I wake up with the most miserable migraine since my sorority’s Pledge Night in college. I woke up that day at four in the afternoon in a dress I had not been wearing the night before with pizza adhered to my thigh.
I remembered none of it.
I remember very little of last night, except…
I have flashes of doing shots, dancing, doing bad things with adhesive sunshines.
I groan.
“Please, God,” I pray out loud, shutting my eyes. “Make it all a bad dream. If you do, I promise I’ll never do anything bad again in my life.”
I chuckle at my prayer, my head hurting even more.
Why do we only barter and make promises with God when we want something from Him or know we’ve messed up?
I brace myself, take a deep breath and sit up, the room all Tilt-A-Whirl. I search for my cell. It is encased in my thigh, just like the pizza from so long ago.
A scrolling line of texts, longer than a royal decree, awaits.
It seems my daughter has gone—what do you kids call it—viral? Even made the news here in Michigan. Call me. When you sober up.
My mom. The former nurse and current hospice nurse who thinks she’s Ellen.
I click the link my mother has shared from her news station in Traverse City, Michigan.
A Palm Springs meteorologist flashed, well, her high-pressure system to viewers in a tirade now heard ’round the world…
I throw my cell across the room.
The video continues to play.
…if she looks familiar to you, she is. That’s Amberrose Murphy, who was born and raised in Traverse City and now goes by the name Sonny Dunes…
Sonny. Sunny.
I squint, the sun glinting into my bedroom.
How ironic, Amberrose, I think.
I groan getting out of bed, my stomach lurching. I kick my cell toward the bathroom and finally bend down, pick it up and turn it off, the simplest of actions making me dizzy when I stand up again. My mouth is drier than the desert, and my tongue feels as if it’s been stung by bees. I splash my face with water and then just stick my mouth under the faucet, lapping water like a thirsty dog. I look at my face in the mirror. It is blotchy and swollen. My eyes have more bags than Macy’s.
The bags have bags.
I take a shower, and when I’m finished, I feel maybe an ounce better. Better being relative in perspective. Better meaning that I no longer feel like I perhaps might die, although I am still walking dead, like a zombie. I head to the kitchen, make coffee, take three aspirin, drink an entire bottle of pH water that I had stolen earlier this week from Ro-Ro and a glass of orange juice and then put my head on my countertop and watch the coffee drip.
When we’d play games in my family growing up, my sister was always the timekeeper, my dad always the scorekeeper, my mother and I the entertainment. Joncee would hold the little plastic hourglass and—when no one was looking—tap it, hard. She’d look at me and wink, put a finger over her lips and mouth, Shh.
In the winter, after we’d played in the snow all day and the world grew dark in the late afternoon, my dad would make a fire, and my sister would pull out all the games from the cabinet beside it: Operation, Yahtzee, Monopoly, Trouble, Battleship, Uno, Sorry!, Candyland.
More than anything, Joncee loved jigsaw puzzles, the ones with a thousand pieces that took forever to complete. Her favorites, of course, were winter scenes, cardinals in snowy branches, a cabin in the woods with smoke billowing from the stone chimney, a girl sledding down a hill. Often, I would catch her with a puzzle piece in her hand seated in front of the fire, just watching us. She loved games and puzzles, I finally realized, not to win or for the fun of it all but because the entire family was together on a cold, winter’s night. We were one.
I watch the coffee drip, thinking of not just how fleeting time is but how the truly magical moments in our lives are the simplest, and how we let them pass without a thought. We foolishly believe that somehow they will all last forever, that destiny will not show up at our door unannounced and knock when we least expect it.
I believed that.
I forgot that time is cruel. I pretended things would be different.
First, my sister.
Then, my dad.
Now, my career.
I am alone at fifty. Hungover, my head on the counter, waiting for coffee to revive me from a funk that has no end.
I grab a mug and then the pot of coffee. I fill it and add a touch of cream and head to the patio with my cell.
After I knock down half a mug and can feel the caffeine pulse though my system, revive my brain and lift my lids, I finally look at my texts.
Three hundred eighty-one.
I take a deep breath, another slug of coffee and start to read.
Most have the same theme: Are you okay? Did you need to talk? Are you going into rehab?
Many are from those entertainment shows—Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, even The Weather Channel—wanting an interview.
My phone begins to ring.
My mother.
I do not answer.
That’s when I see my hedge moving. I sit up. There is a camera lens poking through the green.
What the…
I stand and race at full sprint toward the ficus before the photographer can react. I grab the camera and yank it free.
“What the…?” a man’s voice says. He’s peering at me through the hedge from the street.
“No, that’s my question,” I say. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m with Hollywood Gossip,” he says. “The celebrity news site.”
News site?
“We’d love an interview about your breakdown.”
Breakdown. So that’s what they’re calling it.
“I didn’t have a breakdown,” I say indignantly. “I was angry that I lost my job. I perhaps had too much to drink.”
I peer through the hedge. He is recording me on his cell.
“I’m not trespassing,” he says. “I’m on public property.”
“I’m not doing an interview,” I say. “I’m not allowing you to use anything I say. And if you want your camera back, you will go away quietly. Otherwise it’s going in the pool. Deal?”
“Deal,” he says.
“I want to see you erase that.”
He lifts his cell and I see him hit a button. He turns the screen toward me. “See? It’s all gone.”
I poke his camera back through the thick hedge, and he grabs it.
“Go away,” I say. “Please. If you need a quote, talk to my agent.”
He is quiet for a moment. “She said to talk to you.”
Oh, JoAnne, I think. Anything for publicity. That’s why I call her, “Oh, no, Jo!”
“Go away,” I tell him again. “I’m a bit under the weather.”
I watch him move away, and then I hear a car start and drive away.
There’s only one place I can go to be alone right now, I think, turning to look at the mountains behind me. On a hike.
Despite my hangover, I nab my backpack, fill its inner reservoir with water, and place an apple, some nuts and a protein bar inside. I grab another cup of coffee and drink it as I slather on sunscreen. I change into my hiking clothes and, on my way out, pull a ball cap from a hook in the garage. The hat reads: DSRT: The Desert’s #1 Newscast.
I put it back and grab a yellow one: Sonny Says It’s Sunny Again!
I take both caps and throw them in the trash, before pulling free another one. It’s a purple cap with a big block N from my alma mater, Northwestern.
More like N for Nincompoop, I think.
My cell lights up as I drive, but I ignore it. When I reach the Frank Bogert Trailhead, I head into the lot, my car spewing gravel, dust flying. I shove my cell into my backpack, step out of the car, pull on my pack and look into the sky. Murray Peak hovers in the distance.
It is the highest spot in Palm Springs, and it rises from the desert floor, ominously but magically. For some reason, Murray Peak always reminds me of Witch Mountain from the old Disney movie.
I start the hike and—within moments—am gasping for breath. Even with sunglasses on, the sun is bright, and I squint. My head pounds with each step I take, but the higher I go and the more my body labors, the better I actually feel. Exercise, no matter the season, has always made my body—and mind—better. The hike is a series of quick ascents—one small peak leading to a higher one. About an hour in, the path flattens and meanders through the high desert. All of a sudden, the world stills. I can no longer hear any traffic. There is no one around. The tourists generally don’t hike this far. I stop, take a long draw of water and look out over the desert floor. Some years, when we’ve had an abundance of moisture, Palm Springs will have what’s known as a superbloom, when the desert literally explodes in color. We have not had enough rain or cool temperatures to have a superbloom for a while, but it’s super close to one this year due to a couple of late summer monsoons and some fall showers.
The usuals—the yellow desert sunflowers, which sort of resemble small daisies, the cactus and the purple lupine—are in bloom. But their friends—sand verbena, brown-eyed evening primrose, desert moon flower—are, as well.
I pull my backpack off, set it on a nearby rock and reach for my cell to take photos of this display.
Perhaps some video would make a nice lead-in story to the forecast Monday night, I think.
Without warning, I nearly burst into tears.
I lift my face to the sun to steady my nerves.
The sun has been a constant companion to me the past few decades. Many think being a meteorologist in the desert is easy—and I am a meteorologist, not a “weatherman.” I earned my degree in climate-space sciences and engineering and worked in research for the university after graduating—but it’s not. The sun can be as unforgiving as a Michigan winter, and the constant tracking of earthquakes is more frequent and much scarier than any thunderstorm or blizzard.
I have grown used to the sun. I ran from the clouds and the snow because they were like memories: they hovered and refused to dissipate. They darkened my days and my mood.
So, Amberrose became Sonny.
Literally.
And now who am I?
I glance at the desert in bloom, and it can’t help but make me smile. I suddenly think of Michigan in bloom—after winter—and what a Wizard of Oz Technicolor dream that was: the sunny daffodils followed by the lollipop tulips, and that canopy of green that just pops out of nowhere one warm day when you look out and every bush and tree has come to life again.
Northern Michigan. Southern California.
Before. After.
I reach down and pick a stem of lupine.
What a spectacular show of life emerging from the harshest of conditions.
Reenergized, I move with a purpose toward Murray Peak. The last fifteen minutes of the hike are straight up. There are no switchbacks. It’s simply a serpentine staircase to heaven. Without warning, I start running, my hiking shoes spitting rocks, and I don’t stop until I reach the peak.
I lift my arms into the sky, take a seat at one of the two picnic tables, which I still wonder how they managed to get up here. I eat my lunch and realize my hangover is fading. I am as high as the ravens. They circle just below where I am sitting, wings out, casting dramatic shadows on the mountain ridges. I sit in silence, shut my eyes and let the breeze calm me. When I open my eyes, a constant stream of baby monarch butterflies float by. They are born, in droves, when it warms in the winter, and they quite literally float along the same path like a yellow river. The butterflies are so tiny, so delicate, so beautiful that it makes my heart ache, and I do not want it to end because I need any sign of hope that I can get.
“Be safe,” I yell at them. “Be happy.”
I hear the shuffling of rocks, and a hiker has emerged at the peak and is staring at me.
“Butterflies,” I say, pointing. “See?”
“Oh, my gosh, are you…?”
“No,” I say, grabbing my backpack and rushing down the steep path, rocks flying.
I stop when I’m out of sight. Usually, I run a good part of the path back to the lot. I feel it’s good for my balance, eyesight, ankles and agility. Today, I meander.
There’s nothing waiting for me. Nothing to return to.