My husband and I got married five and a half years ago. Not exactly, but thereabout.
We were married outside an Inn by a wonderful Justice of the Peace, and were pronounced husband and wife just before the impending downpour sent all our guests racing up a hill and into the building. The first drops of rain had started to fall as we were saying our vows...I felt them on my face as Bill repeated his lines after the JP...honor and cherish...sickness and in health...ring on the finger, and then my turn...(drip)...I Jayne...honor and cherish...(drip)...(please don't pour please don't pour please don't pour)...forsaking all others...(drip)...(this is the only time my hair will ever look this fancy) ...in sickness and in health...(drip) (please stop please stop) love one another....
But then there was laughter.
That wasn't one of my lines. I'd finished my part of the vows and was either so frazzled or so worried about a cloudburst, that I just went ahead and repeated the next thing the JP said.
Love one another.
There's a great shot of us - me laughing and Bill rolling his eyes..."I'm marrying her? What happened to the intelligent chick I've been with before today?"
It was priceless.
Later, on our honeymoon in Hawaii (well worth the splurge)...we were in a little gift shop and I was looking at little magnets made of pressed flowers and little sweet sayings (in hawaiian) laminated on colorful paper and then stuck to a magnet.
And I saw this one: E Aloha kekahi i kekahi (love one another).
It's up on our fridge (except now - I had to check the spelling). It makes me smile every time I read it.
That's the main vow we really took. All the honor and cherish and the rest of it - it's all under this same umbrella. Love one another. We said we would. It's a major deal to make, if you are the sort of person to take such things seriously. It's not always easy - it's not always palm trees and sunsets and perfectly made mai tais at an outdoor bar on the water. But still. Love one another. We said we would. We made that commitment.
And since then we've had children. Two wonderful, amazing, impossibly beautiful children. I look at them in awe just about every day. I think about my pregnancies...I think about the two miscarraiges I also had, and I am so very, very fortunate, so blessed, to have these two healthy children to raise.
I would kill or die for them. Simple as that. I don't need to think about it. I know it. It's a given. I carried them for 9 months, I nursed them, I walked the floors at night with them, I hold them when they cry, I cheer when they have conquered the next mountain...they are the most precious beings to me, and they are mine to raise and mine to guard and mine to eventually peel my fingers off of and let them go out into the world as - I hope - good and kind and honest people.
But regardless. I would kill for them. I would die for them. Mother tiger. Don't mess with her.
That's another pair of commitments. Unbreakable, all three.
The hardest commitment to make, I have found, is to myself. I have trouble making them, and I have trouble keeping them. There's always something else to be done, you know? Or I'm tired...(Julia, PLEASE sleep through the night before you leave for college)...or there's tomorrow. When it's me - there's tomorrow.
I'm trying, though I dislike calling it a resolution because I just rebel against peer pressure or any kind of group participation sport...but anyway, I'm trying, since 'tis the season for such things, I'm trying to make a commitment to myself. Nothing huge...but the other half of it is that after making the commitment, I also have to keep it. I can say all I want, but I need to follow through on stuff for me. I need to place value on that. On myself.
So, that's what I'm up to.
After I go bring Alex to bed. Really. Right after that.
I've made a commitment now.
