The day after the October issue of Memphis went to press, our house – the one my now-husband and I moved into only this past July, the sweet old four-square with a fig tree in the backyard – caught on fire.
It was a Saturday evening, a little after seven o’clock. Cameron was cooking, his 12-year-old son was in the sunroom, and I was upstairs putting away freshly folded laundry. I smelled smoke – a strange, acrid smoke, not the smell of the sweet potatoes roasting in the oven. We looked and looked but could not find the source, could not see any flames – and then the power blew, and I leashed the dogs and tossed the cat into his carrier (he entered willingly for maybe the first time in his life), and we fled to the street. The fire department came quickly, saved the house from burning down altogether; another ten minutes, they said, and “we would have been having a very different conversation.” The culprit: faulty wiring to the dryer. It worked fine until it didn’t.
Karen Pulfer Focht
"Not three weeks later, we were married." Anna and Cameron at the Shelby County Courthouse on October 10, 2019.
We lost a lot, including the vast majority of the books, which is saying something considering that my books alone had numbered something like 17 boxes when we loaded them onto the moving truck. The next day, I stared for a few moments too long at my late mother’s last published book, lying charred and waterlogged in a heap of ash and rubble.
But we also didn’t lose much at all. No one was injured. The house will be rebuilt, thanks to insurance. It could have been unfathomably worse, in so many ways that make me shudder. We’ll get to go home again.
Once there was a wall here, holding shelves packed with books. The washer and dryer sat on the other side of that wall.
Not three weeks later, we were married. The day was simple, seamless, lovely and love-full. It was just the two of us standing across from a judge in a courtroom downtown. Simple, and perfect, as we are for each other, as we have been since the first evening we met. We don’t need much to be happy, only to be in the same place at the same time, which in itself still feels miraculous.
We don’t know right now when we’ll be home, in the sense of returning to the house where our belongings live and our mail is delivered. But we’re home already: Home comes along with us, carried in the creatures we love.
We’re in the season of thanksgiving, which is where I do my best to stay all year long. Gratitude arrives, in my experience, not born aloft by ease and good fortune but deposited along with sharp, rough, strange times. Gratitude reveals itself anyway, not despite the hard things but often because of them. Don’t miss Frank Murtaugh’s eloquent essay at the back of this month's magazine about embracing the whens and wheres of his first half-century.
The November issue of Memphis marks the beginning of the season of giving, too. We’re presenting our annual gift guide, with a raft of local gift ideas. One unexpected find: a graphic novel written and illustrated by a local couple, Janet and Martheus Wade, whose story Jesse Davis shares in these pages. As soon as Jesse proposed writing about the Wades, I was excited for us to publish the result; we’re at our best, I feel, when we have the opportunity to share stories about all the remarkable things happening in our city all the time, with or without fanfare.
More: Alex Greene continues his Odyssean quest to explore other American towns sharing the name Memphis. This month, he pauses in the hamlet of Memphis, New York, which he finds to bear certain surprising similarities to the river town we call home, despite being about 0.3 percent the size.
Pam Denney takes us on a different kind of quest: the tasty kind. She writes about experiencing some of Memphis’ most delicious restaurants through their bar menus. I personally have not been able to stop thinking about pickled vegetables since reading her story, and am now further on my way to planning the sour side of the menu at Cameron’s and my imaginary café.
Vance Lauderdale gets to the bottom – or the top – of more local history questions, specifically: why do the topmost bricks of the Mullins United Methodist Church steeple not match the rest of the steeple? Even if, by chance, you weren’t wondering about this before now, you won’t be able to drive past again without thinking about how that steeple is not only closer to the heavens, but also to the cell-phone signals the heavens hoist.
Settle in; read the rest. The days are short, and the air is crisp. This calls for hot tea, an intentional (and contained) fire, a comfortable chair, a warm light.
Enjoy it all. We will. We don’t know right now when we’ll be home, in the sense of returning to the house where our belongings live and our mail is delivered. But we’re home already: Home comes along with us, carried in the creatures we love.
– Anna Traverse Fogle, CEO
