Cold.

It's cold here, for Georgia anyway. The slobs that renovated our house were allergic to insulation or something, so our house feels like an icebox. Rub you hands against an external wall, and that's what you'll feel: ice cold. Cold for Georgia is nineteen degrees. Cold for my youth was a chart pasted on the kitchen bulletin board by my mother. One of us--my brothers, mother or I--would yell out to the rest: It's 20 below with the windchill today! That's the kind of cold that makes your nostrils freeze on the inhale. The kind of cold that slammed into my body when I walked outside. I miss cold sometimes. I miss snow too.

My next door neighbor, and older African American woman named Amanda, likes to tell me that I'll catch cold because I don't wear a hat here in Macon. I always laugh because I remember my wet head freezing solid as I waited for the bus on school mornings. I didn't wear a hat then either. I don't see Amanda much in Georgia's winter. It's too cold for her.

.....

I don't like New Year's. I never have. I was always the kid that babysat on New Year's. I never went out even during college. There have been three times when I have celebrated New Year's Eve. Once was when my brother Paul traveled to Florida with his young daughter. I was living with my parents post-college and waitressing at a breakfast cafe. I felt like a huge failure. To earn bigger tips I flirted shamelessly with balding overweight fifty year olds. I hated them and myself, but I made okay money. Paul and I went down to Eduardo's, the village mexican place, and we drank a lot of whatever--I don't really remember. We stumbled home, peeing in the bushes of some business along the way, and then woke my mother as we streaked across the lawn and dove into the pool. Unheated pools in Florida are cold in January, wicked cold. The combination of alcohol and frigid water left me shivering well into the next day.

The best New Year's I've ever had was four years ago. We'd traveled to Indianapolis on Christmas day and left 17 month old Grace with her Bonnie and Poppie. Craig and I boarded a flight for Paris on December 30th. On the 31st, I stood on a bridge with Craig's arms wrapped around me for warmth and watched the Eiffel Tower light up to announce the New Year. A Spanish tourist played a horn and serenaded the audience. I was freezing. I couldn't feel my toes, but I felt light and ridiculously happy.

.....

For the last three and a half years I've been dreaming of moving back North, back to the cold. I feel like a fish out of water in Macon, and yet here we are. Despite this, I'm starting to feel comfortable with my surroundings. I know the routine. I know what to expect. Dysfunctional as this city may be, I understand it now. On chilly mornings like today, I think I can't live in a cold climate anymore. My skin is too thin. I'm becoming southern.

I feel a chill when I think those thoughts.