I’ve always looked up.
This summer, my family took a trip to visit friends in Virginia and Maryland. While we were there, we stopped at the Naval base in PAX that my dad used to be stationed at (we lived there for about 18 months when I was in kindergarten; it was in between two of our tours in Ridgecrest). We attended a Change of Command ceremony for a colleague of his, and afterwards drove around to see the rest of the base. We drove by a park and my mom said “Emily, that park over there is where we used to come play all the time.” “Oh cool,” I replied not really being phased by it, after all it was a generic looking park in a grassy area right next to some woods. “It’s funny,” my mom continued, “I remember you being very afraid of coming here the first few times.” ”Why is that?” I asked.
“You used to tell me that you were very scared and thought something would happen to you if you got too close to the jungle. You were really afraid when you couldn’t see the sky.”
Growing up in the desert does that to you, I guess. You don’t even have to look up to notice it.
