Falling In Love With Home
For as long as I can remember, my mom has taken pride in not being where we were from.
I grew up in Southwestern Pennsylvania, just south of Pittsburgh. If you’ve ever met anyone from there, you’ll know that it’s hard to get someone from Pittsburgh to stop talking it up. People obsess over the community and quirks and little things that make up that bit of the country. As my friend likes to say, at the end of the world there will be cockroaches and Steeler fans.
But my family isn’t from there originally, which is odd, especially for the area I’m from. Aunts and moms of my high school friends would excitedly ask everyone their last name and their mom’s maiden name upon meeting them, assuming they went to high school with them or met them at a football game. With mine, they usually came up blank.
My family is from New Jersey, another place that seems to seep into your blood. My mom loved living there so much she stayed by herself to finish high school and into her early 20s, though her parents and siblings had moved for my grandpa’s job.
Because of this, when she moved, my mom grappled with keeping her identity, not understanding the new lingo — ’clicker’ instead of remote control, ‘yinz’ instead of ‘yous guys’ — and looking distastefully at the county fair.
As an only child of a single mom, I internalized this struggle. I never really picked up on Pittsburgh lingo and chose to mainly root for the Giants, though the Steelers tend to win more. Because of this, and a slight New Jersey affect in my voice, I never really quite felt like I fit in at home. I fit in more than my mom, finding a love of 4H milkshakes at the county fair and the burgeoning arts scene in the city, but I desperately wanted to move to New York City and leave all of it behind.
Eventually, after a quick detour to Ohio, I did move to New York City. I only return to Pittsburgh a few times a year, though somehow, I’ve made lots of friends who are from the city of champs. But, something has changed since I’ve moved here: Pittsburgh has become home for me. Being here has been everything I’ve ever dreamed, but I do find myself craving Primanti Brother’s sandwiches, missing the feeling of driving around the hills with my friends.
In a city like New York, most people are from somewhere else and they carry that identity with them as a badge. That’s why you can find a bar dedicated to any sports team you want here and people flock to little pieces they can find in the city that remind them of home. Because of the distance, I’ve found a true love of the place that raised me, missing so much about it that I used to dislike.
What’s most crazy is I find myself planning for the future, wanting to move back to where I was raised so I can give my kids an experience like I had. I want them to grow up in a place that is so damn proud of itself, a place with people who want to be there.
I suppose that’s what’s doomed to happen, as it did with my mom. You’re bound to love home and as much as I want to act like I’m different than those who I grew up with, I can’t fool anyone, especially them. I’m a yinzer through and through, and it just took a little bit of distance to see it.
I’m a sum of my parts, all of it is what made me who I am. And I don’t think I can escape that, no matter where I live.
