This past weekend, the man and I ~ after visiting a new MS doctor and setting up rounds of new tests ~ journeyed across the great state of Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh to visit friends and attend the first pre-season NFL game of the year for both the Pittsburgh Steelers and the NY Football Giants.  My cousin was kind enough to give us the tickets as a wedding present, and it gave us a great excuse to journey west.

Spending time in and around Pittsburgh gave me ample opportunity to contemplate the idea of home.  This isn’t a new subject for me ~ in many ways, it’s been a quest of mine; to define it, identify it ~ figure out what home means to me.  I guess that’s not hard to understand since I have lead a somewhat nomadic life to this point.

It felt different being in Pittsburgh this time.  It felt familiar and yet new ~ comfortable.  I wondered if the feelings I felt were because of nostalgia or because for so long, I clung to Pittsburgh as my north star in a stormy sea.  But I think it felt as comfortable as it did because even if I have spent more time elsewhere, have been living outside Philadelphia for over nine years and have established a life for myself somewhere else, Pittsburgh fits me.

Pittsburgh feels like home ~ even a strange foreign home ~ because it IS home.

I might never live there ever again, visit sporadically and drift even further from the kind of person who calls Pittsburgh home.  But it is my history, it is the backbone of my identity.  Being there, sitting next to the fountain at Point State Park, that was abundantly clear to me.  Whether I become ingrained in the fabric of Philadelphia, or another part of our country, Pittsburgh with always be my north star.  It will always be where my dad grew up, sled down steep hills, hopped the fence at the old ball park and became the man he is.  It will always be where I said good-bye to my grandmother for the last time, and drank champagne and celebrated life ~ because that’s what she believed.  It will be where I learned to drive, and found and pursued my passion for art, theatre and music.  It will be the backdrop of so many landmarks in my memory and life.

My heart swells with pride for the way the city has re-invented itself and still maintains it’s unique and incredible identity.  I lost that for a little bit … I felt adrift and as though I wasn’t sure anymore of my foundation.  After Friday, and the turmoil and onslaught of so much new information, it felt beyond reassuring to remember who I am because I remembered where I am from.