Heads Carolina, Tails California

My brother-in-law Martin has impeccable taste in music - cultured, wide-ranging, studied. I do not. My musical tastes bring him some pain, and he struggles to understand my plebeian enjoyment of genres such as country. He has a generous heart, however, and during our third year in Hopi he assembled an album of popular country music songs he found less objectionable and gave it to me for Christmas.

It was a much-enjoyed gift, and the whole family got to know the songs very well as I played them over and over again on our shopping marathons to Flagstaff. Even Luke, whose musical interests align more with Martin's than with mine, admitted to enjoying some of the recordings. In particular, we came to love Jo Dee Messina's song "Heads Carolina, Tails California".

It's not hard to understand why that song resonated with us so much. Life in Hopi was busy, lonely, and barren by that year. Luke worked night and day, and I was stuck in the house with three young children. Strong, persistent winds blasted dust and sand through the air and under every windowsill, making it difficult to play outside even when the temperature was nice. The weekends Luke didn't work were spent driving four hours round-trip to Flagstaff. Once there, we'd visit our round of stores and businesses, feed and nurse and potty and run the kids around in the corners of time left over, pack the car to the gills with our next two or three weeks of provisions, and try to return home before dark.

"Heads Carolina, tails California," we'd sing as a child wailed that they had to pee and we pulled onto the liquor-bottle strewn shoulder of the reservation road. "Somewhere greener, somewhere warmer," we'd hum as we dodged broken glass and thorns, squinted against the driving dust, and guided the child(ren) behind rabbitbrush to do their business. "Up in the mountains, down by the ocean," we'd chorus as a family as we drove through a pile of tumbleweed blown together in a depression of the road. "Where, it don't matter, long as we're going somewhere together!" Luke and I would croon to each other as returned to our dusty home at long last, threw no-longer-frozen pizza in the oven, and began to put our provisions away and settle the kids for bed.

Of course, getting away wasn't really simple. The nearest major airport was 4 1/2 hours drive, all trips required significant logistical planning, and Luke had trouble getting more than a few days off at a time. But it was really fun to imagine that all we had to do was flip a coin and end up in a place where things were green, warm, and easy. Singing the song to each other was a light way for Luke and I to admit that life was hard sometimes.

"Heads Carolina, tails California...

"...somewhere greener, somewhere warmer!"

Fast-forward about eight years. We live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest now, where summer is the magic time you dream about during wet, gray winters. People from around the world come to visit this time of year because it's so lovely. And - rich irony - this is the summer that we're vacationing in both Carolina and California. We don't even have to flip a coin.

I'm convinced that God has a sense of humor.

It's true that California was warmer.

We just returned from our week in California, which accounted for my silence on this blog. We had a wonderful time with family, which was great - because if we had gone just to experience California itself, we would have been disappointed. We visited during a record-setting heat wave. Our car thermometer topped at 112 degrees as we drove through Sacramento, and settled at 108 degrees at Luke's parents' house in El Dorado County. The mercury easily cleared 100 degrees every day of our vacation. My kids (who forgot what Arizona heat was like) were appalled, and locals scrambled to assure me that it wasn't always like that. We spend a lot of time together inside, playing board games and singing to my adorable 15-month-old niece. We fried an egg on the pavement. Our excursions were limited to a local museum and restaurant, a splash park, a pool complex, and one hike in the mountains (where even at 7000 feet, it was still in the 80s).

It was sad to leave family, but it is joyful to be back here, where things are cool and green again. Even the gray sky today was welcome and welcoming.

There's no place like home.