Stealing Home

I hope everyone’s staying cool right now! Another heat dome has descended over Chicago, so this morning I watered my patio plants, added more mulch, and wished them all Godspeed.

My walking boot is still bumming me out, because even though it says WALKING right in the description, my doctors told me that I’m not supposed to do that very much. Sigh. I bought a knee scooter, but totally forgot about the carpal tunnel in my hands and realized immediately that I wouldn’t be able to grip the handles for very long. Plus maybe I’m too short for one? I dunno, but it felt uncomfortable and unstable and I couldn’t see myself being able to go very far in it, particularly on crowded, uneven Chicago sidewalks. I would very much like to not injure my other leg, and that felt like a distinct possibility. So I’m donating it to charity.

This will not be me.

But! We just got home from a very nice weekend away and I want to tell you about it!

With this book, since I wasn’t sent out on a traditional tour, my husband and I have been reaching out to independent bookstores on our own, trying to find a good fit for events that would be fun and beneficial. Sometimes authors get sent out to the same big bookstores over and over and over. Well, most times, actually. And sometimes with those big stores, you’re just one of maybe 5 or 6 authors they’re having in that week, and the audience can get fatigued with events every single night. So I’m finding that reaching out to stores that don’t usually get the big-name authors is a new and rewarding path. Anyway, there’s a wonderful bookstore in Nashville, IN called Naughty Dog Books that hosted me last Friday, and it was a terrific event! Lots of people came out and lots of books were sold and everyone couldn’t have been nicer.

You can’t see it, but I had to prop my bad foot up on a chair in front of me!

Now, I was born and raised in Indiana, even though I’ve now lived more of my life elsewhere. We moved away when I was twenty-nine. I’m not twenty-nine anymore. But we returned to Indianapolis a lot to visit my parents, of course, and my son went to Indiana University, and so there are a lot of memories there.

Since my father passed away in 2021, though, we haven’t been back; we haven’t driven that familiar stretch of I-65 from Chicago to Indianapolis and beyond.

Sign that welcomes you to Indiana on I-65

I don’t think I was prepared for the emotions I felt when we journeyed there again, after all this time.

First, I was just thrilled to be sitting in the front seat of a car! Living in Chicago, we’ve given up a car and spend a lot of time sitting in the backseat of other people’s cars. And that can get tiring. So it was joyful to rent a car and drive on our own, although I was sad that I couldn’t drive because of my darn foot. I love driving!

So that was fun. But driving down the familiar roads filled me with such overwhelming nostalgia—I keenly felt the passage of time, the loss of so many loved ones, the ghosts of my childhood and youth, the ghosts of my children’s childhood when we’d load them up in the car to go spend a weekend with Grandpa and Grandma. The memories of when I was young and cute and unformed. Just—you know. Life. The passing of it. How fleeting it is.

But we also had such a good time at the event, and just being out and about after so long stuck in our condo recovering from our various physical challenges this year. And then visiting the few family members and friends we still have there—that was wonderful! Again, we hadn’t seen them since my dad’s funeral. So there were lots of hugs and catching up.

All in all, as we drove back home on Sunday, my husband and I kept saying, “Wasn’t this a nice weekend?” As if we hadn’t expected it to be so nice, I guess? I suppose we were both a little unsure of how we’d feel, going back to Indiana for the first time since we lost my father, who was really our last tether to where we grew up. There’s a reason we left but there’s a larger reason why we didn’t go back, and that’s all I’ll say. Chicago is our home, our place, our safe space, our soul.

I’m not going to get all Thomas Wolf here, because I’ve never believed you SHOULD go back again. We’re not all born into families who love or understand us. And we’re not all born in the place where we belong. Sometimes you have to venture out into the world to find home. My father never lived more than ten miles away from the house where he was born, except for a time in the Navy. And while he was content with that, he also was never comfortable with anyone who didn’t have the exact same life experience that he had.

Funny that all of his children moved far away, when they were adults. We each had a different idea of home.

And now I’m out of profound thoughts! I’m just going to end on the fact that I had a very nice weekend and hung out with nice people and had the best fried chicken I’ve had in ages – Nashville House, in Nashville Indiana—and that Naughty Dog Books now has a ton of signed copies of THE WINDSOR AFFAIR and a couple of my other titles, if you want to order one.

Stay gold, Ponyboy!