"Resolutions"

This morning I beat the sun out of bed and my reward is a subtle, almost timid sunrise. Dawn breaks on not just another day but indeed a whole new year. The arrival of a new year means it is time once again to declare, either privately or publicly, a series of new year’s resolutions. Absent some anomaly, an overwhelming number of new year’s resolutions will not be kept, despite the hearty commitment in place at the time of their conception. Typically, most people’s new year’s resolutions fail or get abandoned while the new year is still a puppy, the result primarily of the intense pressure of unrealistic demands spontaneously placed upon oneself at the turning of the page on a calendar. After a year or more of living life a certain way, it is not surprising that a drastic alteration in behavior, brought about literally overnight, is difficult to maintain over an extended period of time; sort of like waking up and saying, “I think I’ll write left-handed this year,” and being relieved at how natural it feels to revert back to the way you've always done it.

I have concocted my fair share of new year’s resolutions only to watch them float aimlessly away like spent hulls on the surface of the water mere weeks after concocting them. There was the year I was going to stop cussing; the year I was going to clean out the garage and keep it clean; the year I was going to catalogue the video tapes of my children’s first few years; and the numerous years I was going to eat healthier and get more exercise (that’s a recurring resolution, the outcome of which is so humorous it cannot be dropped from rotation). It’s not for a lack of commitment or discipline necessarily. It’s just impossibly hard to slam on the brakes on January 1 and suddenly begin doing things healthier, earlier, and better than you and your body are used to doing them. But every year it seems we take a deep breath, pull up our waistbands, crack our knuckles and commit yet again to making a fresh start. So with the first day of this new year upon us, I suppose I should join the fray and announce my new year’s resolutions.

I resolve to finally put up a bird feeder in the back yard like I have been threatening to do since we moved into the new house. I will spend more time with my wife in our garden, and I will install a decent rain gauge and a compost heap for her, too. I shall hang a tire swing from the big pecan tree in the back yard for the kids. It has the perfect limb from which to hang a tire swing and no one would fault my children for holding my failure to hang one for them against me all their lives, the way some kids still bring up their parents’ omitting a pony from their childhoods decades later.

Perhaps not surprisingly, however, most of my new year’s resolutions are sporting related. After all, one wouldn’t reasonably expect me to come up with resolutions like volunteering to hand out flyers advertising a gun control rally or splashing fake blood on a beautiful woman in a fur coat, right? I sure hope not. Anyway, this year I resolve to accomplish, improve, cease immediately, or begin entirely, as the case may be, the following.

I will finally repair the tip of the fishing pole my wife slammed shut in the car door last summer, breaking it off about two inches from the end and amputating the guide. I resolve to break down my guns and clean them within 48 hours after a dove shoot, instead of the average three-and-a-half months. Speaking of cleaning, I will clean my skinning knives a hell of a lot sooner than I normally do, too.

I shall fish more, even if it’s just from the end of the dock or the bank of the pond. I shall shoot more skeet and more often, before my wingshooting suffers any longer. I will listen more. I will read more. I will write more.

This is the year I will call up a turkey myself and kill it. No decoys. No blinds. Just he and I and the grand old duel on the ground of his choosing. Like always before, but this time the conclusion will be different.

I commit to calling my wife upon arriving at the camp and at least once before bed to let her know I made it out of the woods safe. Not that she thinks anything bad has happened to me when I forget to call home anymore, unless “bad” is defined as having had too much red wine with dinner and falling asleep in whatever piece of furniture I happen to collapse into after pushing my chair away from the table.

Another new year will not be celebrated by yours truly before I have straightened up the contents of the gun safe and the closets where the hunting clothes, gear, and gadgets are kept. Also, I will politely turn down all flutes of champagne if I have not gotten my climber off the floor of the garage where my wife parks her car and hung it on the wall next to my hip waders. Come to think of it, I’ve been meaning to hang up some rod holders in there, too, so no party favors for me unless the fishing poles are safely off the floor and nestled in their racks.

I will keep my promise to wash off the golf cart before pulling it into the garage, and will not grumble or complain when I sweep out the mud it will leave behind when I promptly break my promise.

I am earnest in my commitment to taking my Lab down to Wolf Bay more often and throwing his bumper so he can do the one small thing in all the world that makes him the happiest: leap off the dock, crash into the bay below, and retrieve his bumper over and over and over again. In fact, I resolve also to add one more “last one” to his last one from now on, too. I did him no favors in the training department but he’s a hell of a good dog in spite of me, and he deserves it.

Finally, I’m going to get to work straight away on my list of excuses for why I failed to keep any or all of the foregoing resolutions – just in case.

Something tells me I’m going to need it.



(c) Roger Guilian 2007