Brilliant … But Bouncy

I Am From Pittsburgh.

I moved around a lot as a child. I lived in nine houses, six cities and five states before I graduated from high school.

But I am from Pittsburgh. I graduated from high school in the Pittsburgh area, then spent my young adulthood there. And while I went to college in Ohio, stayed briefly in Florida, and have lived in Maryland for 25 years, I am – and always will be – from Pittsburgh.

I don’t know how it works for all home towns, but the bond between Pittsburghers is strong. Once a heart connects with the city, the grip never loosens. It’s not that Pittsburgh is the most wonderful city in the world, or that it has the best weather, or even that its sports teams are extraordinary (although they are). It’s just not a place one can ever really leave behind.

Most people who were born in Pittsburgh stay in Pittsburgh. My mother hails from a large family there. In addition to an army of her cousins who never left, all of my mother’s sisters and most of her nieces and nephews still live there. Even the nieces’ and nephews’ families still live there.

That’s just how Pittsburgh is. People rarely leave.

So when an insane person walks into a synagogue on a Saturday morning and fires bullets into a crowd of gentle Pittsburgh families, the pain of their neighbors is real. And their neighbors extend far beyond the borders of Squirrel Hill, throughout the surrounding suburbs of Pittsburgh, and include the hearts of people all over the world who have ever called Pittsburgh “home.”

After hearing the tragic news, I could immediately picture the neighborhood where the shooting took place – a place to which I’d occasionally walked miles, just to be there.

Squirrel Hill is where I bought record albums at a world-class music store, and ate Mineo’s pizza bought from first-generation Italians. It’s where I followed cute boys down the block on Friday nights and it’s where I had my first taste of Haagen Dazs ice cream.

And now every memory of this beloved city will be slashed with a tragedy that, before Saturday, was entirely unthinkable. I will now remember the people who woke early to celebrate a new baby, and who never made it home. And I will think about those they left behind, their lives forever in tatters.

My heart, as always, is with you, Pittsburgh. My only wish is that someday, the healing will be as deep as this pain.