Sojourner

 I would like to be a cup-half-full person. I regularly sit down with myself and go over all the good things that are happening, all the good that has happened, and the good that will surely be in the future. But, it is not my first reaction. I know that with the joys, life is a series of sorrows that can’t be circumvented. 

My family loved to catastroph-fy. We would hold intense debates over how to spend the insurance money should a parent die. (We were always on the edge of financial destitution. I believe we slunk out of several towns with unpaid bills in our wake.) 

By the time I was in 10th grade I had been in 8 different schools in 8 different towns. I loved moving. My sister and brother would moan and fight and cry about moving, but I loved it. (One time, after the announcement of an imminent move, my sister was so traumatized she had the hiccups for days.) 

For my ever-optimistic mother, relocation signaled a new start. Moving didn’t mean new start to me. It simply meant new places to see, new people to observe, new skies, new neighborhoods to ride my bike in. Moving kept me at a distance from the kids and people in each new place. They weren’t going anywhere. I was. They were nice (or not) but I could take or leave them. I craved new places. And I craved the anonymity moving gave me.

Yet, our nomadic life infused in me a sense that this life is precarious: houses and friends are temporary, trouble will find you anywhere so keep hiking. “Things don’t matter, if things don’t matter,” became my mantra way before I knew there was such a thing as mantras or world views. Interactions with people were messy and unpredictable, but one thing you could count on, sooner or later, something would hit the ground, break-down, go south. So hit the road. 

Ironically, I have lived in basically the same area of Chicago now for over 50 years. I feel like a land-locked sailor. I never wanted to live in a big city, and I certainly never wanted to live on a busy street with front-facing windows between a fire station and a hospital. Instead of the sound of wind rushing in through an open car window as I careen down the highway to anywhere, I have sirens. 

But, the lakefront park that stretches the length of Chicago is only a few blocks away. My apartment is comfortable. I have everything I need, and much of what I want. My neighbors and family are kind and would help us in a heartbeat. I tell myself this as I imagine a small camper nestled in a state park under towering pines. Gas in the tank, ready for another day of travel. 

I also tell myself that these are 1st world problems. Ones that many, many women all over Chicago and the world would love to have. I am blessed. But I can’t stop dreaming of the open road. It’s my Boxen—the imaginary home that C. S. Lewis invented as a child wherein he felt this intense yearning for a home not found here. For Lewis, that deep yearning for Other, was evidence that we are not entirely creatures of this world. 

I too can’t shake the wanderlust, or my search for true-north, even if I can only visit it in my imagination. For now.