Mom was driving us home from somewhere. Dad was there too I think. We had to get on I-84, through Hartford. We got lost among the city streets. She was pretty sure one of them led east, back to the highway, but I wasn’t. We unfolded a map and looked. We were on foot now. I looked around to get our bearings. We were in an open plaza with a monument in the middle. There was a blanket of snow. This is the state capitol, I realized, so it shouldn’t be hard to find on the map. There it was right in the middle. We should know where to go from here.

Jackie and I were driving in winter, through an unfamiliar place with steep hills. We tried different side roads, parked, got out and climbed through the ice and snow. We found a great view of the surrounding valley and town but I was worried she’d slide down the ice. We had to be careful.

M.B. called me to say that he was hurt by something I’d said. I tried desperately to call him back and make it right.

I was in some strange village with friends, people from my past and present, celebrating New Years. I asked someone if they were going to party tonight and he said he wasn’t sure, because of what was going on. He indicated some development in the news. I realized it was riots in England due to Covid restrictions.

P. C. had discovered my writing notebook and accused me of “ironic pessimism.” I said what do you think, I’m gonna be an ironic optimist?

I slid down a ski trail on foot, wondering why more people don’t do this. It was easier than being on skis, slower, safer.

We drove up a winding road that unexpectedly became snowy. We were going a bit fast but I felt like I was in control. The road got narrower and eventually we could see we wouldn’t pass. It became a footpath leading into woods. We stood outside the car and contemplated it.

We were at a house party that seemed to last for days. There were excursions out, maybe to buy supplies. A massive snowstorm had struck the city. Trains were delayed, cars were stuck. The house became one familiar from my childhood, maybe the one we stayed in during summers in Woodstock. I saw the stairs that went from the second to the third floor, where there were two kids’ bedrooms for us. One for me and my sister and one for visiting cousins.

The kitchen window had been left open all night in a blizzard and now there was snow all over the sink and counter and windowsill. I was trying to make breakfast. I noticed that I’d broken an egg onto a saucer which I’d placed on a lit burner. That’s not going to work, I thought. Suddenly the stove was enormous, ten feet tall, and I wondered what I was supposed to do to use it.

I walked out of a store in a strip mall, it looked like the one in Storrs that had the A&P and Oscar’s and CVS. It was snowing. JL was there. A few other people. RS, one of my neighbors growing up, was there too. A small propeller plane pulled up to pick us up. As we climbed aboard I thought of the weight distribution—you have to distribute the weight evenly in planes like that, like we had to when we flew to Viecques in real life. As I took a set in the back I wondered whether my side—the right side—was too heavy. I also wondered how dangerous it was to fly like this in the snow. I wondered what it would be like if we crashed, those horrible seconds of anticipation and then the impact, which I could almost feel in my mind. It was a moment of brutal pain, then nothing.