home again?

I just looked at an international house sitting website! Even though I just got back to Philly after spending nearly 3 weeks on the road, I still feel restless and I’m not sure why. I’ve started watching Escape to the Country again; they just mentioned a monastery and it turns out it accepts guests! Now I’m listening to a discussion of medieval pilgrims…I feel like I’m wandering but without a clear purpose. I know why I was on the road recently: I participated in the Festival of Literary Diversity at the start of May, gave two radio and two television interviews with Canadian media outlets, and then presented at Youngsters 2, the annual conference of the Association for Research in the Cultures of Young People. Got home, had one day to myself, and then I took the train up to NYC for a week-long residency at MS 366 in Canarsie. I wasn’t sure my two classes of sixth-graders were all that interested in Walt Whitman (who turns 200 this month), but their poetry performance on Friday was great. I saw each class for an hour from Monday to Wednesday; on Thursday I went up to MA to present at The Common School. I rarely work with classes that are majority White, and it was interesting to compare the cultures of the private and public school. I was running on fumes by that point but got back to Brooklyn and on Friday morning welcomed my sixth graders to the Dweck auditorium at the central branch of the BPL. They were ready to go—some read Whitman’s poetry and some read their own original poems. One student had memorized her poem and asked me to stand beside her; when her memory failed, she asked for more support and several boys jumped out of their seats to circle her on the stage! I was amazed and stepped back only to have her turn again and say, “Will you stand beside me?” Middle graders can be quite a handful and my patience was certainly tested during the week, but in that moment I remembered that they were still kids…

I’ve done a lot of talking over the past three weeks; it was wonderful to see family and friends and to connect with new people, but I’m ready for some silence and solitude. I want to finish my writing workbook this week so I can print copies and try them out on some local students. I have three more NYC gigs and one here in Philly, but then I really do slow down for a while. But what will I do with my wide open weeks? I’ve been writing poems and I finished a board book for the youngest readers, but I need to finish a novel this summer. Will I get back to Sweden and my Viking girls? Or should I keep watching the news and go back to my dystopian tale? I put a lot of effort into beautifying my apartment but now I’m thinking about putting everything in storage when my lease ends in August. I love living in Philly and enjoyed walking around my pretty neighborhood this sunny Saturday morning. But being in Canada for ten days got me thinking…I couldn’t entirely give up my life in the US, but I could definitely use a break. Each day the news just gets worse and worse, and I do realize that it’s quite a privilege to be able to just up and leave. My sixth graders in Canarsie can’t do that. But I had the chance to work with some sweet first graders in Brampton and would like to connect with more Canadian kids. I haven’t forgotten about the students I met in Edinburgh last spring…and I left Scotland with the same realization: I can do what I do almost anywhere. So where do I belong? Where do I want to be? It was so easy to settle into a life here in Philly—do I need more of a challenge? Should I be looking at places where I don’t speak the language? Or should I try living in the same country as my family? We get along better with a border between us but my mom is getting older…every time I move I leave someone behind. And moves don’t have to be final—sometimes it’s dizzying to have a revolving door life but it might be the only life that’s right for me. Here today, gone tomorrow, but back again another day…