What am I doing here?

Introducing the next iteration of Fetch Me Home

“Fetch Me Home” is named to honor my grandmother, Marjorie, who served from 1977 to 1992 on the town board of Marbletown, NY, the township where she lived until her death. At some point in my childhood, I was given one of Marjorie’s sweatshirts, which featured the town crest. 

Over the left breast was written the town motto: fetch me home.

I spent a lot of time with Marjorie before she died, learning how to cook and sew. In the process, I learned that Marjorie had lived an unusual and in some ways extraordinary life, especially in her early adulthood when she and my grandfather spent time abroad spying for the Soviets. It’s a remarkable story, and one I know deserved to be heard. I also knew it was a story that, without my support, would never get told. I felt responsible for finding a way to preserve her story for posterity. 

As the only child of two parents who divorced when I was very young, my early life was filled with turbulence and latent grief, the subconscious understanding that my childhood had been foreclosed by my parents’ personal choices. By the time I was 31, I’d lived in as many places, including time spent in Colorado and working as an au pair abroad. The idea of “home” felt both alluring and distant, something I hoped to one day claim but which always remained just out of reach.

Fetch Me Home was a perfect poetic double entendre – a link to my grandmother, and a concise summation of my life’s ambition. 

But as much as I wanted to write this story, I always found reasons not to start, my life seemingly overcome by events. In 2019, I moved to Germany with my now-ex-husband. In 2020, I moved back to America and got divorced. In 2022, I walked the Camino Frances, pregnant and had a baby. In November 2023, I’d been unsuccessfully job searching (read: unemployed) for nearly nine months when I finally decided it was time to serialize the story that had haunted me for so long. 

https://aliciabonner.substack.com/p/the-story-starts-here

Over the last 10 months as I’ve worked on this project, I’ve been frustrated by the absence of documented history. In attempting to piece together my grandmother’s early life, I’m fortunate to have an official document that chronicles both my grandparents’ testimony of their espionage activities, but I desperately wish there was a more honest account of my grandmother’s ideas and experiences. I hope to leave my descendants a detailed record of my own life and what it’s like to be alive in this moment in time.

I’ve also developed a deeper appreciation for what it means to write on Substack. Yes, it’s wonderful that creators have the capacity to make a living making art. But this space also invites us to chronicle our lived experience of this moment in time and together, envision how we can make the future brighter and more beautiful than humanity’s history. 

Earlier this summer, I launched a second publication to do more germane writing. I published more than eight posts in as many weeks, thrilled to have space to express my thoughts and feelings about the world around me. But I’ve realized that holding that space separate from this one doesn’t do justice to the person I am, online and off. I’m not going to compartmentalize myself to try to “position my work” for some fictional audience. 

Making sense of the choices my grandmother made and making sense of the world we live in are in a sense answers to the same two questions: How does where we come from shape where we’re going? And perhaps more importantly, what does it take to change course?

I’ll continue serializing my Family Spy Story in monthly installments.

I’ll also publish essays and economic analysis under Essays & Economics, which will include the social criticism and personal essays I’ve already published along with other posts still to come. 

In the coming weeks, I may launch a few other content streams, and you, dear reader, can always choose which posts you do and don’t receive notifications for by visiting this link: 

https://aliciabonner.substack.com/account 

We are standing at a threshold of important choices – for the environment, for our economy, and for our society as human beings sharing space on the planet. We get to decide who we will be, together. 

My grandmother and me circa 1990

My hope is that Fetch Me Home will grow from a vessel for my personal and family history into a space that invites others to join me in holding up the broken places in the world around us so that together, we can find ways to heal these fissures and claim the full beauty of life on planet Earth. 

It won’t happen by accident. It has to happen on purpose. I hope you’ll join me for the discussion and the journey. 

PS: I’ll also be more active on Substack Notes going forward, so follow me here for more regular updates.