King Of Marion

I've been reading the back issues of a local blog Sassy Molassy - I don't know her, but I think we have some people in common) and I noticed in her stuff from late in 2009 and early in 2010 she mentions several times how cold it was.

It was, too. Cold, and cold for weeks on end. Usually in Memphis we get breaks from the cold in the wintertime. Maybe a warm day with a gusty wind from the south or a stretch of mild-and-rainy, but they didn't seem to happen much that winter.

I remember people coming to the house to watch a football game one Saturday night in December and they all came in shivering with their teeth chattering. I poured them all little cups of Evan Williams Honey Reserve and they were all grateful for it. Christmas day was icy cold, with a bright blue sky and a north wind that didn't care if you were wearing a coat.

And January? Fucking January. They day my grandmother died was bleak, bleak. A cold-iron sky and useless little spatters of snow. It was sunny at her funeral, but the wind at the little cemetery outside Tyronza blows hard on even the mildest days. That wasn't a mild day.

And at the time three of the four power windows in my old Volvo were broken, so as I'd drive they'd slowly slide down. By the time I got to work all three of them would be open a couple of inches. I'd turn the heater all the way up and keep my gloves and hat on for the whole trip.

One day in February Sonya and I went to lunch in her car. On the way back she was smoking, with her window down. That was cold.

Super Bowl Sunday when the Saints finally, blessedly won? So damn cold. It snowed that night, a real live surprise snow that kept me home from work the next day.

Towards the end of February I went out dancing (on a night when I couldn't have felt less like dancing) and I left my coat in the car. The walk back to the car down Madison with the air hanging right around freezing.

I wasn't sleeping well, at all. I was always getting up to check on John, who usually cocooned himself. But sometimes I'd find him with the covers all kicked off, curled into a ball. I'd put the blankets back over him and I could see his whole body relax under the covers, warm again.

And when I came back to bed Dora would do the same thing every time: she would get up, let me get in bed and situated, and then she would plop her dog ass down against my hip and lay down, snug against the length of my right leg, watching the door to the bedroom. She knew something was up. I don't think she slept, because when I would get up in the night she would always look back at me as if to say, "all clear, boss. Everything's under control."

And then! In April the weather broke, firmly and finally. Warm and mild, open-window days, as if nature was saying "oops. Sorry about all that shit."