Shangri La

I think it takes going back to places you have been in your life to better appreciate where you are. We stopped by the very first place I lived in when I lived in Arizona. 4004 McKellips Avenue, Mesa, AZ. I didn’t think the compound, known as “Shangri La,” was still going to be there. I assumed some smart businessperson would have snatched the property up and made it a huge development or a shopping mall. But it was still there. A little weathered maybe, but still standing. Some guy who lives on the property came out a few minutes after we got there. He started talking to us and told us that Richard—the guy who was living there years ago—is looking to sell the place. I’d like to buy it, if only just to preserve the memory of what it means to me. It meant a more simple time in my life (less responsibilities, but not in a bad way), it meant more optimism about me as a person, it meant doing something with my life that positively affected others, it meant new challenges and new people, it meant peeing in the toilet and only flushing when it was brown, it meant learning to live with others, it meant fresh grapefruit, dates, and oranges, it meant peacocks and community meals, it meant meditation benches, it meant defining who I might be, someday, as a person, as a man.

I don’t regret what happened in my past that might have veered me in a different direction. Things happen for a reason, my wife and I always say. If I didn’t move to a different house in Mesa with my roommates because of a mouse problem, if I didn’t meet Lyn, who had three kids, and was not even divorced from her 2nd husband, if I didn’t quit JVC early (which two people who knew me well back then did not remember I did), if I didn’t get a job as a social worker in a nursing home, if I didn’t meet Dave and Faith, if I didn’t date “Crazy Debbie,” if I didn’t decide to move back home, if I didn’t take a job at Sherwin Manor, if I didn’t get mad that residents were abused there and I needed to move on, if I didn’t have an awesome phone interview with ManorCare, celebrate by getting high, have an equally great interview a month later, get offered a job for the largest nursing home company in the country, if I didn’t take that job and agree to working an hour and a half out of my way, if I didn’t meet Cyndi on the first day of this new job…life would surely suck.

The chain-of-events all seem to make sense to me. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see this. It sometimes simply takes getting on a plane, the desire to show your children your past, and finding a little bit of Shangri La in an orange grove in Mesa, Arizona.