Two thousand sixteen started out great! We went to a lively party at my BFF’s house just up the street for New Year’s Eve, and thanks to celebrating East Coast New Year’s in California, I was home before midnight. We celebrated the following night by dancing to a highly entertaining 80s cover band at a nearby music venue. I haven’t had such a fun-filled two hours in a very long time. I danced so hard I kind of injured my permanently fragile neck, but after about three days I was recovered. And it was totally worth it.

And then, on January 2nd, Maddie came home from camp. I am both sad and embarrassed to report that although I was certainly happy to see my sweetie-pie, life got more challenging in that instant. What followed was four unsuccessful days of badgering her to take a shower along with the anticipation of the impending school week. I was temporarily relieved when I learned she had Monday and Tuesday off, so we had a couple extra days of camp recovery time.

I was optimistic. I’m not sure why. There was no reason to believe that a new year would bring new behaviors. In fact, I have never put much importance on the change in years. So, one day it’s 2015 and the next day it’s 2016? One day it’s Thursday and the next day it’s Friday. So what? It’s just another day. Not very romantic or sentimental, I know. I have just never had that feeling that the first day of a new calendar year was particularly significant. So why for even a second did I think otherwise?

As it turns out, my first and usual instinct was right. We are right back where we started. In hell.

Tuesday Maddie was in a good mood. She woke up around 8:00, very early for a teenager on vacation. She had energy and was perky and when I asked her if she was ready for school the following day, she gave me an enthusiastic affirmative response. All right! I thought. Tomorrow is going to happen! 

Well, “tomorrow” did happen. Oh, yeah, it happened all right. It happened like all those other miserable days of 2015 when my tired kid just dug in her heels and said, “No.” How quickly my optimism turned into anxiety and a sense of defeat. Those feelings are so close to the surface for me all the time. Frankly it’s a wonder that I ever feel otherwise. But I guess it’s all that darn hope I try to grasp onto with my fingernails (or whatever substitutes for fingernails when your stressful life meets with a bad habit and you’re left with nails torn down to the nubs).

Maddie, too, was at least superficially optimistic about today. She chalked up her inability to (or refusal to) get up yesterday to a rough night with a cat who kept clawing at her face all night. She felt justified in the afternoon after sleeping an additional five hours. “See, M0m?” she pointed out. “It wasn’t really a choice to stay home. I needed to. I slept for five hours.”

“You could probably do that any day,” I replied. Seriously, what teenager couldn’t?

“Well, I’m better now. And I’ll put Daisy out tonight.”

“You promise you’ll go to school tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she insisted. And at the moment she really meant it. At least I think she did.

But promises don’t mean much to Maddie if breaking the promise behooves her in some way. Don’t get me wrong: if you tell her a secret, she’s a vault. If she promises you a sword, she’d rather skip her homework and/or sleep to make it. But if she’s promising to do something that’s going to be difficult, don’t count on much.

So as you guessed, this morning, day two, didn’t go so well. She did get up. She got dressed with a lot of coaxing and even some actual help from me. She even came upstairs and put on her backpack, but she stopped in her tracks when she stepped outside the front door.

Clearly she was stressed. She was so stressed, in fact, that she reverted to something she did long ago to soothe herself: she dampened a wash cloth to suck on. That’s a bad sign, I know, but I was hoping that a little self-soothing would help her cope with what was to come. And honestly I believe once she was on her way, everything would have been fine. But the anticipation of a challenging day was apparently too much.

And things went downhill from there.

I’m sick with a terrible cold, reminiscent of, but certainly not as terrible as, the case of pneumonia I had last year. My husband is sick, too.

“There’s some dog poop over there,” said my son. “It looks weird.” Our puppy hasn’t been 100% well the last few days, as evidenced by the varying levels of weirdness of what’s coming out of him. So I picked up what I could with some toilet paper and flushed it down the toilet, only to see water gurgle up and actually over flow. Luckily (or not so luckily) I have an inordinate amount of experience with clogged toilets, thanks mostly to Maddie’s historically dramatic overuse of toilet paper, so I went straight for the water supply and turned it off before too much water escaped.

Then it was time to take my son to school. We left just a few minutes later than normal, and then I forgot to make a particular left turn that helps us avoid traffic, so I got stuck in the usual frustrating line. I was thankful that he was willing to hop out of the car early so I could avoid the worst of it and turn around and go home. It’s the little things, you know.

I still have a little water to clean up. And I don’t think I have the right rug cleaner to do a great job on the dog poop. But those are little things too.

The big thing is Maddie. My son had a thousand ideas to share with me in the car on the way to school. He had tried several approaches to get Maddie motivated this morning, and while I marvel at his wisdom and thoughtfulness, he can’t really help me. I figured I’d let him try, though. Why not? After all, when one member of your family is acting out, the whole family suffers.

Maybe there’s an ALANON-type thing for families like ours. I recall hearing this somewhere: “When one member of the family has autism, the WHOLE family has autism.” No, that doesn’t make us all autistic, but we all suffer from it, or benefit from it, or are in some other ways immensely impacted by it.

And today the impact isn’t good. I’m exhausted from being sick and having a sick husband.

I’m pessimistic at the moment, although perhaps I shouldn’t be now that I think about it. For some people the start of a new year brings hope and a new outlook. For Maddie newness isn’t good. New starts aren’t good. She does better when she’s in the swing of things. We just need to get her there.

Forget the new year, then. Forget starting over. Forget change. Just keep going. Keep plugging away.

The January question of the month: “Did you make any resolutions?”

No, I did not. I never do. Maybe, in the end, that’s a good thing. My resolutions aren’t annual; they’re daily. My resolution is always to do the best I can and try to forgive myself. My resolution is to survive the day and then start over the next day. My resolution is to try to keep my cool the best that I can in the face of some extraordinarily challenging circumstances.

Happy New Year? Sure, I guess. Happy New Day? Maybe. Just New Day? Always.