Cold, Sleet, and Snow

Two anecdotes.

Writing with Digory starts a week from today. You can find out more here.

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The ice storm that affected so much of the US got us pretty good here in Nashville. As of this writing, we’ve been without electricity for 36 hours. I’m literally typing up this letter by candlelight and posting via hotspot on my wife’s phone. I grew up in Middle Georgia, where the winters are mild. But all this ice and snow got me to thinking about two episodes of inclement weather from my early childhood.

My Earliest Memory (I think)

On Feb 8, 1973, a storm dropped 16 inches of snow on Warner Robins, Georgia. I was three and a half years old. My Aunt Nancy and Uncle Buddy had left their baby daughter Natalie with us while they went to Kenucky. The snow came while they were gone, and they were only able to make it as far as Atlanta on their way back. So baby Natalie rode the storm out with us. We didn’t have snow chains, and Warner Robins didn’t have a snowplow, so my father walked to the grocery store, uphill through the snow, to get her some baby food.

This snowstorm made a big impression on me. I had quite a large Tonka truck that got completely buried; it was just the slightest bulge in the snow. Being unfamiliar with the idea of melting snow, I never expected to see that Tonka truck again. This, I believe, is my earliest memory. I will say, however, that it gave me the wrong idea as to what I could expect from Middle Georgia winters going forward.

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The Treasures of King Tut

My first trip to New Orleans—or, indeed, to anywhere more distant than Daytona Beach, Florida—was in January of 1978. The Treasures of King Tut traveling exhibit made a stop at the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Park. We were big fans of King Tut in our house, so we made the trek.

When we got to City Park, the line to enter the museum was agonizingly long. It snaked around the park, underneath the live oaks with their dangling moss, down a pea-gravel path and around a lake. We literally stood in line for seven or eight hours that day. Also, it was miserably cold. I know what you’re thinking: it doesn’t get cold in Louisiana. Well it was cold that day, I assure you; I checked an historical weather site for the first week of January 1978, and the lows were below freezing, highs in the 40s. And we were out in it all day long.

I had seen parts of Doctor Zhivago, so I had some idea of what that kind of cold could do to the human body. But you really can’t understand it until you have experienced it. When it started to sleet, I decided the easiest thing might be just to lie down there on the pea gravel and die of exposure. They could carry my cold-stiffened little body straight to the French Quarter for a jazz funeral. I envisioned the trumpets and trombones puffing out frosty white clouds, the lady marchers’ parasols fringed with icicles rather than tassels. Later, people tried to explain to me that Louisiana was not the coldest place in the world. Tehy spoke to me of Minnesota, of Siberia, of Cincinnati, Ohio. I don’t think any of those people had been to New Orleans in January.

The day was darkening by the time they let us in the museum—or possibly hypothermia was drawing a shroud of darkness over my eyes. In any case, I rallied enough to marvel at King Tut’s treasures, and, more to the point, to marvel at central heat. My sisters, both teenagers, were so put out by the line and the cold that they refused to marvel at anything. In an impressive performance of teenage surliness, they fast-walked through to the exit, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and waited by the coat-check until the rest of us were finished.

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Writing with Digory: An Online Writing Class Based on The Magician’s Nephew

Reading C.S. Lewis can be a master class in how to write. His prose is clear and vivid, his dialogue is convincing, he strikes a fine balance between showing and telling, and he has a gift for conveying abstract ideas in concrete language. In short, Lewis’s writing embodies the principles that writing instructors try to inculcate.

In Writing with Digory, we will examine The Magician’s Nephew with a writer’s eye, to see how we can make Lewis’s techniques work in our own writing. The class will run from February 3 through the week of March 10. There will be one cohort for teens and one for adults.

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Like a bear coming out of hibernation, The Habit Membership is roaring back to life this week after a sleepy holiday season.

• Virtual Writing Rooms on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

• Wednesday evening: Habit Frontiers: Brainstorming Session

• Thursday afternoon: Afternoon office hours

There’s a place for you in this vibrant community of writers. Find out more about The Habit Membership here.

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The Habit Podcast got snowed out this week! We’ll be back on track next week.

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