“You do realize it’s about a hundred degrees in here?”
I look up at my mom. I am curled up on the couch drinking coffee in flannel pajamas, thick, wool socks, a plushy, hooded robe. The fire is blazing, the heat is running, and I’m still cold.
“And?” I ask.
“And,” she says, walking over to turn down the thermostat, “I feel like I’m living in a petri dish. And I don’t want a three-hundred-dollar electric bill, since I’m the one who’ll be paying it. Besides, it’s not that cold out.”
“It’s twenty degrees outside, Mom.” I hold up the weather app on my cell.
“That’s not bad for January. And it’s sunny!” She walks over and shakes my leg. I move it so she can sit next to me. “You better start remembering what Michiganians love about winter.”
My mom. The backward hypnotist. Asking me to remember things I want to forget again.
“What’s that again, Mom?”
“We love a sunny day after a newly fallen snow,” she says. “We love being warm enough to be outside without the temperature being warm enough to melt all the snow away. We love a forecast with lots of snow in it so we can do all the things we love to do here in the winter: sled, ski, snowshoe, build snowmen, enjoy our winter festivals…”
My mom grabs the remote and turns on the TV. She scrolls through and stops on TRVC.
“It’s like the first day of school,” she says. “What time is your interview?”
“It’s a meeting, Mom. I’ve already been hired.” I sip my coffee. “I’m meeting Lisa and my weather team today.”
“That nice Lisa Kirk from college? The one who used to make the cookies for Parents Day?”
“Uh-huh,” I say. “She’s the news director. She hired me.”
“That’s right,” my mom says, looking into space. “I’ve seen her around town a few times. Such a sweet girl.” My mom shakes me. “Well, you be nice to her then. You weren’t very cordial to her in college, if I remember correctly.”
“I was nice to her,” I say defensively. “She was just…odd. She didn’t join a sorority. She didn’t party or socialize much. She didn’t have a lot of friends.”
“Because you wouldn’t let her be one,” my mother says, the tone of her voice as direct as it is to meddling families who seem more interested in a dying person’s will than their well-being. “I think she reminded you too much of Joncee. She was so energetic. So smart. So willing to wear her heart on her sleeve. She wanted friends.”
I begin to protest, but I don’t, finally remembering Lisa in the dorm on our very first Parents Day. She had made cookies for all the visiting parents. I just don’t remember hers being there.
“Well, she’s your boss now,” my mom reminds me.
I think of Ronan, and my stomach lurches. I think of Lisa from college, and my stomach somersaults again.
“Is it your stomach?” my mom asks. “Your face always gets that strange look on it when you’re nervous. Do you want me to make you some cinnamon toast?”
Suddenly, I feel like little girl again. Nothing made me feel better and safer than my mom’s cinnamon toast.
“Don’t you have to go to work?” I ask.
“I took the day off so I could drive you to the station,” she says.
“I’m not five, Mother. This isn’t the first day of kindergarten.”
She cocks her head just-so and laughs. “Pretty darn close, though, right?”
I nod.
“So, you want the cinnamon toast then?”
I nod again, she stands, tossing me the remote, laughing all the way to the kitchen.
I turn up the volume and try not to cringe as the newscast returns from commercial.
The set is—let’s just say—not as swanky as what I’m used to. The anchor desk is very small, almost like a child’s desk, and the graphics behind the anchors are also childish, the typography…
“Is that Courier?” I say out loud.
I hate Courier font. It looks like an old typewriter. Courier doesn’t make the news newsier. Just like Comic Sans doesn’t make something funnier.
The reporters look, well, childlike, too. They are very young. Straight out of college young, and most look like Lily Tomlin’s character, Edith Ann: kids wearing grown-up suits. The lead anchor, however, resembles a caveman who was recently thawed back to life. He has unkempt gray hair and a too-long white beard, and, if I’m not mistaken, what looks like a doughnut sitting beside him on the anchor desk.
“How’s the weather looking, Polly Sue?”
“Sunny and beautiful!” she says. “We might hit thirty today. A heat wave is upon us! Back in a sec!”
A heat wave? Sunny and beautiful? Back in a sec? Is she out of her mind?
My mother brings me my cinnamon toast, straight from under the broiler, and it’s even better than I remember: crunchy, golden and sweet on top, the white bread soft, warm and buttery underneath. I feel momentarily better, until the newscast returns.
Polly Sue is using a pointing stick, which I haven’t seen anyone use since the 1970s. I think Johnny Carson used one in a skit. She’s jabbing it around in the air like she’s taming a lion. She points to the seven-day forecast, which now looks as bleak as my life, before sending it back to the anchor.
“Later this week, we say goodbye to Mighty Merle the Meteorologist, who’s retiring after decades of snowy service. He’s off to hunt and snowmobile, and we’ll welcome our new lead meteorologist, a former Traverse City girl who up and left us but has returned. What do you think of all that, Pol?”
“Not much,” she says.
“What the actual hell!” I yell, crumbs flying from my mouth. “Are you seeing this?”
“I think they’re just having a little fun?” my mother says.
“A little fun? Fun to them must be waking up sleeping puppies and babies.”
The newscast ends with a screaming graphic in giant Courier type that reads: The fastest growing news station in Traverse City!
That is not good. In news terms, “fastest growing” usually means a station has horrendous ratings, and in the latest sampling viewership went up by a millimeter, meaning they will tout any increase in any age demographic and try to make it into something when, in reality, the station is celebrating simply because its ratings didn’t go any lower.
Either you’re #1 or you’re nothing.
“You better go get ready.” My mother shakes my leg. “I think it’s going to take you a while.”
“Ha-ha, Mom,” I say. I wipe my face. Cinnamon toast crumbs fall onto my robe.
My mom looks at her watch. “Should I set a timer?”
Two hours later, I emerge from my childhood bathroom feeling not much different than I did decades ago when I was getting ready for my first day of high school.
My stomach is a flurry of butterflies, I’m wearing too much makeup and my hair is way too big. The one thing that is different is that my back hurts from slouching over the too-low bathroom cabinet, which my parents never updated.
I nearly fall down the stairs in my heels when I notice my mom at the bottom snapping photos.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“We always need to capture big moments,” my mom says. “And this house has been without one for much too long.” When I reach the bottom of the stairs, she asks, “What are you wearing?”
“What I normally wear to work,” I say.
My mother eyes me from top to bottom, her eyes lingering on my dress and shoes. Like actresses on a red carpet, female meteorologists must abide by certain fashion rules: the dresses we wear must be what I term “alluringly modest.” They must be formfitting and show off our figures, but they cannot be so overtly sexy as to offend viewers. Our dresses must be free of distracting prints and lace, and they are generally brightly colored, but never green, or else our bodies disappear in front of the green screen and become weather maps. The dress I’m wearing is red with a black piping that runs down the front of the dress, around the waist and then along the edge of the hips. It’s known as “the dress,” and I’m not joking. It’s the dress that nearly every female meteorologist wears as it’s flattering for nearly every body type, and it comes in about a hundred different colors. There are Reddit threads devoted to the dress.
Warm, however, it is not.
Nor are my shoes.
“You realize this is Michigan, not California,” my mother says. “You realize this is Traverse City, not Palm Springs.”
“Thank you, Miss Lentz,” I say, referencing my middle school geography teacher.
“Miss Lentz knew the difference between the west and the north.”
My mother heads to the coat closet. “You need this and this and this and this,” she says, tossing a coat, a scarf, some gloves and boots my way.
“I’m not Ralphie in A Christmas Story, Mother.”
“No,” she says. “You’re more like the kid who got his tongue stuck to the frozen flagpole.” My mom stops and looks at me, shaking her head. “You have so much to relearn about Michigan.”
I layer my winter garb, and my mom walks with me to the garage. “Ready?” she asks.
“What are you doing?”
“I told you, I’m driving you.”
“Again, mother, I’m fifty. Not five.”
“Okay, fine. Do you know where you’re going?”
“My car has navigation.”
“But no snow tires. And do you even remember how to drive in the snow?”
I shake my head and give my mom a look as bad as any I’d given Ronan.
She opens the garage door and heads through it and into the immense driveway.
“Phil already plowed,” she says.
I look, and the driveway is clear of snow, knee-high walls of white framing it.
Michigan snowplow drivers are like mythical creatures. They appear in the middle of the night, risking life and limb, so Michiganders can pull out of their homes and make it to work in the morning. Many can make a small fortune in a bad winter—doing homes and businesses—and then spend summers doing nothing more than fishing, boating and drinking beer.
“Phil is still plowing?” I ask. “He must be a hundred.”
My mom shrugs.
I’m not sure my mother has ever seen Phil’s face or would even recognize him in public. For decades, I’ve only seen features of Phil, a green eye and a chapped lip. Phil always shows up in a stocking cap atop a full face mask ensconced in a thermal winter suit, a cigarette butt dangling from his mouth. My mom leaves checks for him that are wedged into the seasonal wreaths on the front door: Halloween witches turn into a Thanksgiving cornucopia that transforms into bright Christmas balls, Valentine’s hearts, St. Patrick’s green and happy spring daffodils.
Yes, it still snows in the spring up here.
My mom lifts her cell phone.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m going to film this,” she says matter-of-factly.
I roll my eyes, get in my SUV, buckle myself in and begin to back out of the garage. As I pull out, I glance up at the house, and a memory pulses through my mind. There is a window above the front door, at the top of the staircase, a little nook where Joncee and I used to read. On snowy predawn mornings, Joncee would sneak to this window and try to catch Phil’s attention with a flashlight and a sign: STOP PLOWING! I DON’T WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL!
When I would join her, I could see the light from Phil’s cigarette dance in the dark, and I knew he was laughing at my little sister. One day, after a bad snow, Phil didn’t plow.
You got your wish, sis, I remember.
Without thinking, I hit the gas and then slam on the brake. There is a layer of ice, where the snow has been plowed and then melted and run off in the sun before refreezing on the concrete. My SUV fishtails. I panic and turn the wheel as if I’m driving at a go-kart track, do a full 360 and slam into a pile of snow.
There is a knock on my window.
“Want me to drive now?”
I unbuckle my belt and get out, dejected, like I just failed my driver’s exam.
“We’re taking my car,” my mother says. She moves my car, and we slide into hers. She repeats what she said earlier. “You have a lot to relearn about Michigan.”
I slump into the seat like a kid and stare out the window.
My parents’ home is situated on a deep, heavily wooded lot a few miles outside of Traverse City as you head toward Suttons Bay. It is perched on a hillside overlooking the West Bay and Old Mission Peninsula, M-22 running between the lot and the water. As girls, we’d stop at the road—looking both ways—and then grab hands and cross it, running as fast as we could, sprinting down the long dock before flying into the water.
The dock is up for the winter, packed away, like my memories.
My childhood home, like so many along this stretch, is what I call “quintessentially Michigan.” Rustic lodge homes made of natural materials consistent with the northern environment: wood, stone, and timber crossbeams.
Growing up, I hated where we lived. It was too far out of town, too far away from my friends, and our house seemed like a strange cabin compared to all the ranch homes and trilevels. But now, after living in Palm Springs, I get it. The house fits the rustic environment, much like the minimalist architecture fits the desert landscape.
My mother turns on my radio and immediately finds a station that plays holiday music 24/7. That’s a thing in Michigan: the day after Halloween, many radio stations immediately begin playing Christmas songs. And it doesn’t ever seem to stop, even after the holidays have long passed.
Anything to get you through winter, I guess.
My mom lets me stew in my embarrassment as she drives. It’s one of her specialties. As we proceed through Traverse, there is no denying—even in the middle of winter—that the town has changed greatly over the last few decades and is booming. Young people bustle about, restaurants, bars, bookstores, coffeehouses and cute touristy shops line the streets. The downtown is decorated for winter, and people seem nonplussed by the snow and cold.
Finally, my mom pulls into a giant development in Traverse City.
“Where are we?” I finally ask.
“The Commons,” my mom says.
“For some reason, I thought the station was still on the other side of town.”
“Just moved here,” she says, “with about everything else.”
“Didn’t this used to be…?” I start.
“An asylum?” my mom finishes. “It did.”
“Fitting,” I say.
“I brought you here a few times to shop after it opened,” she says. “Remember?”
I nod.
When I was young, this huge new development now known as the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, and called “The Commons” by the locals, was the Northern Michigan Asylum, a hospital dedicated to the idea that fresh air and beautiful surroundings could ease the suffering of the mentally ill. After Joncee died, I would come down here and sit, wondering how any of us could even get on with our lives after such tragedy. I felt as if I needed to leave the world and not be bothered. I would watch everyone continue with their lives as if nothing had changed, when all I wanted to do was stop the world and go back in time. I watched kids bike. I watched teenagers laugh. I watched parents walk with families.
I wondered about the patients, actually inquired about what was required to be committed.
“Honey,” a woman at the front desk said, “I don’t know what’s troubling you, but you have your whole life ahead of you. Go enjoy the fresh air and all the beauty of our area. Celebrate every season of your life. Just know you can’t control everything, or it will control you.”
“You should be committed!” I yelled at her.
I walked out, and that’s when everything clicked, just not in the way that stranger had suggested: maybe I could control everything—my life, my heart, even the weather.
And maybe, I knew in my soul, such control could even help save a life.
In the near distance, I hear a branch crack in the cold wind coming off the water, and the sound echoes how I feel inside. I take a deep breath and realize my mother has been talking the whole time.
“This project is the country’s largest historic preservation and adaptive reuse development. The hospital closed in 1989, but its forested grounds and buildings have been preserved. Everyone now comes here to walk, run, ski and bird-watch. There are tons of restaurants, retail shops, wineries, even a brick-oven bakery.”
“Thank you for the tour, Mom,” I say. “How much do I owe you?”
My mother shoots me a glance even icier than the buildings’ gutters. “More than you’ll ever know,” she says. I look at my mom, and my soul makes that sad cracking sound again. Standing here, in the cold, she looks so pretty. So much still like a girl. So much like Joncee. “This place embraced its history. Why can’t you?”
She gets out of the car and heads toward one of the old buildings.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to get a cup of coffee,” she says. “You’ve made it clear you don’t want your mother embarrassing you any longer. Station is on the top floor in that building over there. Good luck.”
My mother tosses me the keys. I just stand there, like I did the first day of kindergarten, scared to walk into class. I take off my boots, put on some strappy heels, place my boots back inside and lock the car.
I turn. The Commons resembles a European castle, or even an old prep school, towering on a hillside, a forest behind, the world its view. I slip-slide across the lot in my strappy heels, a feat that is like walking across a frozen high wire. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to walk on ice. It is not fun.
There is a well-marked sign inside the building’s doors, and I locate the elevator to head to TRVC. I hit the top floor and exit into an outer lobby, where I have to buzz to talk to a receptionist.
“I’m Sonny Dunes,” I say. “I’m here to see Lisa Kirk. I’m the new meteorologist.”
The receptionist looks at me as if I’m a Jehovah’s Witness who showed up unannounced to hand her a pamphlet rather than the new hire who’s going to save her station’s tail.
I smile.
“You can have a seat,” she says.
I hang up my scarf and my coat, stuffing my gloves into the pockets.
A few seconds later, Lisa comes rushing through the doors. She has two phones in her hands, Bluetooth in her ear, a badge around her neck and is carrying an iPad.
“Lisa,” I say, the inflection in my voice dropping.