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.

I went to the second most horrible children’s birthday party ever, but it’s not nice to talk about it. It made me sad. I think I hit the car on something on the way out. I pulled over—it was raining—and put on the hazard lights and went out to check the car and then was like, I must leave here now. Got back in the car and drove John home.

I’m too susceptible, I realize, to other people’s situations. I get uncomfortable in, for example, expensive houses that are poorly decorated. I feel like there are no values in the world. This house had an enormous basement covered in yucky carpeting and I thought, These children are going to smoke pot here later. I will not let my children come over. All of which is ridiculous. I will say that no one, including the little birthday girl, face buried in her father's neck, liked the clown they got. John was initially critical because she didn’t have a red nose. She was otherwise dressed from head to toe in extremely distinctive clown gear (right before I did or did not hit the car on something I watched her drive away in her car still wearing the wig, the hat, the makeup and the shirt), but he felt the lack of nose was significant. Darlings, why can’t everything be nice in the world? Alternately, Why must everything have meaning?

It’s rainy, the back of our house is roped off with Caution tape, and I wish I were somewhere else, writing about my travels. If you’re stuck in Istanbul with nothing to do, make your way to the covered bazaar, where you will find, in the third row of stalls, a man whose family has been making paper airplanes for three centuries. He will sell you one for five to ten cents (don’t forget to haggle) and invite you to his home, which is on an island and only accessible by boat. By the time you are halfway there you will wish you hadn’t accepted his invitation.

In Brussels one must not miss the Mannekin Pis.

Few visitors to Goa know the legend of Mary Mary, who led sailors to their deaths.

In Venice, actually, David and I lunched next to a couple who invited us back to their palazzo, an invitation we, our eyes meeting, accepted. I don’t know if I had already read Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers, in which a young couple visiting a city just like Venice is stalked and killed by a friendly older couple. Once we got to the palace, or really the half-palace (subdivided), we were separated, and I was shown their bedroom. One of them wrote poetry, and I remember there was some kind of evidence of this around, although what could it have been? We admired their house, and went out again into the street. This was the kind of thing we thought you should do while traveling, meet people and have little adventures.