GOING HOME IT ISN'T

“Ah, you are going home,” nod my friends as though that could be the only explanation for trading New York after so many years for some unheard of destination west of the Hudson. But going home it isn’t. There’s nothing nostalgic about this decision to move to the historic Illinois river town where I grew up, no yearning for old comforts. If anything, it is a leap into the unknown, as much an adventure as anything else I’ve ever done. The leap surprised me as much as it did my friends. All I planned to do that January Sunday was a little recreational real estate shopping with my sister and niece, checking out an open house at Loretto Towers, a 19th century Catholic orphanage turned condo in the early 70s. For nearly a half-century in-between, the Sisters of the Precious Blood had operated a Girls' Home for unmarried "working girls" like my sixth-grade teacher Miss Christian. I had always wanted to see inside, but live there? Hardly.