Bound Homeward

A year ago this week I wrote my first blog ever, about a journey walking home from work on the Boston Harbor. Little did I know then what exactly the theme that journey home would entail over the next year of my life...


To make a long story short, I moved. 


In fact, I relocated to the region of my youth, to the great and powerful Chicagoland area into a not-so great and powerful purgatory of sorts...jobless and living with the retired 
in-laws for going on eight - yes 8! - months while my husband progresses toward a graduate degree pursuing his dream, while I whither away at a kitchen table that isn't my own in a house that is as still as an empty bird feeder.


This journey home to the Chicagoland area has been a longtime coming, one I've welcomed with open albeit apprehensive arms. I quit a job in Boston I wasn't wild about so once we arrived here I was confronted with my own personal 'now what?' inquisition. To fill the increasing panic-void of having nowhere to go during the day during the week, no children to tend to, no responsibility of any kind really to accompany the impending feeling of being useless most days, I pursued an intense four and a half month paralegal program and graduated with confidence at finding the right job to finally jumpstart my non-existent career. No such luck so far.


Apparently quitting a job, relocating, and changing industries is either the trifecta of ignorance in a country bound by recession, or the perfect storm to administering a much needed personal re-creation. This homecoming has become a rebirth of sorts, a cleaning of the slate for this weary soul to finally get down and dirty, to write or get lost trying. 


On the increasingly less foreign kitchen table that isn't mine, I have dutifully surrounded myself with women's history. Two books (Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Getting There: The Movement Toward Gender Equality an essay compilation by Diana Wells) and a magazine article about Margaret Fuller entitled "Writing the Lives of Extraordinary Women" by Megan Marshall found in Expression, the alumni magazine of Emerson College. I borrowed the books from the library weeks ago and am only on page 35 of the first. But then inspiration struck when I received the magazine this morning and later opened my gmail inbox to a forward by my mother-in-law entitled "A reminder to all' about the ill-treatment of a group of women in 1917 whom by sheer will-power and courage literally stood up against violent oppression because they believed they had the right to vote. These women were jailed, beaten, and tortured because they spoke up, advocating for future generations of women - myself included - to remind us that all women, all people, have voices to be heard, and in this country to right to use those voices. 


My immediate reaction to this viral-email was to ambush all of my gmail contacts with my own personal blurb added. I became hesitant to do so not because I lack conviction to write about such content with my own personal blurbaceousness, but instead because I immediately wondered 'whats the point?' when such viral-email advocacy is either deleted or forwarded based solely on the mood of the reader, female or male.  I trust my contacts to appreciate the importance of the content no matter what they do with it. Perhaps simple awareness is the purpose of forwarding such viral-email to as many contacts as possible in the event no one forwards it along to anyone else ever. I wonder what it takes to gather the gumption to take action, take a stand, to really do something about something when something is stirred up inside. Maybe my hesitancy is a reflection of that question...


The longer I stare at the computer screen contemplating 'send' the more I face the reality of what such a click may or may not mean. And I find myself concerned more about what it means for me to click send rather then for one of my contacts to click forward or delete. Ah-ha. The question is answered. For me it takes a rather large gulp, a closing of the eyes to potential ridicule, two firm feet on the floor, and a faithful leap into cyberspace, all with bright red fingernails for good measure. And I find that not only have I forwarded the email to all of my contacts, I write this as well.


As with the viral-email, perhaps my journey home has occurred to unite the past with the present, to share my journey with others to inform, to advocate, to continue learning. Perhaps this has become the catalyst I've needed all along to fully decompress, to walk on my own path, to finally begin understanding the ways of the women that have traveled before me so that I may get to where I've always known I should be: writing down every winding, twisting path I find myself wandering.   


And in the meantime, I bake cakes and cookies to keep the journey that much sweeter. Mom taught me well. 

Welcome to My Journey Home

Gnarles was in my head when I left work today. Crazy how a song can infiltrate a relatively harmless walk home, but suddenly whoop-bam! there it was out of nowhere (seriously I haven’t heard the song in days) just in time for my .7 mile walk in the stinging cold of Boston’s harbor. Weaving through the Financial District with looming glass, brick, and mortar overhead has its fair share of "crazy" fun, so why the hell not have an apropos soundtrack in my head to guide me? I walk in any weather condition, bundling up and looking quite ridiculous most days, soaking to the bone on some, and sweating under multiple layers more often than not. I walk without ear buds to hear the waves lapping near the actual site of the Boston Tea Party at Fort Point Channel, to hear the rain as it pelts my umbrella, and even to hear the winded conversations of busy walkersby texting or talking their way down the street. It is rare when I spot a fellow listener. Mostly I am alone in my reality real-time, hearing my own thoughts choosing not to drown out the everyday madness of the city surround sound.  

Pedestrian crossings have many challenges here. Today the Devil's horseman, piloting a black four-door sedan of course, raged over white lines just three feet from me with no directional threatening to run off any other commuter that dares get in the way, not even braking for the lady at the corner with a cane yet screeching to a halt at the next traffic light. The others horseman creep up next to the Devil only to boggle at the impatient crazy clearly wondering if perhaps this one is truly in a hurry for a purpose or just in a hurry to hurry. Surprisingly, the sedan didn't run the red light like the N-star van. That white and blue bullet saw a clearing and just as I was crossing the double yellow with both feet it bolted right through the light within two blocks of a police officer directing traffic. 


Luckily, I was well out of the way and decided to take the scenic route through the new pedestrian alley by the Hotel Intercontinental, passing a gallery displaying a giant black wire bust of Albert Einstein boasting the same metallic black as the Devil's sedan and oozing just as much pomposity in all its 3-D glory. Gnarles continued thumping along to the beat of my paisley rain slickers.

Still... Gnarles, the Devil, N-star and Einstein are just observations on my quest to somehow decompress my work-tapped brain. People are amazing and infuriating and really all I can do is keep one foot ahead of the other, breathing deliberately and walking with purpose, whether I do or don't have a destination in mind.

Welcome to my journey home.