Oklahoma.
Chatting with an amazing young author at B 'o B
That’s where I’ve been these past few days, visiting family and spending time at two wonderful independent bookstores, Best of Books in Edmond and Full Circle Books in Oklahoma City.
Signing at Best of Books
I signed copies of While He Was Away and talked with incredible readers and writers.
I also appeared on the TV show, Rise & Shine. (More on this rite of passage when I’ve had time to process!)
My son and I had a great time. We even took a break with our dearly loved cousin to go see The Avengers (though why in this day and age, half-way intelligent, mega-movies still feel entitled, even compelled to make thoughtless, cruel comments about people who were adopted, I don’t understand. I need to write a blog post about this, too).
But some of my favorite parts of the trip were driving with my family around Oklahoma—on the highways and byways, through the city, suburbs, and even out into a little bit of country.
Oklahoma is one of the top Places of My Heart.
I tried to share this with my son. Do you see the soil, how red it is? The trees and bushes—they’re different than those at home, aren’t they? Look at that sky. And that sky. And that sky. Look at the way those radio towers and buildings shoot up out of nowhere, reaching for those clouds, that sunset, that expanse of blue, that spangled black.
When I was a child, before Amtrack (BA), my mother and I would take the Santa Fe Chief (click here for the 1950s film about the Chief) from Chicago’s Union Station down through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, glimpsing the Arch, crossing the Mississippi, passing through innumerable dusty, small towns along the way, until we finally reached the now-defunct and abandoned downtown train station in OKC. We did this about once a year; sometimes twice. As we approached that beautiful, old station and the earth reddened and the sky got bigger, my heart inevitably lifted.
I couldn’t wait to arrive.
I couldn’t wait to arrive this time either.
This past week my cousin told me that when I was a baby, my uncle, a police officer, picked us up in his squad car and escorted us to my grandmother’s house, sirens blazing.
And this past week my cousin told me that when she was a little girl—this was before I was born—she used to think that in between visits my mother spent the entire year perched on top of OKC’s train station. “I thought she just sat up there wearing in her beautiful, elegant green satin dress, waiting until we came to pick her up,” my cousin said.
In spirit, that’s what I’ve been doing, these past years between visits to Oklahoma.
I’ve been sitting on top of the station that is my memory, the family stories pulling in and pulling out, the landscape of the past and present sprawling all around me, ever-changing.
I’ve been waiting. And I’ve been writing. 
It’s no surprise, I guess, that I set While He Was Away in Oklahoma.
I’ve never been able to live there. But I could always visit in my imagination.
Where is the place of your heart, the place you go to in your imagination? What story would you live out there?
