Unexpected Resolutions

“Mom! Mom!” Little hands began shaking my slumbering body. “You need to get dressed.”

I peeked through my eyelids at my very awake seven-year-old. She was not only up for the day, but she was dressed and proudly displaying a lopsided ponytail.

Tying her own ponytail is a newly developed skill. This reminder of newness was fitting for that first morning of the freshly birthed year.

She was beaming with purpose.
I closed my eyes again.

“Where are your exercise clothes?”

“My exercise clothes? Why do you need them?”

“You need to get dressed.”

My eyes open. “Why?”

“We’re working out.”

Let me be clear. In no year have I determined that exercise was my resolution, never mind on the first day. Do any resolutions start on January 1^st? Maybe I’m alone, but it’s a statutory holiday, so I consider a day’s grace justified.

But my darling daughter doesn’t understand statutory holidays. Nor do I think she really understands resolutions. Why, then, was she standing in front of my tired body, insisting I join in her surprise scheme?

The concept was so amusing that I started to chuckle as I expressed my confusion to her.

No questions were answered, but before I knew it, I was sliding into my daughter’s outfit of choice: a pair of pilled Lululemon spandex shorts and my old high school basketball training shirt.

After having my insisted-upon breakfast and coffee, my husband and I trailed behind our energetic children down to the lowest level of the house. Walking into the rear room, we found two yoga mats and our double-sized foamy laid out on the floor. Once situated on the foamy, my seven-year-old, assisted by her four-year-old brother, took to the stage on the yoga mats and began their self-designed exercise class.

From yoga stretches to strange body contortions, not only did my husband and I begin to feel our weary bodies awaken, but we found our hearts pounding with glee. I highly recommend getting an ab workout routine designed by a four-year-old. I am not joking when I say I was sore for days afterwards.

After our mat work, my daughter took us to our machines.

When we were first married, I arrived home from work one day to find my husband at the door, speedily declaring that he may or may not have spent $1000 on a rowing machine. Being a double-income, no-kids family, I had shrugged it off. Ten years later, that rower has had many seasons of use and many seasons of rest. Two years ago, we added a stationary bike as my contribution to our lofty exercise goals. Our daughter seized an opportunity to use these tantalizing machines and put all four of us through a rotating circuit. I started on the bike, moved to dribbling a basketball, shuffled to lifting 2-pound weights, and finished off on the rower.

My favourite moment of that morning was when my best friend called to wish our family a happy New Year. The phone call came during the dribbling portion of my circuit, and, when my daughter heard me chatting, she sternly approached and gave me an amused but authoritative glare. When I gestured that I was able to dribble and talk, she responded by swivelling two fingers from her eyes to mine. She was in charge, she conveyed, and she was watching. I had another good chuckle.

As a family, we worked out for what my husband says was half an hour. I avow that it must have been more with how sore I was in the days following. But even so, whether it was half an hour or slightly more, the memories I hold from that morning at the dawn of the new year have been embedded into my core. In her seven-going-on-seventeen insistence, my daughter gave our family quality time together while honouring the bodies that we’ve been entrusted to occupy.

She turns eight this year, and her sweet innocence won’t last forever. What does 2024 have in store for us? God only knows. What I know is that my daughter is determined to take charge of the year and not let it overtake her. My resolution is to adopt that mindset also because, as I was reminded of that morning, she’s watching.