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.

Yesterday I went to turn off the hose that was watering the magnolia tree, you remember the magnolia tree,that replaced the magnolia tree that replaced the old magnolia tree that was here but dead when we moved in? Long, boring story but anyway I went to turn off the hose and saw, lying on his side, a small mouse, breathing rapidly in the shade of the house. He didn’t move when I came near and when I accidentally dropped the hose end on the slab of stone he lay on he twitched but didn’t go anywhere. So I knew he was dying, and I wondered what I was supposed to do about it. I thought I could kill him with a shovel, or I could move him with a shovel, or I could do nothing.

I chose, of course, to do nothing, and now he is there, dead, today. There are cats that come over from the neighbor’s houses, but I don’t know that they’ll eat him when he’s already dead. Will the possum whom we used to feed, generously, on chicken bones and other items from our garbage, prior to our discovery of the bungee cords that now fasten the tops of the garbage cans firmly to the bottoms, come back and do us this service? David said, Won’t the squirrels take care of it? and I said, You mean the squirrels that eat nuts? but I have to admit that it really does seem like something that the squirrels should do. What do they do around here, anyway, except quarrel with each other and jump from the trees to the roof?