IVY STREET
There is no way to make sense of the lives of our parents, except in fragments. My house was populated by artifacts of my parents' previous lives: a glass boot from Berlin, a suitcase full of baby teeth and Jamaican money. My favorite of these relics were from Pittsburgh, where my parents had met and married in the 1970s. They lived on Ivy Street, a narrow side street in Shadyside. A cartoon poster depicting an infamous Ivy Street block party hung above my bed for years, and I studied the jocular, diasporic speech bubbles every night while falling asleep. How could so many people know each other, share porches, eat knishes together? The notion seemed impossibly exciting from my pillow in rural Pennsylvania. I was so infatuated with the image of such a place that I wore the old key to my mother's Ivy Street house around my neck until I lost it.
Visiting Ivy Street now, I have the uncanny feeling of seeing a place from dreams. For a while my mother was a housepainter and house cleaner, and during her years of living on Ivy, had been asked to repaint every house on the block in her imprecise, quirky hand. While my parents wonder what ever became of Victor Tucci, the Steelers' most manic fan, I look at the windowsills my mother has painted. They bear such a resemblance to our windowsills at home that I wouldn't be surprised to see a younger, tow-headed version of myself staring out of them. It is harder to see the hand of my father on Ivy, but his influence is also there-he commissioned the city to plant all of the young maples that line the street. Maples, I know, ought to look the same everywhere, but these have the same character of the other trees my father has planted on our land.
Of course, the Shadyside in which I imagine my parents exists in the past and in my mind; Shadyside is today the best place to purchase designer kitchenware, choose a dog groomer, or outfit your baby in loden polar fleece playsuits. It is, in other words, experiencing the later, moribund stages of gentrification. Walking through Ellsworth, only a few blocks away from their old street, my parents marvel at the Williams Sonoma, the Banana Republic, the Gap and Baby Gap. It seems the only fragment left from the Stonewall Bookstore is a bookmark left in my mother's copy of e.e. cummings' The Enormous Room. Only Schiller's Pharmacy remains, and even it displays the latest Shalimar perfume.
But that copy of The Enormous Room is still on my bookshelf; my favorite t-shirt is still a worn-out “Ivy Street Block Party '82” t-shirt stolen from my parents' closet. I have no feelings for the chain stores and yogurt bars, but Ivy Street remains a pictogram for me, even now that I live in Pittsburgh and find myself on Ivy Street often. Every time I happen to drive by, I see the fragments of my parents' adult lives mingling with parts of my own.
The above is a brief personal essay for my Research in English class. I wish I had the time to write an entry about how cold and wet I was today and how I think I may have caught cold . . . oh, wait! That's not interesting! Here, just enjoy the above instead.
There is no way to make sense of the lives of our parents, except in fragments. My house was populated by artifacts of my parents' previous lives: a glass boot from Berlin, a suitcase full of baby teeth and Jamaican money. My favorite of these relics were from Pittsburgh, where my parents had met and married in the 1970s. They lived on Ivy Street, a narrow side street in Shadyside. A cartoon poster depicting an infamous Ivy Street block party hung above my bed for years, and I studied the jocular, diasporic speech bubbles every night while falling asleep. How could so many people know each other, share porches, eat knishes together? The notion seemed impossibly exciting from my pillow in rural Pennsylvania. I was so infatuated with the image of such a place that I wore the old key to my mother's Ivy Street house around my neck until I lost it.
Visiting Ivy Street now, I have the uncanny feeling of seeing a place from dreams. For a while my mother was a housepainter and house cleaner, and during her years of living on Ivy, had been asked to repaint every house on the block in her imprecise, quirky hand. While my parents wonder what ever became of Victor Tucci, the Steelers' most manic fan, I look at the windowsills my mother has painted. They bear such a resemblance to our windowsills at home that I wouldn't be surprised to see a younger, tow-headed version of myself staring out of them. It is harder to see the hand of my father on Ivy, but his influence is also there-he commissioned the city to plant all of the young maples that line the street. Maples, I know, ought to look the same everywhere, but these have the same character of the other trees my father has planted on our land.
Of course, the Shadyside in which I imagine my parents exists in the past and in my mind; Shadyside is today the best place to purchase designer kitchenware, choose a dog groomer, or outfit your baby in loden polar fleece playsuits. It is, in other words, experiencing the later, moribund stages of gentrification. Walking through Ellsworth, only a few blocks away from their old street, my parents marvel at the Williams Sonoma, the Banana Republic, the Gap and Baby Gap. It seems the only fragment left from the Stonewall Bookstore is a bookmark left in my mother's copy of e.e. cummings' The Enormous Room. Only Schiller's Pharmacy remains, and even it displays the latest Shalimar perfume.
But that copy of The Enormous Room is still on my bookshelf; my favorite t-shirt is still a worn-out “Ivy Street Block Party '82” t-shirt stolen from my parents' closet. I have no feelings for the chain stores and yogurt bars, but Ivy Street remains a pictogram for me, even now that I live in Pittsburgh and find myself on Ivy Street often. Every time I happen to drive by, I see the fragments of my parents' adult lives mingling with parts of my own.
The above is a brief personal essay for my Research in English class. I wish I had the time to write an entry about how cold and wet I was today and how I think I may have caught cold . . . oh, wait! That's not interesting! Here, just enjoy the above instead.
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