I have often accused Marjorie of marrying me for my heat.  In marrying her, I signed up for the job of keeping her warm.

She claims that as a girl she would go to bed with cold feet, and that they would still be cold when she awakened in the morning.  I'm sure that is so.  When she was an older teenager her father remodeled her room, and realizing that her feet were cold, he bought her an electric blanket.  She found some relief then.  I have become that electric blanket's replacement.

I think that her problem stems from low blood pressure.  I doubt that she'll ever have to worry about having a heart attack.  Her blood pressure is consistently low, and so is her body temperature.

I most distinctly remember the first time that she put her cold feet on my legs in bed.  I screamed.  It was an involuntary reaction, and I recoiled from the shock.  That was shortly after we were married.  Since then I have taken it upon myself to find her feet with my legs each night, and to warm them up.  She sleeps warmly all night, and awakens with warm feet.

I similarly warm her hands.  We can frequently be seen holding hands.  We do it so that I can warm hers.  I hold her hands in sacrament meeting to get her fingers warmed enough to play the piano during sharing time in Primary.

Soon after the opening of the Meridian Idaho Temple, Marjorie and I found ourselves together in the veil waiting room as ordinance workers waiting for the next endowment session to go to the veil.  I discovered that her hands were very cold, so I held both of them in both of mine.  Sister Jones, an assistant to the temple matron, entered.  As she surveyed the room she focused on us cuddling together, and approached us with a look of disapproval.  "Are you newlyweds?" she asked.

"Nope," I replied.  "I'm warming her hands.  This is my job."  Sister Jones smiled understandingly, and I think, approvingly, and was thereafter always able to greet us by name.

One of the worst scares of my life was way back when our nice, light pantry was a dark furnace room.  When we first moved into the house we actually used that oil-burning furnace.  It was the warmest place in the house, but was inadequate to keep the house warm.  We soon quit using it, and switched entirely to wood heat.  I kept my outdoor coveralls and coat hanging on a nail in that furnace room where they could dry after being out in the weather.

One night I jerked the door of the furnace room open to get my coat so that I could go check on my calving cows before I went to bed.  Standing there smiling in the dark, and with a toothbrush in her mouth, was Marjorie.  A spectral tooth brusher was the very last thing I'd expected to encounter in that dark hole.  I recoiled all the way down the hall as my mind tried to come to grips with what I'd just seen.

"It's the warmest place I could find," she meekly explained.

I like to be warm, too.  We both like a lot of heat.  We like our car to be warm.  Eli didn't.  "I'm dying," he'd say.  "Turn down the heat.  I can't breathe.  My eyes are drying out."

I always kept the fireplace as hot as I could get it.  "It's a blaze in here," said Jesse Jones.

"The only way to get a breath in here is to lie down and put your nose in the crack under the door," said Aaron.

Marjorie never once complained.

Marjorie's warmest body part is her heart.  She loves everyone, and especially me, I think.  I never cease to be amazed about that, and most gratefully accept the job of keeping her warm.  I've been at it for 51 years now.