My Saturn Return Story

It was Palm Sunday, 2018. I was living on the Northwest Side of Chicago having a cup of strong coffee. I was sitting on my couch in the living room, enjoying the view from my bay windows looking at the tree-lined street grateful for the harbingers of spring - the sunlight after a long dreary winter, green buds on the trees and bushes, and the twirping of birds returning home from their winter sojourns.

And then out of nowhere, I heard the sound of gunfire in the distance. Not one shot but several. After shaking off my disbelief, I grabbed my phone and, just as I was about to call 911 all of the sudden boom! A white Honda Civic 2017 sedan crashed into my building.

On the 911 call the gal told me that several people heard gun shots from the church across the street, and she asked me if I was okay, if the car underneath my window was smoking (it was), and if there were any people with injuries. After giving her my information, I could hear the cops sirens and within a matter of seconds the street was filled with the fire trucks, (the firehouse was right around the corner, but a block away) cop cars, and two cars damaged beyond repair. By the time I exited my building to check and see what was going on, the cop was pointing a loaded gun at the suspect whose hands were up and who wanted to call his girlfriend.

This happened after a year of various events at my apartment - a rat infestation, water pipes bursting and flooding my bathroom and kitchen and hallway in the previous summer, a break-in and a narrow escape from a sexual assault in the past winter.

In that moment I made the decision to leave my beloved hometown, Chicago.

But where could I go? I worked in a small law firm that was struggling and it was only a matter of months before I would be let go, and given the fact that I was in my 50s I had another long stint at unemployment and gig economy jobs to pay the rent I was already paying. I wasn’t going to find a decent place to live for a long, long time.

The crime, the job market, a relationship that had run its course, and lack of affordable housing made the decision to leave Chicago a no-brainer.

Sure enough a few months later, I was unemployed so when I had an opportunity to take a job in Phoenix, Arizona, I jumped at it and, as fate would have it, I was out of a job again. The non-profit job ran out of money and my position was eliminated. My long term boyfriend and I broke-up because of the move. The money ran out. And I found myself in a situation where I had no other choice but to start over.

What better place to do that but in a city named for the infamous Thunderbird rising from the ashes of the sonoran desert.

I was stranded in Phoenix, and…to make a long story short, I decided to stay.

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