Mom: The school sent this. Read it before you go tomorrow.
| SUN HILL SCHOOL · Typhoon Notice |
|---|
| Classes on as usual Thursday |
| Decision for Friday at 20:00 Thursday |
| Check the school page, not the radio, for all information |
| If you are already at school, stay inside |
Wei: So Thursday is as usual? I have a violin class until six.
Mom: Yes, but come straight home after. The rain gets heavy after seven P.M.
Wei: All right. I will take an umbrella and leave the motorcycle at home.
Keep this page where the whole family can see it.
Do not go out to look at the river, even if the rain seems to have stopped. Water can rise again in twenty minutes, and the ground near a river gives way without a sound.
If the power goes off, do not open the refrigerator. Food inside stays cold for about four hours if the door is kept shut. Check on any neighbor who lives alone once the wind drops, but do not knock after ten P.M. if you are not worried.
Dear Ming,
You asked what a real winter feels like. Today the temperature was minus twelve. That is not a story; it is Tuesday here.
The strange part is not the cold itself. It is what the cold does to time. Nobody stands outside to talk. You walk to the shop with your head down and you do not look up. By four in the afternoon it is dark, so the day feels as if it had been cut in half.
I miss the humid air at home more than I thought I would. I used to say I hated it. Now I would give a lot for one bitter, wet August afternoon with thunder over the hills.
Write soon. Chia
Ask any voter about the weather last March and they will not know. Ask about the typhoon of ten years ago and they will tell you where they were standing.
We do not remember weather; we remember what the weather made us do. A storm that kept a family in one room for two days is stored as a family story, not as rain. This is why old people say the winters were colder when they were young. Some were, but the ones they remember are the ones that changed a day.
Climate is measured in numbers over eighty years, and almost nobody feels it directly. That is the hard part: the thing we can feel is the storm, and the thing that matters is the slow line under it.