Whenever I fly back to Pittsburgh, I always know if I’m at the right gate because half the passengers will be decked out in Pittsburgh sports team apparel. It’s a little hokey but there’s a comforting appeal to it. Even with a flight delay last Saturday and a flurry of changed gates announced in a rush over the airport intercom, I know before I’ve even approached the help desk which gate is mine simply by the number of Steeler jerseys.
I am decked head to toe in discount outdoor apparel and a well-worn pair of Blundstones. I stand out like a sore thumb amidst my midwestern counterparts.
When the plane touches down at Pittsburgh International Airport the pilot says, “If you’re in Pittsburgh for a visit, enjoy your stay. And if you live in Pittsburgh, welcome home.” I look around the plane wondering if I’m the only one not sure which statement is meant for me.
In the Uber to my mom’s townhouse 35 minutes outside of Pittsburgh, the driver asks me where I’m from and I say Colorado because it feels most correct. “But,” I add, “I grew up just outside of Pittsburgh and went to Pitt for four years.”
“Damn,” he says. “You got OUT! How did you manage to do that?” He’s laughing. He says it’s hard to leave Pittsburgh and I understand what he means. All of our families are here and stay here and then more family members come about and they stay here too. Suddenly we’ve all been here for a very long time. Leaving begins to feel like treason. I tell him I left for grad school in 2015 and never came back. “Good for you,” he says. “Colorado sounds beautiful.” I tell him it is, but Pennsylvania is beautiful in its own way too. He shrugs.
He tells me that he, his wife, and their young daughter live just up the road from the airport. He’s running Uber trips on top of his full-time job for a little extra holiday cash.
“It’s so different now,” he says. “My little girl is on Amazon filling up a cart for Santa and it’s getting entirely out of control.”
He’s laughing again. I tell him I get it. I used to circle hundreds of items in toy catalogs with a big red felt tip marker. He tells me it’s been a tough couple of years, that they want to buy instead of rent but can’t afford it yet, especially with these interest rates. His parents are trying to get him to move into the little extra house on their property. “I just can’t do it,” he says. “I need some distance from them.”
I tell him I live in a camper right now, traveling around the country, because I couldn’t figure out any other way to make the rent/life balance work either. “Jeeze,” he says, “They ought to make a TV show about you.”
We arrive at the townhouse a little after 11 pm, windows dark, three hours late thanks to all the flight delays. “Maybe I’ll see you again on the flight back home,” he says as I grab my bags from the backseat. And suddenly I’m unsure if I’m home on the asphalt in front of this townhouse in Mars, PA, or home on the dusty soil of any place else I’ve paid rent. How many places can we honestly call home? I’ve barely slung my bag over my shoulder and keyed in the garage door code before the driver is zipping out of the neighborhood back toward the highway.
The next day at Giant Eagle (a western PA grocery store), the cashier makes a joke about the items I’m checking out, that I must be on a diet. I’ve purchased sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, lemons, oat milk, oatmeal, apples, tahini and white jasmine rice. And it does take me nearly an hour to find these items amidst the standard midwestern meat, potatoes, and frozen vegetables. The woman behind me has four 2-liter bottles of pop (we say pop in western PA) and a box of powdered donuts. The man in front of me has four boxes of steak-umms, six or seven pouches of instant mashed potatoes, and three tubs of oreo ice cream. Comparatively, I look like a freak. I have to work very hard to shove down a gnawing sense of superiority gurgling up inside of me.
Coming home always feels this way, a weighty chip resting on my shoulder. Meanwhile my stomach pools with shame. Still, I can’t stop that judge-y feeling.
Just a day later at a yoga class down the street, I nearly turn around and walk out when I hear “Banana Pancakes” by Jack Johnson blasting over the speakers.
I don’t know what it is about western PA that has firmly locked an entire mass of people into the year of our lord 2009. I am desperate to grab one of the Lulu Lemon clad white women, shake them by the shoulders, and remind them that we have in fact created new music, food, styles, and clothing in the last 13 years. But I don’t think it would matter. A decade behind is the style here.
To my horror, as the class begins and the doors lock, the instructor changes the playlist to Ariana Grande Christmas pop and I have to attempt to find mindfulness while a nasally version of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” blasts so loud my ears ring. (The irony is not lost on me that this is probably the actual purpose of yoga, but still, I hang onto my self-righteousness.) I end in savasana to a horrendous arrangement of “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” and bolt out to the car so quickly I nearly trip over the mountain of beige Uggs clogging the entryway.
When I get home, I complain to my mom about the Christmas music and she asks, “Were the other women happy?”
“Yes,” I say, “Unfortunately the other women were happy.”
“Well,” she says, “It sounds to me like you’re the one with the problem then.” And I know she’s right.
Coming home never feels how I think it will. It’s always just a little duller, a little more muted than I remembered. The Mad Mex margarita that I thought was so stunning in college is actually solidly mediocre, and the yoga studio that I was convinced changed my life actually just plays a basic bitch mix of indie songs that only a 20-year-old white girl who has never left her home state could find deeply moving.
The city, of course, is still incredibly endearing, but the return is never the same.