Hello, Sunshine

Hello, Sunshine 1
You should probably know two things up front. And the first is this: On my thirty-fifth birthday-the day I lost my career and my husband and my home in one uncompromising swoop-I woke up to one of my favorite songs playing on the radio alarm clock. I woke up to "Moonlight Mile" playing on the radio (where it is almost never played) and actually thought, as you only would think if you're a total fool (or, perhaps, if you were about to lose your career and your husband and your home in one uncompromising swoop): The world, my world, is good.

I stayed in bed, in my fresh Frette sheets (a birthday present to myself), the sunlight drifting through the windows, the air chilly and light. And I listened to the entire song, crooning assuredly through my apartment.

Are you familiar with the song "Moonlight Mile"? It's a Rolling Stones song-not nearly as popular as their ubiquitous "You Can't Always Get What You Want" or as wedding-song-sticky as "Wild Horses." "Moonlight Mile" is just the most honest rock song ever recorded. I don't offer that as my personal opinion. I share that as fact: an inarguable fact, which you should twist into your brain and heart so that when someone argues the virtues of a different song as the epitome of greatness (prepare for the Beatles, who naturally arise as a challenge to the Stones), you can smile and quietly think, I know better. It's nice to know better. It's nice to know that when you hear the closing guitar riff of "Moonlight Mile," what you're actually hearing is a piece of music so soft and difficult, so dangerous and quiet, so full of life and death and love, that just below its surface, the song is telling you a secret-a secret that I was just starting to understand-about everything that matters in this world, everything that grounds us and eventually leaves us, all at once.

The tricky part is that the song was the product of an all night jam session between Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones guitarist

Laura Dave is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Last Thing He Told Me, as well as The First Husband, Eight Hundred Grapes, and other novels. She resides in Los Angeles with her family.