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.

Today I went to Henry’s year-end poetry fest. Henry read a poem he wrote about Jose Reyes of the Mets that brought actual tears to my eyes. He was wearing a Jose Reyes shirt. It was a tremendous performance. As a rule, I don’t like to say disparaging things about the other kindergartners, but since you asked, yes, his poem was the best. Mom is great, mom is this, I like baseball, etc. Some poems about summer. Please. Children. Make it interesting. Engage me. It’s cold out there, if you know what I mean.

We are going to start renovating our house, of course. I say of course because almost everything we do is overdetermined, from where we live to what we drive to where we vacation to when we’re going to have the third one. Oh, you have to have a third one, if you’re going to have a fourth. Anyway, the kitchen needs updating, darlings. Our appliances are ancient, and there’s forty years of shit between the floorboards. I found a kitchen I liked in New York magazine and so we’re off. Who cares if we don’t have the money? No one ever has the money for this kind of thing. Except in our neighborhood, where some people do. I’d gloss over this fact, except that it seems somehow important.

I’m surprised by how much I care about appliances. I could talk to you quite movingly about the appliances I used to have, when we lived in the city. The apartment had just been renovated and they were state of the art. Now the children don’t remember the ice maker. They don’t know the “ice maker” exists. We’ve developed a highly ritualized procedure for the Getting of the Ice and the Cracking of the Ice. Before it can happen, everyone’s hands have to be washed. But recently I told them that some day we will have an ice maker, and all this will be over. We’ll remember these times fondly. When we were young.