Home

When I lived on the East Coast, I wanted to move back to Phoenix. For 7 years, I droned on about the grandeur of the west - the spirit of Arizona. When I finally decided to leave Richmond, I told everyone that I was coming home. I wandered through the streets and my favorite places in my mind's eye. I desperately wanted to be there - here - in the desert, in my perfectly photoshopped memories of mountaintops and summer swimming pools. I told my friends, my family who cautioned that "you can never go home again," that I knew my new life in Phoenix would be different - that I didn't want it to be like when I was growing up. And, I truly didn't want it to be the same. I just wanted to be in the place that I loved.

Upon my return to 115+ degree summers and plum colored dusk, I plunged myself into new surroundings with new people, new ideas. I rarely visited the places I used to visit - hardly saw the friends I used to see. I came back to the grown up version of my hometown.

When did it all change? Was it when I went to college? The years I spent in Tacoma and Seattle finding my voice and expanding my mind didn't make the rest of the world stand still. And though I continued to dream of my home - the Phoenix of the 1970's & 80's - when I moved East, it truly didn't exist anymore and I was too far away to notice.

Today, I left my office in Northwest Phoenix to get lunch at a place I liked when I was younger. I drove past my growing up places - Cortez Pool, Cholla Jr. High, Moon Valley High School, the dirt field we weren't allowed to cross, soccer fields, my grandparents neighborhood, houses of friends long gone and rarely remembered, my brother's baseball diamond. In less than the hour it took for my round trip, I had thought a thousand memories of the things I loved about Phoenix.

I used to think that I missed Phoenix the place. Now I live here...and I still miss it. The reality is that this city of 5,130,632 people is completely different than my memories of childhood.

I feel a little ridiculous now, knowing this obvious fact never occurred to me before today. I never longed for Phoenix while living far away. I just wished for slower days, the long drawn time of youth, peach hued sunsets, slumber parties, hot nights with friends, diving into a cool pool, watching the morning light filter through my bedroom window, stewing in my dark teenage thoughts as a monsoon climbed over the horizon.

Missing Phoenix was my way to miss childhood. I created this place as part of me. It was the only way to feel safe like I did when I was young and invincible. I'm no longer invincible - and the Phoenix part of me is in the past.

I'm ready to go home now.