A WALK IN THE WOODS always makes me think of Sinead O’Connor, how she got lost while riding a borrowed bike through suburban forest paths and finally found her way out to make a call from a payphone at a Walgreens in Morton Grove.
Sinead left Wilmette at six a.m. that day, and when she didn’t return, her friends put out a call to report her missing.
The thought of Sinead O’Connor riding lost in the woods by my house unnerves me—how was it possible that the life of my idol, my saint, was overlapping with mine, in these woods in which I often walked with her music blaring in my ears?
Why was she here? What did she need? Could I find her and help her? Where would she go in such a state of anguish?
She was found safe in a “rundown hotel” on Waukegan, just down and across the street from that corner Walgreens, where I still turn left past the woods by car to get to my childhood home, where I live again, after many years far away.
From a Best Western, a distraught Sinead O’Connor makes a phone call to confirm her safety—her whereabouts—I lived so close—I thought, with some degree of delusion—I could swing by and pick her up and bring her home and tell her it was all going to be OK.
I could take her for a bubble tea, or a plate of humble Thai noodles at that little strip mall place with the best iced coffee. I could ramble down Waukegan with her—or even through the woods—and ask her all the questions I’d ever wanted to know about her and her songs—her songs that burrowed deep in my heart—chiseled my rage into recognizable shapes—made me feel like I had every right to scream.
So delusional—thinking our proximity—breathing the same air—riding bikes down the same winding leafy paths through the forests—brought me somehow closer to the star I saw soaring through the skies of my youth—Sinead O’Connor, idol and big sister—folk hero—midwife of the brokenhearted.
I loved her so much—I still do—that when I read about this “tragedy in the suburbs,” her getting lost in the woods so close to my tiny world, I wondered, what were the chances, and how could I help? Never mind she’d moved into a million-dollar house owned by a drummer and his wife, that she’d been convalescing on the grounds with long walks and deep naps in the quaint abode.
Sinead didn’t need me but I still feel that once I knew about her predicament, the prayers I sent out into the woods for her safe return could reverberate in her direction—reach her somehow—allow her to feel some love wafting toward her in the desolate concrete suburban town she’d ridden toward in such a distressed state.
Morton Grove’s not a pretty place. It’s the town next door, full of fumes from the fifties, but every place has its treasures, and now there’s the lore of Sinead I think of whenever I pass that Walgreens—the payphone—the Best Western—that’s now a Red Roof Inn, still rundown and shabby, still bookended by desolate strip mall Chinese and Thai places, dimly lit but still open, forever.
And there’s the woods—the ones she rode through—why do I imagine her riding a bike with tears streaming down her face—it’s because I also rode my red bicycle down these same paths with tears in my eyes, raging against and grieving a mother who could never love me. Our mothers! Me and Sinead, enraged and sad and howling like wolves in the woods, that’s what I feel when I think of her, and how lucky to have gotten close to the tiniest hint of her in my realm.
Hello, Sinead, I wish I could have said. You’re welcome to stay with me, I’m not too far down the road, I’m right there with you on the walk—the ride up and down the hilly paths—the view from those rusted bridges—spectacular and simple in their prairie-like beauty.
How she rode through that vast understory of shrubs in black leather pants and a hoodie—I think of her story—tragic and unfolding near mine—collided and laced into the dream-story of every woman who listened to her lyrics and saw herself in them.
The woods, I believe, protected her that morning: a prayer in black ash, sugar maple, basswood, blue beech, and bitternut hickory, winterberry, hazelnut, swamp rose, witch hazel, honeysuckles!
It’s delusional to make any part of Sinead’s stint in the suburbs part of mine—but every time I pass that Walgreens, I say hello to her in my soul, and when I drive past that hotel where she was found, I still tell anyone in the car with me that that’s the Sinead hotel, where she was spinning and spiraling and I lived so close by I wish I could have helped her.
But in fact I couldn’t quite—this was 2016, the year so much turned upside down for all of us—and I was still flying back and forth across the world trying to find my place in it, and my parents were still alive in the house where I now live, living out their own twilights with tiny suburban tragedies of their own.
So no, I know these woods, and I know Sinead O’Connor’s songs, and I know she once got lost here—orbiting worlds so close to mine—but I couldn’t reach her—she was so far from herself then, and she would rise and fall many more times before she made her cosmic transition seven years later.
Sometimes I think about placing a small shrine to Sinead in the woods—made of sticks and stones, leaves and dead bees—to honor what feels like a significant close encounter of the soul kind.
Perhaps during my next walk in the woods, I will say her name out loud and sing her laments into the leaves above me. I miss her and I also know she’s everywhere, in my neighborhood and yours, wherever there’s pain and grief and hope, she’s there.
I’m writing this after reading a few essays from Nothing Compares to You, a collection of writings by women who riff on all the ways Sinead O’Connor made an impact on their lives and all our lives. I’m finding sisterhood in these stories and I’m also recognizing ways in which my imagined ramble through the woods with Sinead feels like a solo walk forever.
I’m only halfway through the essays and I already know more stories will pour forth from me because like everyone who wrote an essay for this book, it felt like Sinead’s songs were sung just for me, and by me, I mean all of us—anyone willing to feel anything—about the circumstances that make us run to the woods in the first place.
Sinead left Wilmette at six a.m. that day, and when she didn’t return, her friends put out a call to report her missing.
The thought of Sinead O’Connor riding lost in the woods by my house unnerves me—how was it possible that the life of my idol, my saint, was overlapping with mine, in these woods in which I often walked with her music blaring in my ears?
Why was she here? What did she need? Could I find her and help her? Where would she go in such a state of anguish?
She was found safe in a “rundown hotel” on Waukegan, just down and across the street from that corner Walgreens, where I still turn left past the woods by car to get to my childhood home, where I live again, after many years far away.
From a Best Western, a distraught Sinead O’Connor makes a phone call to confirm her safety—her whereabouts—I lived so close—I thought, with some degree of delusion—I could swing by and pick her up and bring her home and tell her it was all going to be OK.
I could take her for a bubble tea, or a plate of humble Thai noodles at that little strip mall place with the best iced coffee. I could ramble down Waukegan with her—or even through the woods—and ask her all the questions I’d ever wanted to know about her and her songs—her songs that burrowed deep in my heart—chiseled my rage into recognizable shapes—made me feel like I had every right to scream.
So delusional—thinking our proximity—breathing the same air—riding bikes down the same winding leafy paths through the forests—brought me somehow closer to the star I saw soaring through the skies of my youth—Sinead O’Connor, idol and big sister—folk hero—midwife of the brokenhearted.
I loved her so much—I still do—that when I read about this “tragedy in the suburbs,” her getting lost in the woods so close to my tiny world, I wondered, what were the chances, and how could I help? Never mind she’d moved into a million-dollar house owned by a drummer and his wife, that she’d been convalescing on the grounds with long walks and deep naps in the quaint abode.
Sinead didn’t need me but I still feel that once I knew about her predicament, the prayers I sent out into the woods for her safe return could reverberate in her direction—reach her somehow—allow her to feel some love wafting toward her in the desolate concrete suburban town she’d ridden toward in such a distressed state.
Morton Grove’s not a pretty place. It’s the town next door, full of fumes from the fifties, but every place has its treasures, and now there’s the lore of Sinead I think of whenever I pass that Walgreens—the payphone—the Best Western—that’s now a Red Roof Inn, still rundown and shabby, still bookended by desolate strip mall Chinese and Thai places, dimly lit but still open, forever.
And there’s the woods—the ones she rode through—why do I imagine her riding a bike with tears streaming down her face—it’s because I also rode my red bicycle down these same paths with tears in my eyes, raging against and grieving a mother who could never love me. Our mothers! Me and Sinead, enraged and sad and howling like wolves in the woods, that’s what I feel when I think of her, and how lucky to have gotten close to the tiniest hint of her in my realm.
Hello, Sinead, I wish I could have said. You’re welcome to stay with me, I’m not too far down the road, I’m right there with you on the walk—the ride up and down the hilly paths—the view from those rusted bridges—spectacular and simple in their prairie-like beauty.
How she rode through that vast understory of shrubs in black leather pants and a hoodie—I think of her story—tragic and unfolding near mine—collided and laced into the dream-story of every woman who listened to her lyrics and saw herself in them.
The woods, I believe, protected her that morning: a prayer in black ash, sugar maple, basswood, blue beech, and bitternut hickory, winterberry, hazelnut, swamp rose, witch hazel, honeysuckles!
It’s delusional to make any part of Sinead’s stint in the suburbs part of mine—but every time I pass that Walgreens, I say hello to her in my soul, and when I drive past that hotel where she was found, I still tell anyone in the car with me that that’s the Sinead hotel, where she was spinning and spiraling and I lived so close by I wish I could have helped her.
But in fact I couldn’t quite—this was 2016, the year so much turned upside down for all of us—and I was still flying back and forth across the world trying to find my place in it, and my parents were still alive in the house where I now live, living out their own twilights with tiny suburban tragedies of their own.
So no, I know these woods, and I know Sinead O’Connor’s songs, and I know she once got lost here—orbiting worlds so close to mine—but I couldn’t reach her—she was so far from herself then, and she would rise and fall many more times before she made her cosmic transition seven years later.
Sometimes I think about placing a small shrine to Sinead in the woods—made of sticks and stones, leaves and dead bees—to honor what feels like a significant close encounter of the soul kind.
Perhaps during my next walk in the woods, I will say her name out loud and sing her laments into the leaves above me. I miss her and I also know she’s everywhere, in my neighborhood and yours, wherever there’s pain and grief and hope, she’s there.
I’m writing this after reading a few essays from Nothing Compares to You, a collection of writings by women who riff on all the ways Sinead O’Connor made an impact on their lives and all our lives. I’m finding sisterhood in these stories and I’m also recognizing ways in which my imagined ramble through the woods with Sinead feels like a solo walk forever.
I’m only halfway through the essays and I already know more stories will pour forth from me because like everyone who wrote an essay for this book, it felt like Sinead’s songs were sung just for me, and by me, I mean all of us—anyone willing to feel anything—about the circumstances that make us run to the woods in the first place.
