“I’m sick,” Hannah says by way of explaining her presence and her appearance, “and I’m supposed to be reading board resolutions.”

Buck doesn’t hear her correctly. That’s because one of the local walkers is passing by, and that has started the neighbor’s dog barking. Buck hears “board” and “resolutions,” and responds with: “Yeah, it can get pretty boring. This time of year puts pressure on everyone. I for one have given up on the New Year’s resolutions.”

Hannah immediately comprehends their misunderstanding. “No, silly,” she says, smiling so widely her sinus hurts. “I said ‘board resolutions.’ You know: legal shit. ‘WHEREAS blah blah blah, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT HEREBY RESOLVED…’  a bunch of prepositions, signifying nothing.”

Buck doesn’t miss a beat. “And I mean it about giving up on New Year’s resolutions. I mean: what’s that about? What will possess someone to make a behavioral change right in the heart of winter? And have it take effect right in the middle of a night?

“Say I decide to drink less, or stop smoking…” he continues, while he rakes the wet bay leaves from the side of the driveway. “Do I suddenly stop drinking or smoking right at the stroke of midnight? That’s when the party starts! So why make a resolution to immediately break it?” He uses the bent fingers of the rake to scoop the leaves around the bases of the driveway plants. “Even so,” he concludes, “I’m going to get out and about more next year. Maybe meet somebody.”

“Sounds like a resolution to me,” Hannah comments. “It is arbitrary. My fact-a-day calendar says Julius Caesar switched the beginning of the year to January 1^st in 45 B.C.E. But it doesn’t say why. And it tells us the British (and colonies) didn’t switch to January 1^st until 1752 (which must have been a discombobulating experience). But I know someone for whom New Year’s resolutions work. I live with him. It’s rather obnoxious, but James seems able to resolve something this time of year, and then stick with it. He quit smoking one New Year’s eve. At midnight. He made the decision to leave teaching and study law on a December 31. I’m a little concerned right now, because he’s been acting strange lately. He may be getting set to make another of his resolutions.”

“Maybe January 1^st works for James, and another day for me. Like maybe my resolution day is February 20^th or something. Maybe I just have to discover it.” Buck is moving with his cuttings net to the back yard.

Hannah goes with that idea. Grinning, she says “I tend to make my life-changing decisions in the fall. I always thought it was rather Judaic of me, near the high holy days and all, but maybe I just have a late September resolution day and never noticed it till now. In fact,” she warms to the idea, “maybe I can have more than one resolution day per year, if I live at different elevations…say, September 21^st at sea level and May 12^th at 7,000 feet or above.” She follows Buck to the back yard, considering coffee.

“What do you mean: James is acting strange…How so?”

Hannah tries to lift her fever-limp hair away from her nape, but it settles back into the collar of her sweatshirt. “Oh, he’s different. More indignant about work but less so about home. He’s been tender and affectionate lately. He took care of me when I was sick. There have even been some erotic moments, and after the recent kidney stone and a few other events, it had been awhile.” Hannah calls the image of James’s face to mind. There is the graying but yet enough hair, the brown eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses, the biggish nose, the average mouth, the well-trimmed beard. There are the arms of those spectacles too tight against his face, carving grooves above his cheeks and ears, inviting one to notice the distortion through his lenses, irritating Hannah. But there too is a rare determination in those eyes, deepening and warming them to chocolate. There is a decision about that mouth that invites Hannah to kiss it.

Buck has paused in his bamboo trimming. He is looking at Hannah and now says, “You go, girlfriend. I think you have something here. It makes me even more ready to get myself out into the world.”

“I think I want some coffee.  You?”

Buck accepts with a nod. Hannah walks from the back deck through the sliding door into the kitchen. She grinds Royal Celebes Kalossi beans and puts them into the brewer. While the heated water drips through the coffee, she goes to the bedroom for her socks. She pushes aside the corporate resolutions to sit on the edge of the bed.

Hannah is an anti-traditionalist. This goes hand in hand with her position on history, as observance of tradition is just blind history worship. She marvels at how quickly tradition can be established; Kwanzaa was invented just decades ago, and now it is widely celebrated where she lives. “Family traditions” can be laid down in a matter of three years.

Hannah would normally be derisive about New Year’s resolutions. She’d say something droll, likening the emptiness of personal resolutions to those of corporations.

But Hannah isn’t normal right now. She’s coming off a benign illness and living with a man acting strangely. In Hannah’s interesting state, the arbitrariness of the New Year observance seems enchanting. Why not a day in the middle of the winter? Why not an hour in the middle of the night? How delightful to make tradition out of a ceremony that contains absolutely no symbolism.

Hannah heads back to the kitchen for her coffee. As she pours out mugs for herself and Buck, it occurs to her that a New Year’s resolution can be a promise. She gets interested in her life.