Long distance information, give me Memphis Tennessee

Back last night from a weekend in Memphis now to sloth through the painful hours of a Monday morning. I am not embracing its new day promises, rather I scowled at its sunrise. If ever I have wanted to stay in bed, this morning was the epitome of such. I am so sleepy - even the marrow of my bones is tired. I shouldn't have tarried till 4am in the Beale St. bars with all of the beer and booty music. No, I should have and I did and it was rich - migrating from one fine establishment to another with a pack of girls.

Oh!, the sanctity of a night and the Beale St. beer and booty music. Sometimes even the classiest of girls needs a period of raw ridiculousness. The high points will go down in the eternal list of remember-whens, but will be omitted from the public eye. True incrimination would not be their product, yet they're best left to pad the walls of the verbal histories that later leave us weeping with laughter over Cracker Barrel biscuits and hangover hot tea.

[I should have napped in my car between classes instead of writing...]

On another note:

WTF? I was almost proud to claim my Memphis home... We are thug-bred! Basketball is in our blood! And what does Kansas have? Corn?

Chalmers’ 3-pointer lifts Kansas to OT and a 75-68 championship victory over Memphis

On porches. [newly edited]

In the south, a home’s porch is a respected, sacred thing often attached to tales of tall glasses of iced tea or eras before air conditioning, when there was still such a thing as community. My parents have mostly been the vessels of this verbal legacy, instilling the value of a deep, wrap-around front porch.

I moved out of their house when I was 18, when it was still theirs and not yet his. Then, it was sky blue with a meager aggregate stoop at the front door. It wasn’t until their marriage had truly come unglued, every stitch pulled from its seam, and nothing but a shaky façade remaining, that my mother decided the house needed revamping. Blue was no longer sufficient and it needed a porch. Some people acquire a new pet, take up a hobby, or actually go through with the divorce. None of these options seemed quite as fitting to her as a complete overhaul of the worn vinyl siding and outer structure of my childhood home. She commissioned not one, but two levels of hopeful architecture. Much like the grandeur of a church lady’s hat or the carat weight of a woman’s rock, my mother must have believed that her stately double porches would somehow declare a picture of greatness.

I can remember going home in the last year of their matrimonial tolerance. I would usually arrive on a Friday evening and wake to the upstairs door as it wooshed open around eight or nine on Saturday morning. Before cracking open my eyes I could already imagine my mother in her gauzy pajamas rocking slowly in the wicker porch swing, and my father sitting stoically in the chair against the wall, now a golden yellow. They would both be sipping black coffee, probably not speaking, but somehow finding solace in the silence of the waking world. Once I joined them, one would inevitably suggest that I grab a cup of my own from downstairs. I would be assured that the pot was still warm and that my fancy creamer was somewhere, although I’d have to dig a little in the fridge to find it.

I could not have known that those would be the last meaningful memories of the three of us as a family, after all, their undulating threats of leaving and staying had been a part of my life for just as long as the two of them, together, had. I sometimes wonder how much success, if any, those sweeping porches gained in her mind and heart, or if instead they played a simple role in my mother’s big scheme of gilding the truth. No matter their purpose or how they did or didn’t serve it, the presence of porches wasn’t enough to perpetuate the game of husband and wife.

Home is...not Memphis.

I said I'd post the back-logs, but I ended up journaling most of them. I'd recap the 4 days of holiday "bliss," if I wasn't exhausted just thinking about mentally reliving them. I saw some friends and family. I ate some good tasting, but not good for you Southern food. I wore skinny jeans and silver pumps to Christmas Eve's festivities. I received my grandmother's wedding set for the possible event of its [very future] intended use, and a fancy GPS, and some books, and lotion. I saw three movies. Drank one beer and two glasses of bubbly. And received 2 birthday presents a month early because my parents...I don't even know.

And it rained.

I'm glad to be home.

Merry Christmas!

I wish that this was my photograph and that it looked like this here, but alas, Southern Christmas's rarely see snow. In fact, I have witnessed one in my lifetime.

I'm borrowing Dad's computer to check e-mail and such, and am back-logging blogs on my iBook. Once all of the holiday chaos dies down, expect a slew of new posts. I hope everyone is well and having a more merry season than mine with divorcing parents. I'm ready for Christmas to be over...it just seems to have lost all of it's magic this year.

Blues City

It's 104 degrees and I can feel the sweat begin to bead at my temples as soon as I open the car door. This is hellacious - literally. I'm hung over from the night before, sleep deprived too, and it's a stifling 104 degrees. I turn the corner and enter the cool embrace of a Coffee Shop's air conditioning and thank God for the vaulted ceiling generously peppered with spinning fan blades. It's Saturday morning and I'm home for birthdays - The florist's and my father's. Dad and I are on Main St. in search of something (preferably iced, and caffeinated). I feel like crawling into the Mississippi and surrendering to whatever fate might take me as long as it's cooler than this Memphis air. Instead, I order an iced Americano - large with room for cream. It's early still and there are few people here, but the synthetic breeze is the only thing on my mind and it moves more freely without the obstacle of bodies. Dad chooses to sit outside, "because there is a 'shade'."

It's ONE-HUNDRED AND FOUR degrees! ...but it's his birthday.

He smiles and says that he likes the heat because he's an old country boy. I politely inform him that I am not, and then clasp the sweating plastic of my frigid cup and suck down a bitter-creamy gulp.

I step inside to use the "patrons only" restroom, and pass the pastry chef as he is stuffing something that resembles eclairs without chocolate. He calls me baby girl and it startles me...I hate to be called that anymore, even by my own mother. I don't hate the chef, just the name and I stop to talk with him on my way out. His name is Kimberly. He has a house in Sardinia where he lives 3 months out of the year. When he was 18 he moved to Japan where he was engaged to his pen pal's sister. She died 2 weeks before their wedding. He turns away and I hear him mutter, "that broke me in two."

A fly has begun to challenge the ownership of the sweets on the counter and Kimberly swats at it, cursing, as he continues his work. I chat with him for longer than I should seeing that my Dad is roasting outside, alone, on his birthday, but I'm so intrigued. I think the chef tries hitting on me...something about eating sushi later, but I tell him I can't - "It's my Dad's birthday, after all." I shake his hand and head toward the door, and as I walk away, I hear the triumphant assassination of the fly he has defeated. "I got you, bitch!" he exclaims, and I smile at the irony of the enemies.

I swing open the heavy door and again enter the inferno. A man resembling a pirate has laid claim to the bistro table adjacent to my father. A powder blue wrap encompasses his head, his mouth is covered with warm-brown whiskers, his over sized white button-up is rolled sloppily at the sleeves and hangs below his waist, unkempt. His khaki pants are dirty and have been cut off at the knees. He wears big, black, unlaced boots that raggedly hug his feet and ankles, and the remnants of an aimless strap hang limp across his body from shoulder to hip. I am unsure of it's purpose since it attaches to nothing. His name is Dan Smith, perhaps an alias, and he used to fly planes for Northwest. I choose to imagine him adrift the seven seas with billowing black skull and bone sails instead. He asks my Dad if he understands death, to which my father unbiasedly replies, "no."

My Dad "understands" everything.

The pirate sits back against his wrought iron seat and agrees that he doesn't either, but it seems to him that Heaven and Hell just take up too much space.

Blues music pumps soulfully into this sidewalk. My father clears his teeth with that popping sound he makes with his tongue. He thinks for a moment before claiming ignorance to both modern art and jazz, but blues he says, "blues, I understand."

On the corner of Main street I roll my eyes at his dramatic tone, and shift in my seat to find the coolest position in this miserable heat. And between the pastry chef, my pirate, the characteristically southern temperatures, and Dad, I feel at home for a moment, at Home.