spatial relations

After three days of being back in Pittsburgh, I'm ready to leave again. Not so much in the sense that I hate everything that is Pittsburgh, but more that there is absolutely nothing to do here. Anytime I come back it's the same people, same enviornment, same activities. I need variation in life to keep my curiosity and vivacity in check. On the other hand, driving through the streets of South Baldwin reminds me of my childhood so much that it's something that I need to refresh myself with every once in awhile.

While looking through photo albums over Thanksgiving break, I came across a photo that struck me as particularly interesting. It was the summer of 1992, and we had moved into our first house. I was standing at the front door with a plate of potato salad and a wide grin. Before that summer, we had moved from apartment to apartment until we were finally able to settle on a one story ranch in South Baldwin. Upon first moving in, I vaguely recall thinking to myself that we had so much space in the house that we would never be able to find each other(this is a legitimate concern for a four year old). Most of our childhood before the age of ten are brief flashes of memories and occasional words, smells, and sights that bring us back to something we may have forgotten. We spent ten years in that house, and as I drove by it today I began to posture why I was always so damn happy when we were there.

To jump to an obvious conclusion, I was a child. And all children are smiling and having fun because they aren't burdened by things that we consider significant. If there's one thing you should take from childhood, it's not to let things that really, really don't matter affect you the way that they do when you grow up. However, upon further mental inquiry, I realized that this was not the only reason that I was always happy. It turns out the reason was rather simple. At the time, we lived in a house that is roughly half the size of the one that we live in right now. Quite simply, if there was a problem, there was nowhere to run to. It had to shared. It had to be resolved. Too often in life we seperate ourselves spatially from someone if we have a problem, and that tends to be the worst thing for it. While it is occasionally helpful to talk to someone about it, the best way to ameliorate any situation is to go to the source. Not only this, but success was shared as well. I would never consider my family poor, but there are times that I realize now that our lives were made much....well something with money. We would spend every summer night doing things like catching baseball or chasing after lightning bugs or seeing how fast we could run through the Section 8 housing in my backyard to get to Leland Field. Yet when we moved from the close quarters of the ranch to the two story home we live in now, that simplicity seemed to be compromised. Undoubtedly, some space between people is necessary. To always be in each other's business is annoying and truthfully somewhat frightening to me. Yet we must remember that physical space creates untold rifts between people. Slowly but surely, extra space creates silence, and eventually all we hear are echoes of how things used to be.

Until next time,

mh