Photographs by Anna Traverse
They told us it was coming. ("They" who? Why, the invisible entities who move around the signs and symbols glowing out at us from our phone screens, of course.) We watched for any changes to the predicted arrival time, the projected accumulation amount. We hemmed and hawed in hallways with our colleagues. We piled up our work with faint grumbles and carted it home, whereupon we discovered that indeed, cold, stinging, slightly granular bits were roving through the air, pelting our faces and shocking our ears and noses. They were right, this time. Snow, on November 14.
November snow in Memphis is not the norm. In November 2014, yes, a fraction of an inch snuck its way down to us. In 1951, snow came to Memphis as early as November 2. Nearly half a foot crashed onto the city in 1929. There are a couple dozen other examples, scattered throughout the years.
But snow in Memphis is not really the norm ever. When it does appear, snow tends to come calling later in the season, which is to say earlier in the year. And yet, yesterday: clear evidence that patterns only go so far.
This year has been topsy-turvy, top to bottom. From politics to personal adjustments, a whole lot of people are a whole lot tired. Our lives feel noisy, overheated, in need of the longest of long winter's naps. Except there's no time for naps, because the work, and because the gym, and because the kids and the dogs and the...
And then it's snowing. Just a little. Just enough to make everything soft, and bright, and new, no matter how many times you've seen it all covered in snow before. It's a good reminder in that way: the same old scene, with merely the barest and most temporary adornment, can always feel brand new.
