It doesn't get really cold in South Africa, so we didn't really prepare for the weather. And we had never seen snow to that point.

We all belong to South Africa, and South Africa belongs to us all.

In South Africa, we speak English and sometimes Afrikaans, sometimes Zulu, sometimes Xhosa.

The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house. All that cold, cold, wet day.

. . .and every native has a story of winter – stories that usually begin, You call this a storm? And grow in the telling like battle tales shared by graying war veterans. It’s a peculiar character flaw to those of us from cold climates that we feel superior to those who have the sense to live elsewhere.

Though Anne was born in Alabama and schooled in Mississippi, she had traveled North, and, like many Southerners, gained a theoretical understanding of the concept of cold. But the mind is an overprotective parent. What it doesn't care for, it hides. Like many inhabiting the subtropics, Anne had repressed the reality of subzero mercury.