A few short days ago, after several months of exemplary behavior, we stayed up all night........again. I had a party at my house, and naturally Sara came to it. We started out innocently enough. We listened to some pretty darn good bands, drank a few glasses of wine with the appropriate amount of time in between refills, and generally conducted ourselves in the way that 40 year old mom's should.
At some point, things changed. We realized we were having FUN, not just a good time, and we remembered that we are FUNNY. We know how to laugh, and how to make people laugh. A couple more bottles of wine were popped open, and Round 2 was off and running! We talked about things that we never seem to have time to talk about, we made jokes, we talked with friends.....and at some point we ended up on the roof of the schoolhouse. :-)
We gave in to wine and sleep around 6 a.m. the (next) morning, and as I woke up at 9 a.m., I thought to myself, "We've done it again." It seems like no matter how old we are, how responsible we think we've become, Sara and I still pull an all-nighter a couple of times a year. I figure if we're willing to pay the price of staying up all night (like basketball tournaments all day the next day, or driving 4 hours to your sister's birthday party), and nobody hops in a car to drive after a bottle of wine, we're more responsible than we sometimes give ourselves credit for.
I was considering this behavior of ours and talking to Sara about it when she came up with the perfect justification, which is a gift of hers, by the way. Her husband was, shall we say not surprised(?), by our all-nighter (again), and she said to him, "Why would you expect me to change now? I'm still the same person I was when you met me. I like to stay up late, and stay up all night sometimes. I've always done it, and probably will always do it, 2 or 3 times a year."
I was freed. I no longer felt like I'd done something wrong. It was an Hallelujah moment.
All of a sudden, I realized, this is what I do. I stay up. All night. 2 or 3 times a year. And I no longer feel guilty about it, or feel the need to apologize for it.
"I yam what I yam." Popeye
