Short Creative Nonfiction on the Weather

In 2005 I took a college class on writing memoirs. We learned a lot about creative nonfiction, and one of my takeaways, almost a decade later, is that there is so much you can do with words in nonfiction to make something matter. You can take something insignificant and transform it into something significant just with how you write about it.

A lot of my creative nonfiction ends up on Facebook, and I’ve been writing a fair bit about the weather lately. Normally the weather isn’t very interesting in Phoenix, but it has been lately. Here’s a few of my short writings from Facebook that have made me happy lately:

The story of how I got soaking wet

1. I opened the front door so the girls could see the pouring rain.
2. The kids sat on the top stair so they could get a little wet.
3. The kids descended the rest of the steps while I watched, still completely dry, and sang rain songs to them.
4. I took pictures of the girls playing in the rain, but stayed dry.
5. The girls’ friends came outside to play with them and suddenly my daughters didn’t want to stay right next to the stairs.
6. To be a responsible adult and to supervise their fun, I went out into the rain.
7. I realized I was already soaked, so I decided to shed my adult self and play. I jumped in puddles, ran through the “river” on the sidewalk, and skipped rocks. It was freeing to enjoy myself and let my stresses slip away into the water.