We have had a lovely blizzard and are continuing to have a lovely blizzard. The snow is damp, white, thick, and surprisingly easy to shovel. My next door neighbor borrowed my shovel yesterday, and did my walk and the walk of the lady the other side of him, but of course it kept snowing all night and is going to keep snowing. This morning, filled with energy, I went out and shoveled some more. It was deceptively easy.

Now I am sitting in my nice warm house, amiably unable to remember my computer password or the name of the poem that goes “It was snowing/and it was going to snow” (Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, I find after a prolonged search), and I reminded myself that at my age, I should not be shoveling snow any more. I am strong enough, it just makes me lightheaded and confused, that’s all. The feeling is passing; I remembered my computer password after a little bit, and found the Wallace Stevens poem after a relatively brief search. Stevens wrote “The Snow Man,” too, which I remembered right away, but that’s a different enigma.

I once went to an emergency room after doing a weightlifting workout, sure I was having a stroke, because I was perseverating (lovely word, that, meaning having repetitive thoughts), and that is how I feel this morning. Luckily, this time I recognized the sensation, so I am not going to traipse out in the blizzard to have a clinician lecture me. The feeling is already passing. I remembered my password and also set my fingerprint recognition again.

My neighbor from around the corner, who is maybe in her early forties, just stopped by to lecture me about shoveling, so I will behave myself, but the walk is cleared. Anyway, I wrote down my computer password, as they tell you not to do, but I don’t have much alternative, honestly.

Oh, it’s weird to be older. Unsettling. Peculiar. Disconcerting. Always a surprise. I’m perfectly cogent, and surpassingly capable, and then from time to time the universe takes a swerve and I realize that being confused at my age is qualitatively different from being confused at the age of twelve, so I have to adjust.