Fireworks, anyone?

The evening started - and ended - with a bang.

We show up with sparklers and fireworks, ready to catch up with old friends over charred meat and drunken strawberry Jello.

Ginger needs help, so we arrive early to hoist bags of melting ice; toss the cold, crisp broccoli salad; artfully carve a watermelon; and manifest an outdoor, mosquito-netted harem room which serves more as a love nest for mosquitoes than it does for party goers.

Bill arrives early, inquires whether or not we had brought the pictures of his naked ass from New Years Eve, and then leaves again to retrieve Kelly Commander - our resident party girl and flasher-of-the-boobies. Later, it doesn't take long for the entire party to weigh in on an over/under bet on when she would peek first. (Before midnight, after 10; SCORE!)

Ginger and I suck down a Jello shot, then two more. As I'm slurping the third, there's a knock at the door. I throw it open. The Three Wiseasses appear bearing gifts of beer, sarcasm, and stories of years I've long forgotten.

"Hey, Roxy! Last time I saw you, you were drunk on a bar at Awful Arthurs downtown!" McLeary bellows. "That was the first time I sang karaoke too - I sucked."

I laugh. "Didn't you also flash us your penis?"

"Yep! If you're lucky, you'll see it again tonight." McLeary takes the cooler to the kitchen, making way for the Second Coming.

"Oh, shit folks, she's back. Long time no see."

"Hey Scotty-karate. Been in Arizona for three years - that's why."

"Been that long? Damn."

I move away from the door, not recognizing the guy bringing up the rear.

"Hey!"

I turn around. Oh shit.

"I haven't seen you in forever, Roxy! I never thought... well, you know... um, I'd see you again. You back? For good now?" His face lights up like an exploding firework. I know what he's thinking.

"Hey, T. Yeah."

I see my husband come in from the porch as T moves in. "T, this is my husband. Husband, this is T."

T eyes me, eyes my husband. After a quick hesitation, T pulls it together and shakes Kevin's outstretched hand.

I think about the last time I saw T - two nights before I moved to Arizona, illegally skinny dipping in the pool after hours. I blush with what I remember.

Ginger laughs, hands me another Jello shot. The awkwardness is over.

We spend the rest of the evening languishing in the retreat of the usually humid East Coast July - wholly succumbed to the cool summer night. The hours pass- wrapping us in the rich smells of citronella, barbeque sauce, and roasting marshmallows.

I see people I haven't seen in months, years. My brother and future sister-in-law are there too - and they know most everyone from their bar. We laugh and talk, mingle from group to group, everyone switching locations and people as if performing an elaborate ballroom dance. My husband hears stories that I had forgotten. He laughs at the end of one and says he knew what he was getting into when he married me, and that life will never be boring.

We eat ice cream cake and light homegrown fireworks in the backyard. Flashes of green and silver ignite the evening. Sparklers pop and sizzle in our outstretched hands. I pause to look around at the illuminated faces.

It is so damn good to feel like I'm home.

Saturday

Dawn rose in hazy pink hues this morning, breaking sunlight just east of the white domed Capital building. The golden rays turned the silver spikes of the Missing Man Memorial into a golden crown.

Thin clouds veiled the horizon, a humid cool skyline punctuated with spires and obelisks.

Days like today make me love the nation's capital.

the cost of happiness

For two brief months, I lived better. I thought about the kind of life I want - a smaller home, a brief commute, a city existence outside of suburbia. Kevin and I planned to think small rather than sprawling. We want to travel, to enjoy things outside the home.

And then, today, we bought a house. It's really beautiful. The lot is surrounded by trees. The house is bigger than we need right now - we have room to grow. The mortgage will be hundreds above my comfort number.

Will we travel? Will we still enjoy life? Is it really just about making a home, raising some kids, and trying to stay out of crushing debt? I think about debt on a regular basis. What amount is too much? How much does happiness cost?

For this moment, I have my answer. Happiness (with a morning room, walkout basement, gourmet kitchen, bay windows and a luxury bath) runs about $350,000 (before design upgrades).

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.

Things I miss about Richmond

Pizza from Bottoms Up.
Cary Town Watermelon Festival.
Cary Town - period.
James River.
Baker's Crust breakfast on Sunday morning.
Hollywood Cemetery.
Lane Sanson.
Sharky's.
Irish carbomb shots.
David Carter (dot-com).
Magnolia Trees.
Art.
Parties at Susan's.
Molly's screened in porch.
Tailgating the Strawberry Hill races.
Drag brunch.
The Aquarian on Ellwood.
Millie's.
Antiques.
Sales at High Cotton.
Saxon Shoes.
Snow in open fields in winter.
Tree frogs in summer.
Monument Avenue in fall.
Anywhere in Spring.
Texaco happy hour.
Shockhoe Espresso - late at night in winter.
Penny Lane Pub.
Lee - the fantastic, gorgeous hairdresser/rock band leader.
The ability to drive to the beach for dinner on a "school night."
My friends & my brother.