I Resolve

It was New Year’s Eve long ago and Monte and I were alone in the house with a canister of chocolate, rich smooth bars with hazelnut, my favorite kind, so naturally I ate too much of it and felt disgusted, and with great drama and conviction I announced that I was going to give up chocolate for New Year’s.

“That was it,” I told Monte, “the last piece of chocolate I will eat for at least a year…maybe ever.”

Monte looked at me skeptically.

“It’s my only New Year’s resolution,” I said, perhaps a tad defensively, “and I’m serious about it.”

He continued to look at me skeptically.

“You’ll see. When I resolve to do something, I do it. In fact, if I go anywhere NEAR this chocolate, just remind me that it’s been declared off limits.”

The next morning this bravado seemed like the folly it was, and a bit of chocolate with New Year’s Day breakfast was a most enticing prospect. As I reached into the canister, Monte gently took my hand.

“I thought you said you were giving up chocolate,” he reminded me, precisely as instructed.

“What are you? A goddamned cop?! Behavior police on duty?”

Monte immediately learned never to get drawn into the role of monitoring my dietary habits and I eventually learned that I am a big windbag when it comes to resolutions, particularly the arbitrary ones involving concrete, radical and immediate changes to ancient habits and long-indulged impulses. I probably will not lose ten pounds by February 1, stop biting my nails entirely, rise daily at 5 to write ten pages, or give up sweets and coffee.

But then again, I might. One of the benefits of being an optimist is that I honestly believe that every day is a new beginning and that despite all evidence to the contrary, I might do all sorts of shining new things tomorrow. My credibility to myself is based not on past history but on a crazy belief in possibility. It’s the delusional credo that keeps me from slashing my wrists: DUM SPIRO, SPERO.

And yet I grow tired of myself. I guess I‘ve had too much time for self-contemplation lately, and I don’t really like what I see. I spent a lot of time in my youth just trying to survive and didn’t develop any of the luxury skills and talents that make a person interesting. This wasn’t so glaring during the years of raising a child and teaching school, but nowadays there are fewer distractions and a chronic sense of having missed a boat somewhere.

Meanwhile, my daughter is visiting for the holidays, and as lovely as this is, the very fact that it is a visit, not a homecoming, has left me with a lingering case of “what next?” that has been subtly depleting me like a low-grade infection despite my intention to just enjoy the moment. Boxes have been shipped to Oxford, keys have been tendered, and plans are swirling in the air like clouds from a genie's lamp, all of them enviable, faraway, and happening to others. My own stale stories seem to evoke yawns, my attempts to help tend to generate annoyance, and my efforts to be a part of all the excitement or to somehow vicariously live it are clearly doomed to fail. So for starters, I resolve right now to stop being a youth vampire and get going on a life that is my own.

I resolve. It's a word with strength. I shall be resolute. I shall re-solve those problems whose solutions have not been lasting. I shall revoke my own license to whine and make excuses. I shall revive my enthusiasms and realize my dreams. I shall stay involved but perhaps less convoluted. I shall absolve myself of guilt, and others of the grudges I may harbor. I shall let old hurts dissolve so that my consciousness may evolve. While I'm at it, I'll repair, recycle, and rearrange. I may reinvent myself entirely. It shall be a veritable resolution revolution.

I realize these proclamations are pretty ambiguous, but that gives me a little wiggle room, and I like that. There are no benchmarks to bump into, and none of the arbitrary nonsense that leads you straight to failure...like giving up chocolate, for example. My resolutions are well-intentioned and hopeful, but forgiving and yielding if necessary, and isn't that a kind of strength? Look -- here it is in the Tao Te Ching: "The hard and stiff will be broken/The soft and supple will prevail."

Now the kids are in the Valley visiting with friends, and Monte and I decide to take a walk up the canyon. The eucalyptus trees are creaking like old doors and the cottonwoods shake their yellow leaves like gypsies, and we chat about the things we'd like to do in the coming year, and Monte mentions that he wants to explore his relationship with the water (yes, he really said that) which I think has a ring of significance, and I say, "Oh, is that one of your resolutions?"

"No," he says (predictably), " It's just something I'm doing."

That's Monte. He doesn't make announcements or resolutions. He just does it, whatever it is.

I think I'd like to be like that from now on. All I have to do is choose the thing I would be doing. Which obviously would not involve water. And I was quite inspired by that lady I met who took up tango in her sixties, but I'm afraid I don't have much flair in the movement department...

Well, I have lots of time to think about it, and the menu of possibilities is theoretically vast, and despite my abysmal track record for false starts and unequivocal quits, I still believe that next time will be different.

My heart is young, you see, and in the context of my new resolutions, auspicious outcomes are quite likely.