Every December, I imagine that this year the month is going to be relaxed and fun and sweet. We'll decorate the house, I'll bake lots of cookies and share them with friends and neighbors, go to gatherings and sing carols, sit before the fire watching classic holiday movies.
It's never like that. Even though I long ago gave up giving and wanting presents, I still find that the month develops a certain edge of tension. I do send out cards, usually about 80, and that takes some doing, what with writing a note in each one, signing, addressing, stamping, going to the post office. And I do bake cookies, but then we have a lot of cookies around. I share them with as many people as I can get together with, but in these post-Covid days, there is still a lot of caution about gatherings, so I don't cross paths with as many people as I would like. So I/we end up eating them.
Sweet Hubby and I do watch many of the classic movies, but SH also likes to mix it up by watching other movies as well, and since we take turns choosing, some of the time, we watch movies that have nothing to do with the holidays at all.
I said in late November this year that, even though we don't have room for a tree, I still wanted to put our many pretty decorations around the house. SH brought the ornaments box up from storage, but it has been sitting there now for more than half the month, and I haven't put up a single decoration.
That got me to thinking. SH knows what I say about myself ("I'm going to put up decorations this year", "I'm going to lose weight", "I'm a playwright", etc.), but he also knows what I do, how I act. So he knows that my actions, my behavior are much too often not aligned with my declarations. I know he loves me, but how deeply can he respect me, how fully can he trust me, when I don't keep my word?
You might think I'm being too hard on myself, but if I actually were hard on myself, I would either speak who I truly am, or act as who I say I am. It's an integrity issue, and one I'm not proud of. I am able to look the other way and let myself get away with all sorts of slip-sliding. But when I remember that SH knows me inside and out, for good and for ill, I find I want to do better, be better. So I guess I'd better start now, this moment, because, after all, every single moment is a time to start fresh, not just January 1.
