My very first house was on Beechwood Blvd. Not the fancy-pants part, but the part by the parkway entrance with the heart stopping merge requirement. Dead stop to full blown merging into 60 MPH traffic right before the tunnel. Pittsburghers are nodding their heads in understanding. But, I digress. That first home was, for me, 1972-1974. I don’t remember it, however once when I was little my Dad took us trick or treating there and we got to go in and I KNEW which bedroom was mine. So maybe some primitive part of my baby-brain registered “safe space”.
In 1974 my parents bought the house that I lived in from ages 2-17. It was insanely cheap. (Maybe $70k). 216 Beech Street in Edgewood. Amazing Victorian. This was my house. Holy shit did I love that house. This month I turn 47 years old and I haven’t stepped foot inside for 30 years yet I dream of it often and torture myself with thoughts of visiting constantly. Torture.
I think that house had magic in it.
I think that my mom was able to infuse love and happiness within its walls somehow despite a divorce at a young age and raising two daughters alone. I should have memories fraught with sadness and strife and hardship yet all I remember was good. I credit my mom for that. I also credit the house itself for that.
On the surface, on paper, it was a 3 bedroom 2 full 2 half bath home. But oh my God just writing that out feels like blasphemy to lock it down to such trivial words and descriptions. I can’t even do it. It isn’t fair to the house. It’s like describing your child using height and weight instead of that they are kind and funny and snort when they laugh. So what about this particular house was so special? From my own perspective as both someone who lived there as well as someone who sells homes for a living it blows pretty much all the other houses away.
Describing this house is a funny thing because pretty much only my sister and my mom and maybe a handful of my childhood friends and relatives will remember these details like I do. Can I describe it? I have it all imprinted in my mind forever, yes. Can I make you see it? I don’t think that I’m a talented enough writer. How do I describe the exact feel of the sunlight hitting the back of the couch in the sunroom by the windows or the way I had to sit on the high swivel wooden stool at the counter in the kitchen if I wanted to talk on the phone? How do I describe all the funny little things that made that house so magical? Maybe it was the ancient box of Pall Mall cigarettes I found in the attic once that me and my best friends smoked in true rebellious fashion. Maybe it was the secret hidden closet behind the closet in my mom’s bedroom where she hid our Chanukah presents. The black and white floor in the front entry that our job was to Mop & Glo before Rosh Hashana dinner. Roller skating across the long three rooms that were the back playroom, living room and front sunroom. One big long expanse of hardwood floors. The Eric Estrada poster which hung on my closet door in my room that I used to kiss goodnight. The wooden sign in the kitchen that would perplex me and my friends “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you”. Why it was chosen to sit over our kitchen table at the picture window is a mystery. Mom? Why ? But hot damn, I remember. So many memories, thoughts and emotions tied to that place.
I want to go back. We came close once after my childhood best friend Dorothy’s father Sherman passed away. After the funeral, me and my mom and sister went and snuck into the back yard and took a picture (below). That’s as close as we’ve come. I have talked to the new owner of the home and he graciously has invited us to come. But it’s an impossible thing. What if I go and what it is now ruins for me what it was? I want to so badly and not at all in equal parts.
After we moved out someone bought it and trashed it. (pic below) Absolutely devastating. It was foreclosed on. Then it had a restoration I still can’t believe. It’s gorgeous now. It’s not at all my house anymore. Is the magic still there inside the walls? If I walk inside will it be like walking into a strangers house since it’s completely different or will it still be magic? Still be home? It used to be a beachy weathered gray, and me and Johanna would sit out front waiting for our Dad to come visit us and take us to dinner. (pic below). Now I can barely recognize it when I do my inevitable yearly drive-by stalking session.
Stay tuned for Part Two to see if I decide to visit or chicken out.
