I’m in Mesa, Arizona, in the backseat of C’s car. I watch the desert expand itself as we travel east out of the city. We are leaving behind the watered cactuses and thick palm trees marking the gardens of retirement communities and shopping centers. The farther east you drive towards mount Superstition, the resort version of the desert dries out, giving into the bald red earth. Dry sagebrush cracks, waiting for a flood. The red dirt stirs and whips into dust easily as cars like ours fly past.
We pass a high school. It’s early evening, the sun is striking the sides of adobe bricks. Through the gauze of fencing, I see a baseball team is practicing a game. I wonder if they feel the warmth on their skin as I do on my shoulders through the rear window. Do they still feel eager at the sight of the sun if they’ve grown up with it? When the sun pierces your eyelids awake in the mornings more often than not, year-round, do you still notice it?
I remember in Olympia when the sun spell roused us all. Three months a year the sun might come out and fry the black paved streets. Suddenly there we all were, out of hiding. Entering traffic on our bikes, speed walking groups, playing frisbee in cut grass fields. The sun touching my skin through the binds made me grab at frilled tops and cut shorts and lotions. Everything looked and felt tight, sticky, and pale. My friends and I stayed out late as we could. It felt like that’s what we were suppose to do. Bare and legs and arms, goosebumps into cool blue evenings walking the sidewalk back to my house. The sun made us frenzied and anxious to live. It still does, my body remembers that it won’t last long.
