I brought in the new year with a blind dog. She was seated beside me, wagging her butt. I think she could feel the energy in the air.  

Everyone else in my house was asleep because they are—in the literary sense—massive party poopers. Thus, I was alone in the den except for Marigold, the blind coonhound. 

Marigold had one eye removed. The other eye is dead. She lives in darkness. She moves by rote. When I turned on the TV, I could see her stepping carefully through the room, looking for me. Using her nose to feel the edge of the wall.

“Here I am,” I said. 

I’m used to alerting Marigold to where I am. We’re all used to acting as her Seeing Eye Humans.

Marigold crawled upon the sofa beside me as I watched the TV-people with weird hairdos perform a countdown.

Times Square was littered with thousands of giddy people who you could have blindfolded with strips of dental floss.

And when the ball dropped, everyone on the screen cheered. My phone started blowing up with texts from loved ones. 

But in that moment, it was just me and Mary. 

“Happy New Year,” I whispered her. 

Her tail began smacking the sofa, making a gentle “Thwat!” noise. 

Then, she used her nose to trace the contours of my face. 

Marigold will use her muzzle to feel the shape of your mouth, to see what your lips are doing. At first we didn’t know why she did this. Then we realized that Marigold was feeling our faces to see whether we were smiling. 

The way we figured this out was, whenever she felt us smiling, her tail would wag. Whereas, if our mouths were slack, if we were not smiling, she would not move her tail. 

“I’m smiling, Mary,” I said to her. 

She moved her nose to feel my tightened cheek muscles, just to be sure I wasn’t lying. I could feel her sweet little hound nose on my skin. 

Thwat! Thwat! 

And I smiled as I felt the old year slipping away. Like grime on your skin, rinsed off in the shower. I could feel the old year, the old me, the old garbage that follows me, the old way of thinking, the oldness of my own idiocy, washing away. 

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. This means I have a chance to find meaning. I have a chance to tell my friends and family how much I truly love them.

I have a chance to make the act of living more important than the act of earning one. I have a chance to make memories with my wife. I have a chance to make space for new, unexpected friends who will alter the course of my existence. 

But most of all, I have a chance to make Marigold’s tail wag harder.