I planned to drive back home to our apartment today, but the East Coast was hit by a blizzard on Sunday, and two days later the roads are still caked with snow and ice. My mom suggested I stay for one more day. Frankly, I'm grateful for the hazardous driving conditions. I wasn't ready to see Ex again.

Ex returned to the apartment last night. He took a train from upstate New York which was forced to idle between stations for over an hour because of the snow. When he finally made it to the PATH station, the buses weren't running and the taxis were refusing to pick up local travelers. "They were charging sixty dollars to go to Newark," Ex said. "They wouldn't take you anywhere if you told them you lived around the block."

Our apartment may not be around the block from the train station, but it was too nearby for the drivers to charge their inflated sixty-dollar fare, so Ex trudged home back to the apartment in the snow. I called him just as he got inside, he said. I wanted to make sure our cat had survived these six days without us; we'd left her alone with only one mouse toy and two big cereal bowls filled with food and water. The cat was fine; Ex, on the other hand, was frostbitten. He wanted to soak in a bath of cool water. Why not warm water?, I asked. Apparently, to ease frostbite, first you need to soak in cool water, then warm. Ex is dancer as well as a theatre director and an actor and an interdisciplinary artist. (In a previous entry, I enclosed "interdisciplinary artist" in sarcastic quotation marks. Tonight I'm feeling less hostile.) The dancer in him seems to know everything about the human body, including how to treat frostbite.

I spoke in long but controlled sentences, each of them precise and complete. I asked him, had he done any thinking about the logistical arrangements? He said, "no." (I thought to myself: Of course you didn't. Aren't I always the one who has to do the thinking?) I proceeded to tell him that I'd thought about the arrangements a lot. I couldn't remember exactly where we'd left things (it had been six days since we'd spoken last), but here is what I decided. I wanted to keep the apartment. I probably wouldn't find another apartment in our area for less than what we were paying, especially an apartment that allows pets, and since he'd offered to let me keep the apartment anyway, I wanted to stay. I reiterated our arrangement for insurance; he would keep me on his health plan (I have no insurance of my own) and, in exchange, I would keep his name on my auto insurance to reduce his rate. (Ex has a spotty driving record.) I said I wanted it this way for the sake of parity (I actually used the word "parity," and in a much longer sentence than this.)

He listened. Mostly he said nothing, only occasionally speaking up to let me know I was being heard and to assure me that he completely understood. I told him he should start looking at apartments. The apartments I'd already looked at were so close to our building that you could look out the windows and see straight into our kitchen, so he should look further. He understood. "How far do you think you'll look?," I asked. He wanted to be nearby, he said, reminding me that we'd agreed to stay friends and continue working together. Being friends, I said, might take some time. The line was dead for a moment. Then I heard his voice again. He said he understood.

I knew I was trying to hurt him. But I also knew, no matter how much I hurt him, he was still prepared to move on and I wasn't. Later that night, I was reminded of this when I signed into Facebook and saw that Ex was online. I sent him an instant message. We exchanged a few awkward lines of text, then he wrote that he needed to go to bed. "Ttyl," he wrote. My response: "Please don't 'ttyl' me. Goodnight." I exited my web browser and almost (but never actually) cried. Earlier on the phone I said I might have to "de-friend" him on account of his inappropriately carefree status updates. He said he understood. I couldn't bring myself to de-friend him. I settled for hiding his posts and status updates instead.

Today I spoke to Ex again and he sounded significantly less calm, even nervous. At first I imagined the financial reality of his situation might have hit him as it had hit me the night before. I felt some satisfaction at this idea, but it was short-lived. A few hours ago he informed me via Facebook that he'd quit smoking, soda, and coffee, and that he has been "working out like crazy." The nervousness that I'd attributed to a reality check was probably just the result of a mixture of endorphins and caffeine and nicotine withdrawal. (Frankly, I find his sudden fetish for self-improvement insulting. Hours after our breakup I was already plotting to quit smoking and commit to daily exercise. Ex beat me to it and even managed to cut out caffeine!)

Stinging with disappointment, I closed Ex's chat-window. Then I noticed that a friend had "liked" my status. (I'll call my friend "Daphne," though her real name is authentically Greek and far more exotic.) My status reads: "Saw a wonderful friend tonight and the two of us had dinner with a truly inspiring woman. Feeling wonderful." The "wonderful friend" was Daphne, and two days before the snowstorm we shared Christmas Eve dinner with a truly inspiring woman named Flora.

Flora's daughter ("Sharon") had been my friend many years ago, first in elementary school and later during my senior year of high school. She had been Daphne's friend, too. A few years ago, Sharon died in a mountain-climbing accident. She had wandered away from camp and her climbing partners at night and was crushed by a cascade of rocks and snow. Two years later, Flora's older daughter, Sharon's sister, also died, though I'm not sure how. Rumors of suicide or drug overdose circulated for awhile; Sharon's older sister had a history of drug problems. She also had three sons, one of whom was diagnosed as bipolar. The youngest came to live with Flora and Flora's husband. A year later, Flora's husband died of heart failure. Flora is now living with her oldest daughter's son in the house she once shared with her own two children and her husband. Of the family I once knew in that house, Flora is the only survivor.

I wondered what the house would be like now. Perhaps all the rooms would be dark except for the living room, where Flora would invite Daphne and me to sit and watch as the small boy in her care played with a matchbox car or some other, diminutive Christmas gift. I imagined a shadow of a house with Flora and her grandchild comprising the one bright dot of hope in an otherwise massive darkness.

Instead, the house was bursting with light and children's voices shouting. Daphne and I were greeted at the door by a woman who introduced herself as Flora's niece. The niece introduced us to her husband (the niece and nephew-in-law were staying with Flora while they house-hunted in Oyster Bay), then she showed us to the kitchen where Flora was slow-cooking a brisket.

Flora beamed at us from across the stove. She gave us each a big hug. A photograph of Sharon was stuck to the side of the refrigerator. Flora saw me looking at it as we embraced and gestured tenderly at the image of her younger daughter. "I can't take it down," she said, still smiling. Then, with a hint of defiance: "Why should I?"

Daphne and I peered through a doorway off the kitchen into the dining room. The table was set for what seemed like a banquet; it sparkled with clean china and silverware, the empty wine glasses catching and reflecting the light. Daphne looked at me, widening her eyes. Her expectations may have been less melancholic than mine, but the marvel of the dinner table surprised her.

Flora's niece urged us to sit. Across from us sat all three of Flora's grandchildren - the boy in her care as well as his two older brothers. The niece sat beside us. At one end of the table was the boys' father, Flora's son-in-law. Flora shared the opposite end with her nephew-in-law.

I was foolish to imagine a wounded Flora and her orphaned grandchild nursing a meager flame of Christmas spirit in big, dark house. However, I would be equally foolish (if not condescending) to paint Flora as the prime example of triumph-over-tragedy, of proverbial "good people" overcoming "bad things." The ghosts of the two daughters hung low over the table, especially the spirit of the older daughter. Her husband rolled up his sleeve and showed Daphne and me a tattoo of his wife on his triceps. Her meaty bosom and defiant face were faintly misshapen from the stretch and sag of his skin. He shot possessive looks across the table at Flora whenever the conversation turned to the boys, their education, or their behavior. Flora shot back with harsh looks of her own. He wants custody of all three children; Flora has clearly decided the youngest belongs with her.

The room was bright, the table setting immaculate, but Flora's relationship with her son-in-law cast a shadow. I'm sure there are many shadows in Flora herself, just as there are shadows in us all. But what inspires me about Flora is her strength and resilience. The fact that she is still standing inspires me, let alone cooking brisket and hosting Christmas dinner and talking cheerfully about everything from the stuffed animal-pillows she'd given to her grandchildren as Christmas presents (the oldest of the three boys felt he was too old for them) to the neighbor down the street who collects junk and occasionally gives an old bottle or a torn baseball card to the youngest son to take home. ("I never let him keep it," Flora said, wagging a finger with her eyes. "I always say, 'You need to give that back. That's not a present. That's junk.')

A few months ago, I helped my students arrange a lecture on depression and suicide prevention at the college. Attendance was poor, and the speaker, who is also the mental health counselor at the college, addressed us as though we were second-graders and she were appearing in a segment of Sesame Street. ("I'm a psychologist. Psychologists are here to help you.") But she did say something that struck me. She is a cognitive psychologist ("a cognitive psychologist"), and she talked about "the catastrophe scale" - a scale of 1 to 10 that cognitive psychologists use to help patients put their problems into perspective. "Imagine the worst thing that could happen to you," she said. "That would be your 10. Now think about a problem you're having right now. Say you're in a fight with your boyfriend or girlfriend, or you failed a test. How high would you rate failing a test on the catastrophe scale?"

One student in the audience said he'd rate his anxiety level at a 4. I chuckled to myself; if only some of my students would rate failure so highly. But the idea of the scale stayed with me. The point is to "decatastophize" whatever depression or anxiety you might be feeling in the moment. By comparing what you're feeling in the present to the worst possible scenario you can imagine - becoming paraplegic, for example, or losing your husband and two daughters in the course of five years - you can put your present anxiety into perspective and knock it down a few points on the scale. Flora survived her 10. And if she can survive a 10 - a truly devastating 10 - surely the rest of us can survive our 6s, 7s, and 8s. Maybe we can even knock them down one or two points.