A House Is Not A Home?

            Today, who can imagine living in a house with one bathroom, but growing up, there we all were, the four of us, sharing one tiny bathroom in our two bedroom flat. For years, I wanted my own room and I was always envious of my friends and relatives who had two floors with the privacy that waited up the stairs. I never saw myself living in that house forever – I wanted space, a place where I could be left alone, yet at the same time be found. 

     



                                                                                My brother knows something about me that I don't.




     

            I was born in the same city that my parents live in today and the same hospital that welcomed my birth also brought me the sadness of losing my grandmother. To me, Medford was the only home I ever knew, but for my father, from East Boston to Chelsea, it was a long and winding road that led to this city seven miles north of the capital.

     

            In East Boston, where I was born, I have a vague memory of sitting on a cold linoleum floor. The visuals are faded now, but I can remember walking up stairs and holding on to my mother’s hand to visit a deceased family member’s relatives. I hear we lived on the second floor of a three decker in a house owned by distant cousins. The address was 208 East Eagle Street and it was ironic that many years later I found that your mother’s aunt and uncle lived at number 51.

     

            At the age of three, my parents bought a one family home at 41 Webster Ave in Chelsea. I would be surprised if it was more than three miles away from Eagle Street. It was over the bridge. In my time, a deep large body of water was drained to make room for a shopping plaza. When the Mystic Bridge went through the square, I watched in awe as they moved several homes down Broadway to be resettled along the side of the plaza. It was, I recall, the displacement of a large Polish population.

     

            Years later, my godparents – my father’s brother and his wife, who lived across the street moved away – I was more than jealous – they were escaping the city where I spent my childhood and where, it seemed, my parents were destined to spend more time than I thought they should give it. Even though it was the only home I’d ever known, my attachment to it was and still remains, strangely without emotion.  Over the years, I watched my cousins leave their parents’ homes and the thrill of packing up was magical.  In the past 20 years though, I have moved back and forth across the country four times – and as I get older – I can tell you that it’s not as easy or fun as the dream may seem.

           



     

            In December of 1949, my parents bought the two family at 16 Carney Street and I remember vividly the real estate agent driving us to Medford to look at houses. The first one we looked it was on St. James Street, just down from the now demolished church. Because of the traffic and the bell from the steeple, we weren’t too keen on the place. The real deciding factor to rejecting it was that the owner wanted Pa to let her daughter continue to live on the first floor and also dictate how much rent he could charge her.

     

            The second nice house was on Valley Street and it was a good decision to pass on this as well because years later, we would have been uprooted when they widened the street to make room for Route 93. It was 16 Carney Street that Ma fell in love with and years later, how I wish she could have seen it when I renovated the first floor. Except for the two years I was in the service (1953-55), I have lived here ever since. I brought your mother here as a young bride in 1962 and raised my sons here.

     



                       The house that holds so many memories. It's the best kept one on the street. My grandparents would be proud.

        

     

 In all the years I have moved, I’ve never felt such emotion to a place I’ve lived as my father and his parents. From apartments with views of the San Francisco Bay to condos that over looked all of downtown Boston, each residence was simply a place I lived. Granted, I loved each one of them for different reasons, but the connection that my father feels towards his home has eluded me in all of my addresses. For sure, I’ve had great times in them, but the memories that exist for him and the circumstances that surrounded them perhaps don’t have a place in this life anymore. People are transient, always searching for the one thing that will make them whole or create happiness. This new age of technology allows you to discover  new places to live, virtually walk through and design them and the roots that grew “back in the day,” the feeling of working towards something seems to have lost its luster.

     



     

     

            Can I feel the same way towards a physical place as my father and his parents before him? From my history of moving, the answer is, most likely, a resounding “no.” However, home, to me is not a place but a feeling. It’s who I’ve surrounded myself with from day to day and whom I can run to when I feel the world is crumbling around me. It’s the love that my grandmother had for me that, still, to this day, keeps me warm and feeling safe. Out of curiosity or perhaps looking to see if I’ve connected to the places like my father has to his home, I’ve often driven by my previous residences. Looking at the places in San Francisco, standing outside the brownstone in Boston and driving by my old apartment in West Hollywood – each time, the reaction was the same: they were merely places I’ve lived.  Did I not connect to them for some elusive reason that will forever be out of reach to me? The answer for me is that I’ve never defined myself by where I’ve lived and now, so many years later, I understand why we never moved away from that two family house in Medford. To my father, home is where his parents brought him to live and the memories are etched deep within its walls and floorboards. Separating the physical from the spiritual is no easy task and they are intertwined so deeply and knotted so tightly, that they become one. Seeing it from that perspective is not a fault. I admire it now and understand the emotion he feels when he plants a new flowerbed or fixes an appliance without calling a repairman. Even switching at long last from oil heaters to gas, I can feel his pride.

           



     

            It is June of 2009 and today, I cut off from the climbing rose bush, the first two flowers. We always had a red climbing rose bush next to the gate near the garage and every year, Ma would take in the first rose. Before I screened in the back porch, she would reach over and cut a few. This year, she would have enjoyed seeing that the bright red roses measured five inches across. Ma, these two red roses on this day are for you.

                       In front of my grandmother's favorite rose bush.