Here I am in Bolingbrook, Illinois. Sarah, a friend from grad school, and I once bonded over the fact that we both come from towns whose names predicted our obsession with the Renaissance. Bolingbrook is named after King Henry IV of England, a star character in one of Shakespeare’s plays. Sarah’s hometown is Raleigh, North Carolina—Raleigh as in Sir Walter Raleigh, the great English explorer who got chucked in the Tower by Queen Elizabeth for falling in love with one of her ladies-in-waiting.

I looked up Bolingbrook in Wikipedia, and found this image:

Wikipedia describes it as an “average neighborhood street,” and it so is! I swear, it could be my street.

In many ways, the town is nicer than when I grew up. The trees are big and leafy, not the spindly young things I remember. Also, there are book stores. And good coffee. Sure, I have fond high school memories of going to Dennys with my friends and drinking bottomless cups of coffee until our eyes bugged out of our heads, but now my stomach is thirty one years old and can’t take that kind of punishment.

It’s a quiet spring break. I’m hanging out with the fam. Editing my second novel. Rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 3. Grading papers. Tonight, my dearest friend Becky and I are dining at the fanciest restaurant in town (they have cloth napkins!). We’re celebrating, though I’m reluctant to say what we’re celebrating as I’m always afraid that if I take good news too seriously, it will vanish in a puff of smoke. This is not a good attitude, I know. It keeps me from enjoying things.