The grid is the plan above the earth. It is a compass of possibilities. —D.J. Waldie, Holy Land During the time I spent completing my MFA, I worked for months on a single essay about the south suburbs of Chicago, where I spent my youth and young adulthood. I had just moved to Michigan, and…

At the end of next week, barring some kind of family emergency, my husband and I will load the children into the car and head up Interstate 95 to attend my twenty-fifth reunion at a boarding school in Massachusetts. For my husband, as is the case with most spouses, I guess, this is one of…