PaperMe

In elementary school, I did a project on buttes and plateaus--what the differences are between them, what they look like. My dad and I worked in our basement on a model, old coffee cans used to base the paper-mache models. We added layer after layer. My dad has an eye for detail. As the model dried, it was time to paint. We started with a brown base, then added varying shades of tan and grey.

"You need a river going down between the canyons," Dad pointed. So I painted a blue line trailing along the apparant canyon.

I thought of this while on the road this week. As we drove across Arizona from Phoenix to at least the California border, I watched the mountains, the canyons, the buttes, the plateaus. I was reminded of why I loved this land in the first place, how even in second or third grade I was drawn to study the place that I called my second-home, even if I was only there two weeks out of the year. The landscape colored me, coupled by the comfort of family, Arizona called me.

I thought I needed to be there. I often still do.

A few years after the paper-mache landscape, in art class, we created life-sized figure drawings of ourselves. We were then told to mail them to other people and have those people take a picture with "paper me" and mail back the drawing and the photo to  be displayed at the upcoming art show. I remember sending PaperMe to my Aunt Necie, who took a picture making snow angels with paper me in her yard.

Then, I sent PaperMe West to Aunt Sharon and Uncle Tom, who took a picture of the three of us--paper me stuck to a large saguaro in front of their house, aunt and uncle on either side. But the mailing to Arizona took nearly a week then, and PaperMe didn't make it back.

My art teacher had me quickly draw up another one to display with my photos. I scurried crayons and colored pencils into crooked lines that couldn't nearly match the hard work of the original--the real one, in which I had put so much of myself, as artists do. The re-make was simply a shell, a fill-in-the-blank replica. This wasn't PaperMe at all.

She was still in Ariziona, and maybe she still is.

When I first arrived in Mesa on Saturday, the hot air hit me all at once, and I smelt the instant warm of desert, of childhood summers, of a sunlit, familiar sense of home. I hadn't flown into Mesa before, and as we left the plane, we walked right onto the tarmac. I found my way to the door, and soon enough, my cousin Sunny purred around the bend on his motorcycle. I hopped on (yes, Mom, I wore a helmet), and we smoothly navigated highway through desert.

The sun seaped into my desperate skin, and I closed my eyes and leaned back against the seat. The hairs on my arms danced in waves. My breath was slow, concentrated. I smiled uncontrollably, taking in every second of the limited days of my visit, and I thought, maybe this is enough.