A new year

I felt foggy. 

I wasn't sure what I was looking at, but the resolutions I had been tossing around in my head made me ready to stop gawking at the world through this tiny screen.

I wasn't going to pick it up.

In the first light of the new year, my twenty-twenty vision felt more like twenty-fifty.

Things swam in and out of my eyesight as if I had woken up underwater.

Honestly, I wasn't hungover.

Not in the traditional sense anyway.

But this feeling was slightly new.

For the first time, in more than a decade, my family had momentarily parted ways as the networks counted down the hours toward a new beginning.

Two of us - the elders - ventured out into the night, bearing desserts and the willingness to let the cards fall where they may ... usually on a large and generous table as happy party goers engage in some profane ad-lib.

The other two – the youngsters - stayed home with a single TV to fight over (who will get Netflix and who will have to give up Xbox) and a smorgasbord of TV dinners to choose from (and overheat).

Somehow, none of us seemed happy about this new end-of-year independence.

Certainly not the teen who had turned down what turned out to be her only invitation. In her estimation, it didn't count because she had fished for it. Of course, she had to throw it back.

There are so many things I could have told her. So many pearls of wisdom to let loose from their string.

But I know If I tried they'd just scatter all over the floor, tripping me up in the midst of my own awkward lecture series.

I stayed quiet, but offered my husband, who has trouble comprehending a world in which any problems remain internationally unsolved, the best advice I could give anyway: "sometimes a person just needs to wallow in her sadness."

It seems wrong, I know.

It's counter-intuitive and self-defeating. And yet to know what I'm getting at you just have to ask yourself: how many solutions turn out to be explosive messes when added to something caustic?

Arguing this point may be the emotional equivalent of bleach meeting ammonia.

Of course, the other parents didn't have it easier than we did. Our kids may have stayed home with their Apples To Apples and their disappointment, but their kids were driving around with their newish licenses into the adult world, heading to other kids' parties. Their parents were tracking their every move with Find My Phone.

I'm not sure I'm ready for this new normal, even if it is just an exaggeration of the old normal, which includes a liberal dose of worry that lives permanently in the pit of my stomach.

Humor helps. Laughing helps. Getting home in time to watch as the Pope loses his cool with The Faithful even restores my faith in humanity.

Because the old normal still rings true. Our party doesn't end until we are home safely with our kids, and we turn on the station that always drops the ball.

Just like us.