Geography

Geography is one of the major themes in my life. Widespread panic breaks out when someone asks me "Where are you from?" I have found that the kinder, gentler question is "Where did you go to high school?" That one I can answer, no problem--Silver Spring, Maryland, or Mongtgomery County, or more specifically, Montgomery Blair. (Click on Montgomery for the new bldg, click on Blair for info re: the old building.) Goldie Hawn and Connie Chung are famous alums. My answer to the geography question these days is "I've been in Pittsburgh since 89." One guy remarked, well then, you're from Pittsburgh, now.

When I was in elementary school, we lived for two years in Bonn, Germany, walking distance from the Rhine river. The river flooded the bike path sometimes (there were bike paths everywhere in Bonn) and once flooded our basement school library. We went on boat rides down the river, crossed the river on ferry rides...the river was a big part of our life. In third grade, we moved to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. There wasn't a river there but the first house we lived in had a huge resevoir behind it. We lived in a huge sprawling Spanish hacienda style house. The roof had those orange curved tiles and there was a large porch on the front and a patio area on the back. Each bedroom had a small patio, where we hung hammocks. We also had a patio area that was closer to the resevoir...you had to go down steps to this little area where we had our Weber grill. Dust was a big part of our lives at that house--it was a growing development where new houses were being built daily, and where I first encountered construction workers. In the States, they may whistle, but in Teguc, they clicked their tongues--it sounded like snakes. I was nine and blonde, in a country full of dark skin and hair and eyes. All around us were hills and mountains; Tegucigalpa actually means "Silver Hills." Our second house in Teguc was in town, and on a street that was on the side of a hill. This was common--in some of the older neighborhoods, there were stairs connecting the streets. It was always about 75 degrees in Teguc and often we would go down to the "pulperia" where we would buy bags of frozen raspberry juice ("mora"). We would bite a hole in the baggie and slurp out the frozen bits.

So about five years ago or so I realized that Pittsburgh is a combination of my two childhood hometowns. It has not just one river but three, with a whole network of bike paths. Flooding is a reality when the spring melts the snow. The hills surround the rivers and there are steps all over the city, not just on the South Side where you can see them from miles away, but tucked in alleys in the East End.

I have just finished listening to the second (and last) side of Jacob have I loved on audio. In this favorite book of mine, Sarah Louise lives her childhood years on an island but dreams of going to see the mountains. She ends up working as a nurse-midwife in a town in the Appalacian Mountains, in a town that bears her father's name, Truit. I think I so closely relate to Sarah Louise because geography is important to her too. Mountains and water...

When my parents were house hunting for a rental in Westchester County, New York, the prices were horrendous. My parents were going to be living on a government salary with no cost of living for that very expensive part of the country for one year. When we saw the house my parents ended up renting, I immediately fell in love. It was walking distance from the Long Island Sound and Playland was just around the corner. If you've seen the movie Big, you can imagine the beauty of the locale. I saw a pelican fly over head. I'd never seen a real pelican, and for me, this was a sign that this was the house! It was a Dutch Colonial with barely three bedrooms and one bathroom. When I visited from college, I slept on a couch in the "sunroom," which was drafty. My brother and sister each had a room smaller than some walk-in closets. But it was the geography that made it *the* house...when I came to visit the weekend my grandfather died, I could walk along the beach at the Sound and pick up shells. My mother became a bird watcher and could identify different types of ducks. My brother and sister walked to school, at the elementary school Barbara Bush went to as a young girl. Rye was the perfect little small town. I hardly lived there, but I miss it and long to go back to the library, which I think was built in the "Carnegie style" of the turn of the last century.

In high school, Cynthia Voigt was the author all my friends were reading. Everytime we went to the bookstore, it seemed like she had a new book out. Many of her books centered around the Tillerman family, four kids and their grandmother who lived in Crisfield, Maryland. So I fell in love with the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and when I was looking to transfer colleges, Washington College appealed, not only because it had a world renowned writing program, but because it was located on the DelMarVa peninsula, in Maryland called the Eastern Shore. By the time I moved back to Maryland, though, Cynthia Voigt had moved to Maine. The year I moved back to Pittsburgh, the National Teachers of English had their annual conference in Pgh and Cynthia Voigt did a bookstore signing at a bookstore in Squirrel Hill that is now a camera shop. I think I was the only person to show up. I got her picture and she signed a bunch of books of mine, as well as a book that belonged to a friend's sister. I had her sign it something like "You're finally getting this book back, and signed by the author!"

For me, ten years is a long time. I was just at a birthday party for a co-worker who turned 50, and when we all shared stories, my story was about my mother's fiftieth party. They felt so sorry for my youth. (Right!) A decade for someone who has lived five of them is less dramatic than a decade for someone who has lived three and a half decades. (I'm guessing.) So the fact that I have paid rent on an apartment at the same address for ten years is staggering to me, the world traveler. One summer in college I slept in 25 different beds! (by myself--no snarky comments!) Most of my life was lived three years in one place, two years in another, four years in the next. I've lived in Maryland the same amount of years as I've lived in Pittsburgh, eleven years. But that includes three years for preschool and kindergarden, six years for jr. high and high school, (in the same house) and two years in college (in Chestertown, Maryland.) I've lived in the Pittsburgh Metro area since 1989, but I've left twice: once for two years, once for three. So that's sixteen years since I initially moved West-ward, but eleven years that I've had a physical address and phone number. And I've paid rent at my current address for ten years, but for three of those years I lived in Northern Virginia. I've lived in the DC metro area for twelve years, but that includes the 9 years of school (pre and high school) and the three years I lived in Northern Virginia. So I guess 2006 is a watershed year, when I tie for the DC Metro area for amount of years lived in one Metro area, and 2007 is the tie-breaker, assuming I'm still here at that time. Not that I see myself leaving Pittsburgh, come hell or high water, though I live by James 4: 13-15, Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

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That verse was the one I clung to my senior year of college. My parents were leaving New York and moving to Brazil. I was moving back to Pittsburgh because some friends said they could house me for a few weeks until I found a place and a job. Three weeks became three months, but that's another story.

October has always been a watershed month for me: twice I've had job interviews that turned into jobs--my first "real" job out of college, at a small press in Edgewood that specialized in translations of Latin American literature, and the job I currently hold as a librarian. Last year was one of the worst Octobers: I just found a letter where I wrote to a friend about getting very very sick one night. I had a really bad bout of depression and ended up not working for almost three months. An intense friendship that had started in November the prior year was dissolving, and I did demolition work one day a week at the Union Project, which is where my church, The Open Door, now meets. Once a week, I would drive out to the library to have dinner with my friend Myra. This year October has been a month of up and downs: heartache over a guy, heartache over a house, angst and hard work. I have been to two concerts, I have danced with a baby in my arms, I have cried and cried and I have laughed and laughed some more. Bring on November, when the Birthday season begins. My cousin Carrie's birthday begins the fest, on November 1.