My elder niece, Peep, keeps talking about "Uncle Dan and Mamie's house in the desert." She loves it there, and is having some trouble wrapping her brain around the idea that I am not in the desert anymore.
The other day, we walked out to my car and she stopped dead in her tracks, pointing at the Arizona license plate, a silhouetted saguaro.
"Mamie! You brought a little bit of the desert with you!"
In Colorado, you don't have to surrender your old plates, so I tucked my saguaro into the pocket behind the passenger seat, carrying a bit of desert with me as I drive around my new mountain life.
