I thought about John Updike, who died two days ago, as I shoveled my walk yesterday morning. I thought, This is exactly what he would have written about—someone, in this case me, clearing the cold, wet snow from our walkways, stopping every few steps to bang the shovel on the ground to shake off the white clumps that stick to it, shoveling the snow from the path to the garbage cans only to uncover smeared grass and mud, and to realize that the path lay in a different direction.

Inside, the house smells like pancakes. John plays somewhere—I hope it's not with the dog, on whose head he likes to sit, and whose tail he holds as she tries to escape down the back stairs. He is so excited by her warmth and her fur that he needs to have her, to consume her in some way. Now my arm is tired, my elbow clicks, and I stop to rest and watch the snow fly from the front path, where Henry works quickly, more diligently than I do.

Updike’s character would have gotten the salt spreader from its spot under the overhang, as I did, carried it around the house, and started spreading, although I don’t know if he—it would have been a he—would have reached into the bottom of it, grabbed the clumps of melt that had stuck together there, and thrown them on the ground, stomping to break them up. His men were more precise workers, outdoors, than I am, and I wonder whether Updike would have attributed that to my interior, domestic, womanly heart? Would he have noted that I am careful in the kitchen, that in the kitchen I clean as I go, I wipe the counters down, I organize the dishwasher in a specific way, but out here I feel a freedom that is in fact the beginning of a kind of panic, a feeling that things are beyond my control, so I might as well not care?

Well. The rain comes down, then comes down harder. The snow melts beside the paths Henry and I cleared, and floods them with water. By late evening, everything is ice. David slips on the way inside, and goes out to spread more melt. It doesn’t matter. The morning is cold and everything, still, is ice.

Everything is wonderful. Not really. I’m just speaking for myself. Of course, everything is wonderful for me all the time, technically and also in the context of historical and prehistorical physical and social conditions, but sometimes that’s just not enough. What I am trying to say is, we had a long vacation, and I am happy. I am even happy that we went to Slava’s Snowshow, that misreviewed, philosophically misguided, mildly abusive, lazy, overpriced load of hokum, because, circularly enough, I was happy there. I was very bored, and I almost fell asleep a couple of times, and Henry didn’t like the beginning, and turned in the dark to stare at me, and silently transmit this thought into my brain, five or six times, and at the end John cried that balloons weren’t being hit to him, turned snarling on the little girl next to him to seize a balloon from her, then cried pitifully as we left the theater and I led him by the hand through Times Square to the subway, and it looked to other people that we were cruel, uncaring parents, when really we are the kind of parents who spend a small fortune to take our children to see clowns and snow (Boys, I said, boys, we’ve got tickets to Slava’s Snowshow! and they said, What’s that? And I said, Um, there’s clowns! and snow! You’ll love it! and they disagreed and I began to see their point, and to see that I had maybe made a mistake in purchasing the tickets) and are in other ways kind and loving. The night we saw the show, after the children were in bed and David and I were also in bed, the lights out, David said to me, Those were some Russian clowns, and I was happy that we could admit that the clowns had been too Russian, and in fact too much like clowns for our taste.

We were a model of happiness, and I find that happiness—isn’t this strange?—needs models, needs examples, needs memories you can attach it to, so you can find your way back to it, in the event that you and happiness ever drift gently apart.

I'm going to keep posting here, capriciously, but I am also going to be posting more regularly at Full Constant Light. Take a look.