Home is Where Your Tribe Shows Up

Photo Credit: JackWy Photography

In his posthumous novel by the same title Thomas Wolfe famously proclaimed that you can't go home again because things change. People grow older and more cynical, the town itself expands into something other than how you remember it or contracts into itself due to economic shifts, and leavers are shunned as traitors to family and community. Especially if one of those leavers writes a book reflecting the author's nostalgic image of that community.

I'm here to say that not only can you go home again, it will welcome you with open arms, show up at your book events, stand in line for hugs, and delight in reminding you of a thing you did that you'd forgotten or might wish they'd forgotten. But mostly you will laugh, the kind of laugh that starts deep in the belly and hollows out a secret place where tears are stored. Memories collide; the reality of your mortality a mirror staring back at you in all their beautiful faces. 

Last month I traveled to West Michigan for my Midwestern book launch of THIS I KNOW. My biggest fear was not that folks wouldn't buy my book, but that nobody would show up. People are busy with kids and jobs and aging parents. Driving 30-60 minutes to see an author you knew from church or went to school with might not be a priority when there's a wedding to plan, upcoming graduation or work and family obligations. 

But show up they did. I signed books for those I sat next to in kindergarten in the 1960's, smoked my

first joint with in high school, waited tables together while raising our children, hung out at the beach with every summer, sold real estate for during the 80s, and a critique partner who remembered when THIS I KNOW was just a seed of an idea. There were friends, friends of friends, cousins, nieces and nephews, and people who'd merely heard about me through the grapevine--still the most reliable form of communication in the rural Midwest where decent cell and internet service are as scarce as designer handbags. 

Best of all my five siblings sat grinning from the front row at nearly every event, lined up much like when we scrunched together in that old wooden pew every week as our Dad went into overtime on his vigorous Sunday sermons. On one of those nights we enjoyed a slumber party, scattered around my eldest sister's cottage in our jammies, munching snacks and sharing stories from our current lives but mostly stirring up memories form our shared past.

Thank you to every one of you who attended my events, arranged after-parties, put me up in their home, and drove me where I needed to go. A special gratitude to Barnes & Noble Muskegon, Book Nook & Java Shop in Montague and The Bookman in Grand Haven for hosting me at your lovely bookstores. After one of my readings an employee handed me a Sharpie and asked me to sign their author wall. I only hesitated for a moment before writing, "You can take the girl out of Michigan, but you can't take Michigan out of the girl." Because Thomas Wolfe is wrong. You can go home again. And as we say here, you might should.

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Have you heard? THIS I KNOW is Delilah Book Club Selection from America's most listened-to female radio host! Pop over to her page to read Delilah's review and why she chose to recommend my book to her 8 million listeners!

A Room of One's Own

I live in a tiny cottage with my beau but thankfully it came with an extra bathroom. Okay, bathroom is a generous term for the toilet that sits in the basement laundry area with no door, completely exposed. Even so, anyone who grew up in a large family with a single bathroom will relate to the benefit of having more than one commode.

Such was the case for the first twelve years of my life, when my family lived in a two-story parsonage. The house boasted five bedrooms, perhaps because preachers tend to fill a couple pews with their own children. Yet unbelievably, there was just a single bathroom to share between seven kids and two adults. Think about that for a minute. Nine people, one bathroom. I understand this is  not uncommon in third-world countries but this was America. Rural America, but still...

So you can imagine how convenient it must have been to live across the street from our little church, one whose doors were never locked and that contained a bathroom with not one, but TWO stalls. My five sisters and I often pee-pee danced across the street when the bathroom was in use by one of our siblings or, God forbid, my dad. To him, it was not just a bathroom; it was his study, his escape from seven females and our baby brother. When nature called my dad, it was as if God himself had called him to the ministry of elimination. He'd spend hours in there "studying," his claim backed up by the stacks of reference books, concordance, and a several versions of the Bible. And yes, some of them had toilet paper squares marking the pages. 

People often ask if THIS I KNOW is autobiographical. The answer is yes and no. The story is fiction, but did I harvest snippets from my fertile childhood growing up as a preacher's kid? Absolutely. Including this little gem:

By the time I get back from town, Daddy’s in the bathroom doing some last-minute cramming for his sermon tomorrow. It’s one of his favorite places to think. Unfortunately, if one of us needs to pee we have to walk over to the church because he’s not coming out anytime soon. Even if he did, nobody would want to go in right after Daddy’s been in there. I fast-walk across the street, rushing past the church janitor and into the girls’ bathroom. Somebody has scratched "Jesus Loves You" into the back of the bathroom door. I wonder if whoever wrote it considered whether Jesus would like her vandalizing His holy house.

 Sorry, Dad, but that was too good not to steal. 

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If you're reading this on Sunday morning (12-19-17) there's still time to enter a giveaway for a $20 Target Gift Card just by dropping a comment on the thread below this photo on my Facebook Author Page: