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.