The Gilmore Book Club

How to Find Your Own Stars Hollow

Valentine’s Day. Around this time, the world aims its focus on couples, romantic feelings, and falling in love. As a single person, I usually just ignore this day completely, though my freelance career normally has me writing several articles gift guides or romantic movies to watch during this time of year.

Being in love makes you feel powerful, accepted, and celebrated. A shimmery bubble of light-heartedness and love surrounds you and a gentle peace radiates through your body. Of course, being in love doesn’t always feel like this, but it’s those beginning feelings of love, and those days when your love has grown strong that really matter. Love makes you feel at peace and at home.

If you think you’re about to read a love story, you’d be right, but before grabbing your popcorn and settling in for a real life rom-com, you should know: I’m not going to talk about a person I love.  Instead, I’m going to tell you about a place that I love, a place that made me feel at home.

My parents and I first visited Chicago for Spring Break one year when I was in High School. My sister was at “The Happiest Place on Earth”, a.k.a. Disney World, with a friend, so in the interest of fairness, my parents let me select my own vacation destination.  My choice? Chicago. I didn’t know it then, but The Windy City would soon become one of the Happiest Places on Earth for me.

As soon as I saw the Chicago skyline though the window of our cab, I knew I was in love. The skyscrapers, the creative energy as strong as a gust of Chicago wind, and the city life immediately captured me a gravitational pull of their own.  Completely captivated, I spent those first days dreaming of the future my new love and I could have together. It was a marvelous, and somewhat chilly week in the city, but before we had left, I had made up my mind: I was going to move to Chicago.

For most, moving to a place where the lifestyle and culture is completely different than your own can be daunting. Some, like myself and Isak Dinesen, it can be an exhilarating, life-changing experience. Dinesen, the pen name of Karen Blixen, moved from Denmark to a farm in Kenya. Her other works, some under other pseudonyms, have received acclaim, but Out of Africa is one of her most famous books. Full of stories from her years in Africa, Out of Africa is more than just memories from a place where one has lived. It is a love letter to a land that seemed to have always been calling to her from across the vast distance, “Come, and be who you were born to be.”

I still had to graduate from High School, and I didn’t even know of any colleges in Chicago, but staying in South Carolina wasn’t an option for me. It seemed like everyone who grew up in my hometown went to one of two places for college: Clemson or the University of South Carolina. My sister had chosen Clemson, so I was already familiar with the schools in our area, but even before taking a tour around the campuses, I was certain that my destiny was elsewhere. In fact, I felt the same about my hometown. We had moved there was I was two or three, so it was the only home I could ever remember, but it was only home in the sense that it was where my family and I resided. Living there just never felt quite right for me. I always felt out of place.

Gazing out on a concrete jungle full of skyscrapers and sidewalks, all I could see was an opportunity for greatness, and the freedom that stemmed from on my own for the very first time. People have often asked how I found the right college, and amidst the collegiate loyalties that children were often raised with in my hometown, my answer is rather unconventional: I Googled it. That’s right, I googled Chicago colleges, picked a few to visit and then made my choice. But it’s not my choice of college that matters the most. What truly matters is that my love story with Chicago was only just beginning.

Continue to Part 2

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