spt: the heat is on

What am I doing to stay cool this summer?
Sticking close to my big green water bottle. 

 

Fourth generation Arizonan. I know heat. I know burnt skin, lazy summer swimming, curse-worthy air conditioning bills, year-round sandal wearing.  Yet, this is where I choose to live.  But I was not always so content with this desert world.  Was horrified, in fact, by the cliche thought that perhaps you really could fry an egg on our summer asphalt.  Well, the sun has been too blessedly absent to test that theory today, so, instead, this is my word portrait of a girl raised in Hell. 

Of course, I had no clue it was hell as a child.  But after childhood's barefoot oblivion, I began to wonder.  Perhaps the first hint clicked when my sister got second degree burns going down a slide.  Or maybe it was because encyclopedia love taught me.  Things I was sure "they" didn't want me to know.  Some people have actual snow in the winter.  Some places get rain more than twice a year.  Sometimes rivers and creeks actually have - shhhh! - water in them.  I pined over pictures of places rich in green and blossom and non-reptilian life.  

And became the girl who couldn’t wait to leave home. Restless. Dreaming. The one whose high school bedroom was crowded with brochures from every east coast college. Or maybe Denver. The green, the mountains…real sweaters and high boots. Anywhere that could boast seasons would do nicely.

So I left quickly...gone within a week of graduation. No looking back. My family would always be there. I would always return for visits.  On the short side, I was sure.  I lived in Japan, Provo, D.C., Denver.  All places of instant love.  Where I was introduced to green summers (imagine that!), fiery falls with crunching leaves, naked winter trees engulfed in ice, sweet scents of blooming spring.

Post-mission (six years later), I returned to Arizona with ready plans to go Away.  But was stunned by the revelation that somehow this was Home again.  An Arizona girl.  Despite.  And now I see the beauty in drives across my painted desert.  In late summer lightning storms precursing late fall chilly.  Bold red mountains out my window.  

And in summer, well, my boys run obliviously shoeless on our backyard path...and my grass is brown...and my bills are high.  And somehow that's okay.  We'll curse the summer sweat and bless our winter warmth for all our days, I'm sure.  Because, well, no other place is Home.