The Return to Dry Air

Dear Julie, Andy, Dad,

It was the first time I’d been back to the motherland in two decades.  I met my friends at Rustler’s Roost, and the slide and the kitsch and the country music came flooding back in familiarity.  I was a Stunt Pepper in the park that year, with our only real-life jalepeño-in-the-eye incident, and two kinds of horrid, slobbering monster.  The grass was so cushy it felt fake and there was great love and Mexican food.  I visited my childhood home and found our aged neighbor in her pajamas and got her take on Phoenix over the last forty years.  We stayed in a house of musicians and family.

The next year I was also a little girl throwing herself a birthday party and a carnival barker.  There were delicious breakfast sandwiches and a perfectly dry, bewitching hike in a place called Mesa, and a reunion with an innovating dancer and her friendly, Croatian husband.  The host family was missing, but the house of musicians still slept us that year.

That’s probably all rather vague…

I miss the air and the rocks.

love,

Tim