning back for me now.

On the night of Boxing Day this year, I watched the always-delightful animated classic — 101 Dalmatians — by the Disney of Yore.  I thereafter decided to continue with my translation review of Chapter 59 of THE DAWN into L’AUBE.  The night was young — it was only 9:45!

For Debra, bed-time would be closing in on her sleepy eyes.  For her night-owl Muse, the nocturnal sack-time chimes at 2 a.m.  And then it’s at least another hour before the creative-brain submits to slumber.

Sometime around 10:00, I made the resounding realization of what this chapter is ALL ABOUT.

It was during my perusal of the end of a scene between Guillaume and Camille, after she bids him good-bye from the maison d’été, and he drives up the limestone cobblestone drive in his beloved 1938 shiny black Citroën — that I said to Dear Husband:

“You know, I think this chapter is the one where Artur meets Guillaume.”

Indeed, it is!

Now, some might ask, “Don’t you know you own work?’

And I would answer, “Some of the time.”

The fundamental truth is that every time that I approach another Chapter of THE DAWN, for translation review, or just for review, I WANT it to be as if it’s for The First Time.

Or, as I read this morning in this online review of a spanking brand-new foundation, from a highly reputable cosmetics company:

!!! LOVE !!!

Yes, I thought.  It’s always Love the First Time.

Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.  Maybe the concept must overpower the reality, the first time around.

Of course, then the reality must become Reality, and you must confront it, and, gulp, accept those truths.

That’s what a New Year is all about!

The New Year is not for looking back, as much as it is for looking forward.  Sure, there are bits and pieces of the past that feel like big pieces of concrete, big wet pieces of concrete, that you’re lugging, and they’re holding you back.

Let the concrete dry, and you’ll find how much lighter that load is.  How do you let that heavy burden cure?

Forgiveness is the key to saying goodbye to any burden, big or small, happy or sad.  It’s nice to say, “No foul, no harm, I can go on my way.”  It’s a bit more divine to say, “Mucho foul, lotsa harm, I’m so thankful I got out of that one alive!”

In either scenario, you haven’t lost time, merely the lack of patience, which is truly what holds anyone back from marching freely, with serenity, into the future.

Arthur Boucher Carmichael is one such guy who needs to allow sufficient time to pass by in order for the scars from the wet concrete of an abysmal love — that wasn’t love at all — to fully cure.  He can then stop lugging those lamentations around in his heart.  He just might toss that canister of grief over those cliffs in Roussillon that he walks by, with increasing frequency during Volume II of THE DAWN.

Arthur, however (even as “Artur”) is not the fastest of learners, but, then again, neither is Guillaume de Vallon.  These two men first meet in Pascal’s Restaurant in the spring of 1942.  From that point on, there’s no turning back — for them, for Camille, for anyone in THE DAWN.

Likewise, there’s no turning back for this woman who created these characters and sent them on their way in the worn-torn France of her dark years, 1940-1944.

I’m thankful to still be discovering more of my fiction.  It helps me to discover more of my life as this year turns the corner and heads into 2026.

Resolutions?  I’ve made them, as always, all year long.  The biggest resolution is that revolution of the heart that actually puts those words into action messages, and then into:

ACTION!