“A house without love is not a home”— Hank Williams
Most of us have heard some musical or literary version of the saying, “a house without love is not a home.” My experiences have taught me that a house is just a dwelling. But a home is a slice of life. A house is a structure that provides shelter. A home is full of emotions, good and bad, high and low, created by the memories from events and daily life. A house is concrete, wood, brick and mortar. A true home is filled with love, including tough love.
This past weekend I made a bittersweet trip from South Carolina back to my childhood home on Laurie Drive in the Pittsburgh suburb of Penn Hills. The purpose of the trip was to help my parents, Joe (94 on March 13) and Angie (88) purge and pack up their home since 1965. Along with the Herculean efforts of my brother Jan and his wife, Mary Lou, we readied the house for sale and prepared my parents for their pending move into a senior independent living apartment complex just a few miles away in neighboring Monroeville.
Inevitably, most adult children from middle-class families in the United States will face this difficult but necessary time. It is a logical step that at a particular time just makes sense. But it doesn’t make it any easier to do in reality for us, or our parents. My mom has played the role of Wonder Woman for far too long and she’s earned a rest. She’s stubborn, in a good way, but it’s time to let the rest of us help more and give herself some slack.
Yes, my parents need to do this because the house has become too difficult for them to maintain. Yes, they will actually be closer to my brother and his wife. Yes, they will even be closer to medical facilities, grocery stores and other retail shops. Still, at the moment when it all starts happening, emotions kick in full force.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is because it was their home sweet home for the past 61years. It is way more than a house precisely because it is filled with stories and memories that impacted family and friends spanning four generations. I think it really hit me when our own adult children realized that they probably had spent their last Christmas in the home where I grew up. I even wrote a column about our Christmas experiences back in December.
Did I mention this weekend was bittersweet?
“A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
In many ways, I believe that my brother and I had the idyllic upbringing. My parents grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh and were among a group of young married couples that decided to venture outside their comfort zones and move to the suburbs. They settled on an area of Penn Hills that borders both Monroeville and Plum boroughs, and it was a fast-growing place for people looking to move out of the city looking for a life better than their parents lived.
My mother‘s older brother, Uncle Joe Carolis, and his wife, my aunt Rita Mae, moved into the same neighborhood of Jefferson Highlands. We had our own swim club, Highlands Aqua Club, our own baseball field, and after just a couple of years, a brand-new elementary school within walking distance. Dible School is where I met two friends, Lou Longo and Clark Dexter, who have remained among my closest friends for almost 60 years. Eventually my mom’s mother, Concetta, her oldest sister and her family, and my Uncle Louie would also move to Penn Hills.
My brother Jan and I were walking our dogs up and down Laurie Drive and we were trying to remember the names of our neighbors as we passed by the many houses that had helped shape our childhood. We were good kids, for the most part, but let’s just say we had a little mischievous streak in us, and we may have caused our parents and neighbors a little stress. But overall, we were blessed to grow up in a great neighborhood with a lot of good people and families that made those house’s homes. Both my brother and I are still in touch with many of our friends who grew up on our street.
When Crawford Realty first decided to develop this area in the mid-1960s it was one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Penn Hills. Most of the houses are still in really good shape. They’ve been well maintained over the years, with additions, upgraded porches and patios added. There are a couple that are in disrepair, but overall, it is still a very desirable neighborhood as it is within walking distance to the elementary school and only about 2 miles from the high school and middle school. It is also close to entrances to I-376, I-76, and for this former Nittany Lion, Route 22, a road that I travelled on countless times to Happy Valley since 1978.
Back to the purge, we filled up a large portion of a rented dumpster, donated four car loads full of clothes, home decorations, furniture and other items to St. Vincent DePaul’s, and we sold two sets of bedroom dressers, a dining table and chairs and a buffet to a local antique dealer.
I ran into my old friend and neighbor Gerald Labriola who I have known since 1965 and our next-door neighbor Dan Scully who was visiting his mother as well.
I did take a little time out to go to lunch with three of my former hockey players, including Rich Filar, at Carl’s, a long-time favorite “hole in the wall” restaurant and bar in Monroeville. The very next day I ran into an old baseball teammate Mark Proviano at Labriola’s Italian market. He mentioned that he knew one of my former Penn State players, a Rich Filar, who had a daughter who swam with Mark’s twin daughters. I just chuckled and said that I had lunch with him the day before! Can’t make this stuff up!
During one of the showings, I decided to take my father to his childhood home at 122 Shetland Avenue in East Liberty, where my brother and I and our many cousins used to spend almost every Sunday for family meals. We thought the home was a palace and the yard seemed so big to us back then. My father reminisced about his childhood and his own memories of the Larimer Ave. neighborhood.
I don’t know how many more times my father will get to see either of the old neighborhoods. I feel so blessed that my parents are both still around to be with our family. I certainly feel the hand of God at work as things are just falling into place so smoothly, given the events taking place in our lives. I look forward with an even greater anticipation to a last holiday, Easter, in a few weeks for us to gather in my old “home sweet home.”
