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You Can Go Home Again

Thanks to Thomas Wolfe, the phrase, ‘you can’t go home again,’ is as ubiquitous as any number of other clichés.

For years, my husband and I have been searching for a place where we felt at home. We’ve debated going back to New York (where we both originate) several times over, but finally decided it wasn’t an option. We tried Cleveland, but it wasn’t for us.

Palo Alto and San Francisco were even serious contenders for a long time, until we gave up on them a dozen years ago. I live in Los Angeles, and though the weather is perfect. The driving is going to kill me slowly.

My mother-in-law always thought Boston suited my husband. My mother thought I should give Washington, D.C. greater consideration.

About ten years ago, after considering places as far flung as Sacramento and Denver, we decided to broaden our journey outside the United States. London, England and Edinburgh, Scotland were neck and neck for a while. Then my husband was in love with Portugal. Seoul was even in the running for a few months. We considered Paris for as long as it took to figure out we’d have to sell all of our kidneys to afford an apartment there.

Every place had it’s great points, but none gave us that elusive feeling we were looking for. Fast forward five years, and one child later. My husband had a work meeting in Prague. Looking at the map, we searched for somewhere else to go. With our plane tickets paid for, we wanted to get the most for sixteen hours of travel (with a two year old). The debate was between extending our trip to either Vienna or Budapest.

photo by Sylvie Fox

We chose Budapest because I wanted to see the Danube in person and we figured we’d never be there again. Five minutes outside of the train station, we looked at each other and knew, we’d found it. Home again.

I’m writing this post from our Budapest apartment. Every day I walk outside and it’s like taking a step back into my childhood. In so many ways, it’s all that I remember loving about growing up in New York City with the added beauty of Europe.

photo by Sylvie Fox

Yesterday, I was on my way to pick up my son from summer camp and walking down the street shaded by Plane and Chestnut trees transported me back for a long moment to similar walks in Brooklyn with my parents. Whenever I come to New York and drive over the bridge, I nearly cry with relief about being home. (Then I get out of the car, and I find that New York has moved on).

I get that feeling nearly every day I’m here. The streets smell like home. The people remind me of New Yorkers with gruff exteriors and warm hearts. And the food? Someone could have told me that what I considered New York diner and deli food was really central and eastern European food transported six thousand miles. Every time I go to the market, everything is so familiar I want to squeal with delight.

Despite Wolfe’s admonition, I think you can go home again as long as you look in the right place.

Sylvie Fox is the author of The Good Enough Husband. She’s also the author ofUnlikely and Impasse, the first two books in the sexy, contemporary L.A. Nights series. Don't Judge Me, the first book in the Judgment series, releases this autumn. When she’s not battling traffic on the freeways of Los Angeles, she’s eating her way through Budapest.

Setting: Where the Heart Feels at Home

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Richard Bransone

My husband and I in front of the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

Have you ever visited a place for the first time and felt as though you were finally at home?

That's what it was like for me when I first set foot in Italy. And—more incredibly—it's felt that way every time I've been fortunate enough to travel there. I'd expected the magic to wear off after a visit or two, due to familiarity or the added perspective of age, but it's remained constant through the years...like my love of Renaissance art, Murano glass beads, or freshly made chocolate-orange gelato. (For the record, Festival del Gelato in Florence is my favorite gelateria in the world!)

Then again, maybe I'm biased because I'd daydreamed about taking a trip to the famous cities of Venice, Florence, and Rome ever since I was a little kid. Or possibly because our close family friends were native Sicilians. Or because my dad had spent a memorable summer working in that country before he met my mom, and I grew up hearing stories of Italy's beauty. Or maybe it's just because I really love ravioli, passionately sung music, Mediterranean shorelines, and pure southern European sunshine.

"Marilyn Brant's A SUMMER IN EUROPE
is a wonderful tale that captivates readers
as Gwen, transformed by her surroundings,
undergoes a change of heart about life...
and love." ~Doubleday Book Club

I poured my love and first impressions of Italy into a novel called A Summer in Europe (Kensington, 2011). The main character, Gwen, takes her first trip abroad with her eccentric aunt Bea and the elderly lady's outspoken Sudoku & Mahjongg playing friends. The adventure opens Gwen's eyes to the wonderful transformative power of travel and getting to see the world through a new lens at long last. It's a happy story of a woman who's on an inward journey as much as an outward one—though, of course, she doesn't know that at first.

What's always intriguing to me about travel is that, even when we know a trip has the power to change us, I don't think it's possible for us to truly recognize that change happening until we're at least halfway through it. Or maybe even home again...

I remember being sixteen and an AFS exchange student in Brisbane, Australia. I couldn't believe I'd been lucky enough to be chosen for this dream placement. (The residents often called it a "sun-burned" country, but I just called it "gorgeous," especially with sites like the Sydney Opera House, the Gold Coast, the Great Barrier Reef, and real live koalas that I could hold...) I'd read the student-exchange materials with tremendous interest. All of those handouts and brochures that the organizers had sent us—not just about the host country, but also about the time we'd be spending with our host families and our host schools. We were cautioned that we would need to change and adapt to our new environment. That there would be a lot of information to process. That it would be a roller coaster of emotions.

And it was.

Somewhere in the middle of my summer (their winter) stay, I wrote in my trip journal that I was supposed to have changed from all of this, right? Hey, I'd entered into this journey being open to change. I'd expected it. So, why hadn't it happened yet? I felt almost exactly the same as when I'd left home. To my own eye, I was still this mostly geeky, sort of awkward high-school girl who was good as school stuff and not entirely comfortable with much else. It was only in retrospect—some months after I gotten back—that I could see in hindsight that there had been changes all along. Some were subtle shifts in perception. Others were massive worldview transformations that, ultimately, ended up altering the course of my career path and my life.

"Gelato" Photo by Aaron Logan, courtesy
of Wikimedia/Creative Commons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gelato.jpg

I think a strong setting—whether it's in 3D right before our eyes or simply described on the page with heart and an acute attention to detail—has the power to affect as much change upon us and/or our protagonists as any other real-life person or fictional character could. It's the very air we're breathing. The sounds we're hearing. The landmarks in our periphery. And the taste (oh, the delightful taste!) of our most unforgettable dessert.

What's a setting that's left a life-long impression upon you? A place that made you feel at home?

~~~

Marilyn Brant is a USA TODAY bestselling author of contemporary women's fiction, romantic comedy, and mystery. She was named the Author of the Year (2013) by the Illinois Association of Teachers of English. She loves all things Jane Austen, has a passion for Sherlock Holmes, is a travel addict and a music junkie, and lives on chocolate and gelato. If you want to see pictures from her European travel adventures, she has a page on her website HERE. And, in her latest novel, The Road to You, her characters take a road trip down Historic Route 66, and she has photos HERE from that journey as well :) .

A Letter to all Millenials by Jenny Gardiner

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Richard Bransone

authors note:

With it being graduation time, I thought I'd post a recent column I ran as my regular column in my city's newspaper. It elicited a bit of response so I figured I'd re-post it here for your contemplation...

Dear Millenials:

On behalf of my generation, I'd like to apologize. I know there are those who consider you pampered and fragile and expectant of handouts, desperate for the wub-wub-wub of your helicopter parents to swoop in and save you from failing.

But I see it differently. I see us as having failed you on far too many levels. And for that I'm most sorry.

We arrogant Baby Boomers thought we knew it all: how to succeed in business (and life) without really trying. Yet then imposed on our children a set of rigorous expectations, so that they became near-paralyzed in their Herculean efforts to achieve them. To make matters worse, the terms and conditions got changed while they were busy killing themselves to succeed by our skewed definition.

Yeah, my tribe imposed structure out the wazoo: no more playing outside, for fear of kidnappings. Only organized sports, the earlier and more intense the better. Learn your Beethoven while in utero, by God, all to prepare you for a lifetime of preparing you. For what? That's what a lot of these kids are starting to wonder now that they're young adults. For what?

They had to overachieve in order to achieve. The one or two AP courses of my era morphed into quintuple that and more. Childhood became a grind, working to the breaking point, whether in academics, sports or work, preparing you for work. Because these kids practically had to know their career path by Kindergarten.

And in the middle of it all, the bottom dropped out. Even though they did what they were told: work your fingers to the bone to get into the premier college. Don't you dare ever do anything wrong, because it will destroy your permanent record, permanently. Caught with a beer at the age of 18? You'd better hang it up and plan for a lifetime of misery, because You. Will. Pay. Forever.

And now? With an economy my peers decimated, these young adults carry debilitating college debt, for which they cannot find relief: Congress made sure they could never, ever discharge that debt. And despite that unspoken deal we made with them to abandon their childhoods in order to achieve their adult goals, they can't find jobs, thanks to an economy that still barely chugs along.

Instead we have bright, productive, ambitious kids inventorying sweaters at The Gap if they're lucky, or floundering for years in unpaid internships, because that's all that's out there. No insurance, can't afford rent, so they live at home, feeling like losers. Type-A-perfect-score-on-the-SAT-attended-UVA-or-Haverford-or-Dennison-invented-the-cure-to-cancer-but-can't-get-hired-losers.

I want to tell them, "Go. Have fun. Stop worrying about everything." Yet they were brainwashed into a culture of fear. How could you not be afraid, 24/7, when we have CNN broadcasting nothing but "updates" (even when there are none) on a missing and presumed malevolently-downed jet? When Fox News' business model is "scare-the-hell-out-of-you-24/7"? Weaned on war and attacks and uncertainty, it's impossible not to "catch" the fear if you're subjected to it long enough.

My advice for those soon to enter college is not to amass reams of debt for an undergraduate degree at an overpriced university; stay local and save. Look for scholarships when possible, but ironically, in reality, most super-achievers actually don't qualify for merit money anyhow, so why bother? Better yet? Take a gap year and breathe.

Try to have fun while you're in college, while trying on lots of hats to see what truly does strike your fancy. And when you graduate? Travel. See the world. Do it on the cheap while cheap doesn't bother you so much: assuming eventually you'll actually earn some money, you'll get soft and grow accustomed to sleeping on beds, and want to eat at nice restaurants and drink good wine. But now? Forego the comforts to burnish the memories of your journey, which will far more imprint on you and your future than would that unpaid internship-to-nowhere that lies in wait regardless of when you get back.

I wish I had answers for these young adults who doubled down on our rules and were robbed of the intended results. I wish stress and anxiety in young people wasn't at record levels. I wish we weren't drugging these kids up with pharmaceuticals to counter the irrational demands we've placed on them.

And mostly, I wish we hadn't denied them their childhoods. But I'm encouraged that now that they're adults, these bright people are realizing they can rewrite the rules to suit their needs, and they can find joy in less, and not feel bound by this rewardless, perpetual, nose-to-the-grindstone movement we launched on them. They're eschewing the materialism of my generation in favor of simplicity. Their "failure" is ultimately their greatest success.

I was inspired recently by a young couple that travel the country, playing music at farmers markets, sleeping in a retrofitted van. Or the young man who took a break from straight-A grades in a premier college to decompress and work on a sailboat instead. And the UVA grad who got tired of a futile job search and instead took her barista act on the road, California-bound.

Sadly, our cost-cutting, budget-busting, bottom-line society has rendered the finer things in life irrelevant. Music education, arts education, a liberal arts degree? All now viewed by "deciders" as obsolete. Value is only placed on science and technology, so those without such skills are considered professionally irrelevant.

In the meantime, my generation wanted what we wanted and needed it now. And that means sorry, kids, we've fished out your oceans, drilled out your Earth, squandered your resources, and now, lucky you, we're leaving you to hold the bag and figure out if you can fix the mess we've handed you. Thank goodness we made sure you were the smartest generation ever. You're gonna need it.

In the meantime, in this graduation season, I wish you all nothing but peace and happiness. And hope the journey to find that is a joyful one.

Sleeping with Ward Cleaver