This morning I took Daphne out and she ran around like crazy and then vomited up her breakfast and ate it, and David came downstairs and told me he is sick and would like me to take him to the doctor, and both of the boys had upset stomachs after breakfast and we were late to school. After I dropped off John I drove up the parkway to the vet, where I had to get Daphne her heartworm pill and some topical tick and flea treatment, and on the way, of course, I looked up at the trees, which are totally bare now—winter-time trees, pretty in their brown and skeletal way, but necessarily suggestive of a certain way of being, a certain mood, a certain pain, even, in my fingers and toes. I remembered only three weeks ago, when I drove up the highway and looked up at the same trees and saw them covered with red and gold leaves hanging on by little vegetal threads, and thought to myself, myself being, apparently, a mournful, desolate soul, how beautiful the leaves were, but how all this beauty would soon be gone, and winter, which I dread, would be upon us. This morning I was able to occupy both times, the time of beauty and dread, three weeks ago, and then this morning, when the sun shone on the bare curling branches. I thought, I didn’t want it to happen, but it happened anyway. Oh, well.