I am going to take one more break this summer. I should be back after Labor Day.

It’s not that I’m not doing things, I am doing things, I am doing a lot of things, I’m taking trains into the city and ripping my skirt on the arm rest so that my underwear shows and I have to run into a store and buy a new skirt, I’m meeting my youngest sister for dinner and getting schmackled on a bubbly red, I’m walking home from the train station at 11 under a full moon, I’m reading the entire New Yorker in bed in the morning while the men hammer and bang things somewhere else on my house. The house! I’m driving to Stamford to look for wood flooring, I’m agreeing to expensive additional procedures for the renovation, I’m calling the tree man in for a consultation, I’m talking to our contractor about our progress and handing him an enormous check, I am in pursuit of the perfect front door.

I'm reserving a room at a midtown hotel, where I'm planning to meet my husband tonight, I'm holding an appointment for a haircut on Wednesday, before I head to the Open with my father. I’m slowly making my way through Saturday, although it’s overdue, I’m going through the children’s papers for the first day of school, I’m following Gonzales’ resignation, and the arrest of Larry Craig. I'm eating breakfast, and I'm even doing the dishes.

The children are gone, is the dramatic way of saying that they are at their grandparents’, and happy, and that they slept through the night. I had so many things to do in their absence, but I didn’t understand how I would feel, doing them.

Saturday morning John and I sat on the bathroom floor, me in my bathrobe, him naked and wrapped in a towel and waiting to vomit again. I was sorry he was vomiting, and he was really sorry he was vomiting, but at the same time it was cozy together on the cold tile floor. He knew I loved him, and I knew I loved him, too. Later we both fell asleep in the playroom and were woken when he vomited on my chest. This is the easy part of being a mother.

I’m letting the children watch TV every night this week, and not just good TV. Bad TV. The fourteenth in the Air Bud series, in which the dogs are puppies and talk and you want to throw yourself against a wall so you don't have to watch anymore. Last night the boys settled down for a remarkably (I’m finding putting John to bed tiring, so I put it off) large part of Angels in the Outfield, a film that forces you to explain to your kids how parents can legally relinquish custody, and endorses cheating. And has angels. Freakish, smiling, cheating angels.

We watched part of Time Warp Trio on Tuesday. I actually consider this good TV—I learn so much!—except for the ads, which are targeted at broke grown-ups or young children, or both (McDonald’s). And yet I love some of the ads. Henry and I share a fascination with both the rocket blaster fishing gun, and the one for the cake decorating kit with three thousand attachments, all of which, except for the grass-making one, seem wonderful to Henry. When he saw the grass-making one spewing fake green icing grass onto a cake, he said, Okay, that one’s gross. But the rest are so cool. Can I have it? Please? I’ll pay for it with my own money.

He loses two more teeth and he’s got enough. Speaking of which, I had somehow forgotten I had the dentist today. Partial crown: mother fucking shit and piss. I’ve given up on the idea I’ll be able to watch TV there. If anyone has any ideas of what I should think about for the ninety minutes that I have to keep my mouth open, let me know.

Henry and I went into the city together, today. We were going to the Shake Shack and then I thought we’d like the Rudolf Stingel exhibit at the Whitney. As it turns out we did not, we wanted to leave almost immediately after he wrote “Star Wars” and I wrote “Carey and David 10 Years” on Stingel’s foil wall, but we did like the Shake Shack and the train ride and I think some of the walking around was okay.

It was strange today not to know, exactly, what my relationship with Henry was. Well, obviously I am his mother and he is my son and I am 35 and he is 6, but apart from that, I was a little adrift. Should I make conversation? Should I bring up topics of interest? Should he? And what would be topics of interest for us? Because most of the things I talk about he considers a little naggy on my part, and most of the things he talks about involve gas or the toilet, which I’m not supposed to be interested in. (Although I am.) In fact, one of our conversations today went like this:

Me: Which was your favorite thing at the Shake Shack? The burger, the fries, or the ice cream?

Him: The burger, definitely. Speaking of which, can I go to the bathroom now?

He really did need to go to the bathroom. The point is, we’re not making witty repartée, for the most part. We don’t drink martinis together and he doesn’t accompany my singing on the piano, either. Sometimes I tell stories, which passes the time, and sometimes Henry pursues a line of inquiry that interests us both for a little while. Who was the first person? That kind of thing.

Today I learned to be quiet, and I got to hold hands. We held hands in the crowded city for almost an entire afternoon, and I will be jealous of my old self for that in the very near future.

You want to know more about vacation. It’s not enough that we caught a fish and it lay dying in a metal box at our feet and then we ate it and it was delicious. Even if I had told you that its gills were “frightening ... fresh and crisp with blood,” like Elizabeth Bishop said they would be, that wouldn’t be enough. How was it really, Carey? Did the children have fun? Did you eat lobster? Did you play tennis? Did you get some sleep? Tell us how it was, how it was, how it was.

You guys have a crazy idea of vacation.

Elizabeth Murray died while we were away, and I didn’t know it until yesterday. When my Nana died I expected to find her death in the papers, and for Murray’s death I expected to be called and told. I didn’t know Murray, of course, but I loved her, and shouldn’t I have been told?

Murray was a real artist, she addressed directly what art should be and what art should be about, she took me to school, and I’m sorry she died. She was young, and still painting. In fifth grade she sold erotic drawings to her classmates. She understood sex and babies and the way the daily stuff is eternal, and she made paintings that embodied all of this. Another way I've been thinking about this is, She understood that everything is a problem, and she loved that about everything.

As for Nana, well, she was the most important person in the world and I’m still surprised so few people knew it. When she got into the back of a car so that she could lie down comfortably for the ride somewhere—she was old, her legs troubled her—you knew that she lay in the back of the car with her feet up as a full person, as a mind that never rested, always pushing and thinking and loving.

We went fishing in a hired boat, with a hired captain and a hired mate. They took us out of the harbor along the submerged jetty, out past Great Point to a spot where two currents came together. There was a line running down the water: on one side it was glassy green and rolling, on the other it was dark chop. The mate set up a line for Henry, and he got an immediate bite, a hard pull on the line that you could see was something big. He reeled the fish in and the mate caught it in a net. It was a 34-inch striped bass, good eating, and relatively rare. It was a prize, so we kept it. The mate dropped it in a metal box at Henry and David’s feet, where it thrashed and died. We would eat half of it for dinner, and give the other half to the mate.

The boat circled around, crossing the currents, for another hour or so, and we caught bluefish for the rest of the time. They’re very oily, and my family doesn’t like to eat them, so the mate threw them back. After that there was just the pleasure of repetition, of letting the line drag, the boat turn, feeling the fish bite, reeling it in, then watching the mate catch the line and use a metal piece he had to free the fish from the hook. We were never sick. I thought we might be, but we were too busy reeling in fish to be sick. The captain called down from his seat above us, encouraging us to catch more, showing us where the blues were making the water virtually boil, from their numbers. On the way in and way out you couldn’t hear anything but the wind and the motor.

The fishing was stupid, it was fishing for stupid people, but it was still something I did with my family, somewhere beautiful. We killed something, and we ate it. Now we’re back.

I'll be back soon, I promise.

I was trying again, but now everything was wrong. The sun was too strong, the trees were overgrown, the bridge was closed and I had to walk around. Cars were parked where they shouldn’t have been. I couldn’t find the House Where I Went To My First Party (Not Really), or I didn’t know which house it was. The Murakami House’s hedge was too high. Then I turned and went completely the wrong way and didn’t realize it for a quarter mile, somehow. I hadn’t noticed that all the houses were wrong. I had to backtrack. I felt shy about taking pictures of people’s houses. I thought I was going to be yelled at or arrested. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. The pictures I wanted to take weren’t there, they were somewhere else. Maybe I should just be taking pictures of my parents’ house, I thought.

So you have words. Not pictures. I’m glad, by the way, I failed. I was being stupid, but sometimes being stupid is correct. I had thought, I’ll walk and catalogue as I go, but you can’t catalogue. I remembered: You have to create. If I were really a photographer, I wouldn’t have taken the walk, I would have just gone to the parts of the walk I cared about, I would have arranged things, I would have planted things, I would have waited until the light was right or I would have fixed the light how I wanted it. I would have waited at the Home Invasion house until someone passed in a truck, and I would have caught the end of the truck as it went by, or I would have hired someone to drive by. I’m no Gregory Crewdson, with a totally controlled sound stage filled with props and actors, but maybe I should be. He’s not wrong.

I’m glad I failed, because I want to write. I thought I might want pictures, but I don’t. I ran home from the 2005 Elizabeth Murray retrospective at MoMA in a fever of excitement because I thought that I had seen into the heart of things. I knew, because the paintings had told me, that Murray had spent her time as an artist identifying, and then loving, and then trying to solve the problem of painting, which was that art was about movement, and paintings, of course, are static. So, I mooned, What was the thing that writing didn’t do that it had to do, what was the problem that I had to solve? I ask myself this question, still, every day. My problem is that all I see is what writing can do, because writing never ends, it keeps running down the page, I can keep writing and writing until I put my finger down precisely on the spot.

For the first several days of any vacation, I think, What’s vacation for? That’s how much fun I am to be with.

But I’m even more fun before vacation starts. Five days, maybe six, if you’re lucky, and sometimes people are very lucky, I know my husband considers himself (he’s said this) the luckiest man on the face of the Earth, before we leave I become, what’s the word? totally anxious about everything that I ever had to do or will have to do until the end of time. What about the children? is a thing I think to myself. They will have school in three weeks. What am I going to pack for Henry’s lunch? How will I ever get the doctor to sign their medical forms? How will I convince her to do this? And money! We might not have enough! David, do we have enough money? He says What? and rolls over. Also: Did I really graduate from law school? I never got my diploma in the mail, it’s true. On the other hand, the school communicated with the Bar and I couldn’t have passed the Bar if I didn’t graduate and I did pass the Bar. And yet those dreams that I have another paper to write are so convincing. Speaking of dreams, and writing, and all that, all that good stuff, Did I spend the last six years writing a shit novel? I hope not! Body hair. I must have it removed. Am I inappropriate with the children? Was Mom tense on the phone with me? What did Dad mean when he said that thing the other day? And what about the laundry and I have to get to the drug store and are we renting car seats? Aha! That’s it! Those things are vacation things. I’m tense about vacation! Relief floods through me, my husband is grasped around the middle and lifted into the air, the children are kissed all over their ears, because they've turned their heads from me. Vacation! Not my whole fucking life. Thank God. Now I can go lie on the sofa and put off packing until the last possible minute.

I’m not leaving tomorrow, by the way, I’ll be here tomorrow, but after that you’ll have to win your own round-robins and threaten your own children and wish you were somewhere else, on your own. You won’t have me to do it for you. You’ll have to make your own half-assed references to other people’s art. Maybe this will be good for you. Maybe this is just the kind of thing you need. I think it is, actually. You’re lazy, and you’re soft.

In my imaginary world I am holding the askos that the Getty has to send back to Italy in my hand, stroking it, I am at the Lynda Benglis and Louise Bourgeois show, feeling it, I am in Edinburgh participating in that play that you act in, on instructions fed to you through your headphones. I once cracked open a Walter Benjamin book and read ten pages in it (I meant to read more, I wanted to read more! but I didn’t). I’m not bragging when I say I have no idea what Benjamin wrote, except I remember a story he said he had read once, himself: the story of a man who goes into a book store and sees the titles of all the books he can’t buy, and so sets about writing books to go with the titles he can’t afford.

Darlings, you are looking at the winner of the Ridgeway Golf Course Play for Pink tennis round robin. Or not looking at, but thinking about. Or not thinking about, but ignoring. No, if you’re reading this you’re not ignoring me, you’re interested in me, you want to know more about my tennis triumphs and even, should I say it? my tennis failures. You were there for me for my defeat to Joyce in the semifinals and you’re here for me now.

How did I do it? I played ad side and poached a lot. I put a lot of pace on the ball. I came up to net on deep shots. It goes without saying that I stayed focused, and didn’t let the bad points get me down. That’s key, not getting down. Not letting the stupid shit decisions you sometimes make on the court get into your head and affect how you think about yourself. You are the point you are about to win, not the point you lost.

I tried not to serve on a bad toss.

For lunch I had poached salmon with a subpar green sauce, shrimp salad, hearts of palm and artichoke slivers in balsamic vinaigrette, and several Arnold Palmers. I didn’t waste time with the low-cost buffet items. I finished up with a few cookies and a piece of pineapple. The served dessert was banal, and I ignored it.

The goodie bag included socks, pink tennis balls, and a bottle of perfume. I don’t know yet what my prize was, because I left the luncheon early. Amy C. is going to drop it by later.

So congratulate me!

I’ve been thinking a little about things that are perfect, as a category of things. The library I used to work in, and certain hotels, and Leonard Sciascia’s book To Each His Own. Train stations, and some pop songs: closed systems that achieve every goal that is set for them.

But then I think about Anna Karenina, which is imperfect, and better than most other things.

Which should I go for? Being perfect, or being great?

I gave blood on Friday and then went to see the Bourne Ultimatum. I should have something substantive to say about the movie, but I don’t; watching it by myself on a summer afternoon was like getting a shot of something: instantaneous, icy. I hadn’t thought about that aspect of pleasure, which is that it numbs. On Saturday David said I smelled like chlorine and gin, and I said, Isn’t the point of gin that it doesn’t smell? and he said, Then tonic. He meant it as a compliment. We drove into and out of the city with the windows down and the music up and I said, We are a Pleasuremobile.

I’m going to give blood today, so I reread Updike’s “Giving Blood.” It begins, “The Maples had been married now nine years, which is almost too long.” I’ve been married almost ten. The Maples are in their thirties, living in the suburbs, with children, and guess what? So am I. I bought the book this story is in, Too Far to Go, when I was nineteen, for a class, and I marked passages faintly in pencil. What’s funny to me now is not that I didn’t understand my future when I was nineteen, but that I felt it so intensely. The cruel things he says to her, the part where she tells him, “Now you’ve said things that I’ll always remember,” struck at my heart when I was younger, unmarried, without any children or even a concept of myself as a wife and mother. Now I read the story for the funny parts, the technique, and the ideas behind it. If my younger self hadn’t marked the way faintly in pencil, I probably wouldn’t remember that I came to it emotionally, first.

I’ve given blood twice before, and both times I felt I had to. Everyone was doing it. Yesterday I sat in the ice cream shop as the kids ate in silent dedication and read a sign on the window, backwards, the letters reversed. Blood emergency, I read, and then when I saw the date for giving donations, I thought, Yes. Is this further proof of my new, old cold-bloodedness? That I no longer fear the needle and a dizzy spell? What won’t I be afraid of next?

Last night sometime in the wee hours I was woken by my husband saying, What the fuck is that? He heard something in the bathroom. He turned his light on. He picked up the yardstick that the previous owners left in my closet and that the children like to whack things with, and advanced, cautiously. He still heard it. What could it be? Could it be the beating of the wings of an enormous moth? It was. When I woke up in the morning the first thing I said to him was You’re part of the conspiracy, by which I meant the conspiracy to wake me at least once during every fucking night, but which probably sounded crazy. Well, I was crazy. When it was time to go and John started whining for a Starburst, because we have a bag of Starbursts on top of the fridge that started as a rewards system for using the potty and which has mutated into a fountain of bribes, I said, You are getting to the door by the count of three or the Starbursts are going in the garbage, and held them over the garbage like someone in a Neil LaBute play.

The thing about Crazy Mommy is that Crazy Mommy wins.

I don’t like Crazy Mommy. Yesterday I played tennis with some women I don’t know very well but who know each other fairly well and felt stupid and smiley and wasn’t playing very well because I wanted everyone to like me, but of course not playing well doesn’t make people like you, does it? It is at these times that the advice of my husband, who, despite (because of?) his tendency to listen for the beating of giant moth wings, is intelligent and perceptive, comes to me, and I think, I don’t give a shit if these people like me. I’m here to play tennis. And then I played well and in fact won. Later in the day I was reading Ian McEwan’s first book, the first story of which is a first-person account of a boy’s rape of his little sister, and I thought, It’s just like tennis. You have to not give a shit about what anyone thinks about you in order to play well.

I haven’t read all of The Sheltering Sky, or even half of it, but my first impressions were, I’m afraid, of a commercial and self-pitying nature, i.e., No one will let you write anything this boring anymore. No one’s interested in your worlds, with their ambiguous types and specific moods, no one wants you to nail something that was out there but never captured before, no one wants you to create a thing out of the nothingness around you.

If I can't bore the pants off of everyone, how am I going to make great art?