6/100: Snow + Micro Memoirs

This article looks at Day 6 in a series of 100 visits detailing what happens at my local library

It snowed overnight. Not that slushy nonsense we got earlier this week, but actual snow, the kind that rests on tree branches like blankets of lace, and elicits lots of cringey literary descriptors.

New York hasn’t gotten this much snow in years, and people are out. As such, there’s more going on at the outside steps of the library than inside it, and today’s installment will focus on this.

I’m pretty new to Medium, and this morning I came across an article that explored this concept of micro memoirs — the idea of distilling memories into a single sentence each. I love this idea, and I figure a 100 day writing challenge is a great place to experiment with novel writing techniques. Here are my micro-memoirs from a snowy Saturday at the library:

A one-eyed snowman with a potato for a nose and buttons made of baby carrots, perched on a bench

A photographer heading through the park gates with a foot-long zoom lens and a palpable sense of purpose

People everywhere, looking up

A middle-aged couple carrying two pairs of cross-country skis through the farmers’ market

A kid in traffic-cone orange snow pants going through the motions of making a snow angel

On the last one: the girl couldn’t have been older than three or maybe four years old. She had on a camo pink jacket that clashed horribly with her pants, but the great thing about being three is you tend not to care what other people think. Her snow angel attempt didn’t work out all that well, probably because she chose to make it on stretch of walkway that had been shoveled earlier that morning. She hasn’t fully grasped the concept yet. But that’s the other great thing about being three (or any age at all): she’s got plenty of time left to learn these things.

Thanks for reading to the end! If you’re enjoying this series, you might also like:

7/100: When I Learned Reading Isn’t Dead
9/100: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics