Living in the Desert, Lesson #3: The Sun

How very observant of Candy to notice that, in the desert, the sun is turned up loud.

This commentary is not about the heat. I'll save that for later. This is about how the sun never goes away in Phoenix.

My old college roommate, Belle, and I delighted in one another for many reasons. One of those is that we are two people who adore gray skies. It may have been the first time either of us found another netherbeing who deems it a happy sight to open the morning curtains to a dismal, threatening sky. It was dang-near shameful to be us. When we admitted our craving for cloudy days, we spoke in low tones, as though confessing to being secretly in love with a lesser-known Osmond.

In our 4th floor dorm room, we shared an array of secrets and rituals. For instance, one thing that Belle cannot stand is when someone bites cloth. With their teeth. Yeah, I know. When she first told me, I thought what you're thinking: "How often do people bite cloth?" In our dorm, not often at all. Until I mercilessly spread the word. Then we all openly gnawed on our big fat bath towels while passing Belle en route to the shower.

Another ritual: On Thursday nights as we were falling asleep, Belle and I would talk about creepy things across the darkness between our cheap dorm-crap twin beds. Frequently we retold a story that had scared the spleens out of both of us years before: "The Monkey's Paw." A horror story from 1902 about the paw of a dead monkey that brings its owner any wish they ask for, but with hideous repercussions. The monkey's paw eventually comes knocking at the door, a furry little severed grim reaper. Like a lucky rabbit's foot dipped in hell-gravy. Why did we need to relive this fear on Thursday nights? Probably because the weather forecast had predicted sunshine for Friday.

Belle would understand how sick I am of the sunny days of Phoenix. One after another after another. It's as though the sunshine is holding me hostage. It desperately wants me to fawn over it and tell it how glorious and wonderful it is. Which I cannot do. Because sunshine annoys me.

Sunshine is also devious. Sometimes in the morning I look out the back window to a delicious metal-colored overcast sky. A work of art. I sing and prance my way to the kitchen to hurry and celebrate with a poptart-y breakfast. By the time I turn on the coffee, the sunshine has sneaked around to the front of the house to taunt me. "Oh!" it beams. "You thought I'd left? No. I'm here. And I'll be here all day today. And tomorrow. To infinity." I look at it in grim silence. And then it chews up my brown sugar cinnamon toaster pastry and spits it out in little blobs of sparkly sunlight, scattering everywhere like poisonous toads.

Why do I love gray weather? Because it feels calm, peaceful, low key, unpressured. All those things that I am not. When I see cloudy skies as soon as I wake up, I actually can't help smiling. Because then there is no sunshine-induced urgency banging at the door.

When I was little and it was sunny and hot, my mom would say "Get out there and enjoy that sunshine!" All I wanted to do was stay inside with my friend, the TV. Outside, there were no friends. We lived in an area so rural it would've taken me an hour to ride my bike to a friend's house. In the sun. At which time my friend would've wanted to play a game like "Who Can Stay Out in the Sun Longest." And if we did go inside for a tiny little break from the glare, we'd have no doubt had a glass of Sunny-D. If it had been invented back then.

So I mostly stayed home and was sucked onto the front of the TV like a squid onto the mask of a deep sea diver. Until my mother would once again order me outside to "soak up some of that good sunshine." Which was just like telling me to go slam myself head-on into a briar thicket or find a fistful of earthworms to put down my shirt.

At least back then, in the midwest, you could count on a cloudy day coming along regularly. A good old violent storm hit us every couple of weeks in the summer. The kind that had us running to the basement holding blankets over our heads, bumping into one another like alarmed bedouins. Hmmm. Which may have been my sign that one day I would dwell in the desert.