Resolution

My husband and I got drunk and un-decorated our house last night, or rather I got drunk and my husband and I un-decorated and our house last night, and although the 45 minutes spent puking in the toilet this morning was unpleasant and somewhat worrisome to my 5 year old, it was worth it. I flirted wildly and danced around "seductively" to Guns n' Roses (if you consider lame Axl Rose impersonations sexy). When I called him at work last evening, my husband was delighted at my suggestion that he pick up some wine and we stay in --- his libido makes him forget the fact that this always leads to me snoring and drooling in bed and nothing else. He is such an optimist.

We both felt melancholy at the thought of dis-assembling Christmas, but it was really fun and quite festive, somewhat moreso than the mad rush to get the damn tree up seconds before our 4th annual Tibb's Eve party began. We played all the CDs we had stuffed our stockings with for Christmas (I gave him all my favorites and he gave me his). And the alchohol helped. In our house it only takes the opening riff of Sweet Child of Mine to call it a party, we don't even need company.

I love my husband. It bears repeating in bold and with exclamation marks.... I LOVE MY HUSBAND!!!!

It may be surprising to you that there are days I do not feel this way. Like the months of October and November.
I mean I loved him, sure, but I wasn't feeling it, and beleive me when I say neither was he.
Its difficult to find love for each other between all the demands. Difficult to dredge up the energy and vulnerabilty and honesty that is required to actively love. Living takes so much out of a body, between organizing and mobilizing the family to do all the things we have to do, and the expenditure of personal resources at work. By the time our children are tucked in we are wasted, there is nothing left. nothing.

And then one night, folding laundry or scraping plates or un-decorating it drifts in like wisps of mist wafting through the house. It starts as a moment of peace, and grows to awareness, just realizing that the other adult inhabitant of the house is known to you, familiar and relied on, but also precious and significant. That awareness becomes gratitude, a sense of fortune, I am so blessed, and that is love, and it has nothing (and everything) to do with the kids, the house, the paid and unpaid bills. It is romantic and charged and splendid. And it is real and necessary because it offsets the demands. Its a trick of the mind really. I shy away, even push away from loving my husband because I think I am empty, depleted, devoid.....I have nothing left in me. But when I let go, of the tension, the day, the urge to run screaming.... then it drifts in and if I am open to it, or caught off guard - then it fills me up again, and I am replenished. I seem to have trouble remembering from one moment to the next that loving someone is a gift, and not another set of demands.

So my resolution this year is to love.
Freely
Frequently
Openly
Indiscriminately (although this has gotten me in trouble in the past)
Passionately
Romantic-ly
Platonically
Physically (my husband will be so pleased)
Joyfully
Warmly
and without hesitation, reservation or regret.