Testing that old theory about going home again

I suppose apologies are due all around for my behavior of late. I've been distracted, forgetful, incompetent, stressed, and untoward - in a constant state of confusion while pretending to be in godlike control.

I want my mommy. I want "Serenity now!" And I want someone else to do the heavy lifting.

Moving - as in moving from the house where you live to another house where you're going to live - has this predictable, bipolar effect on me. Which is why we DeLeons tend to stay put as long as we can, unless and until circumstances or court orders come into play.

Thirty years ago, the four of us (two parents, two children) were perfectly happy living in our first home - the little rowhouse on the prairie, in South Philadelphia, where we had lived since 1973. That was back in the day when newspaper real estate writers were calling people like us "urban pioneers" in stories about the "so-called" back-to-the-city movement by young white couples from the suburbs. I always hated that "so-called" designation, as if the choice to live in the city were suspect and unsustainable.

In 1973, the white ethnic residents of the mixed-race 200 block of Montrose Street referred to the surrounding neighborhood as South Philly. But my Main-Line-by-way-of-Erie-Avenue-raised mother was visibly relieved when a Realtor friend explained that her grandchildren were not growing up in a "redbrick rowhouse in South Philadelphia" but rather a "townhouse in Queen Village."

For some reason, though, Mom never boasted about our proximity to the four majestic high-rises on the other side of Third Street, where thousands lived in the Southwark Plaza public-housing projects.

I heard a few stupid things from Philadelphia cops in uniform and on duty when we lived on Montrose Street. The stupidest were spoken about a year before we moved to West Philadelphia in July 1985. It was on the Saturday night when some psycho kicked in the front door of a neighbor's house. She was a retired professional who lived alone but was visiting her sister in New Jersey. Another neighbor and I kept watch over her house until the police arrived to take a report.

It was daylight by the time a cop came rolling up the street. As he wrote down the information, I remarked how strange the crime seemed on our quiet block. The cop replied, "What do you people expect living down here?" I didn't inquire as to what he meant by "down here" (near the projects?), but the insult was clear: What kind of white people would choose to live on a block like ours?

Lots, apparently, because in the decades since, whatever was considered the urban frontier has been replaced by neighborhoods full of middle-class people buying homes and raising families. But it's important to understand that Philadelphia cops actually said things like that years ago.

Years after we moved to our Victorian twin in West Philly, on the uphill side of Clark Park, our third child, Molly, arrived; our second, Emily, was almost 16. (I call that surprise a Catholic 7-10 split.) Emily was concerned that people would think that her baby sister was her baby. But it was love at first touch when she held Molly in her arms. And that, believe it or not, was 25 years ago.

So my wife, Sara, and I are now in the process of learning whether you can go home again. Not only have we moved our empty nest back to the old neighborhood, but we have moved onto the same block and into the same house where we raised our young family.

Has the neighborhood changed? Well, there used to be a handicapped-only parking spot across the street. Now there's an electric-car-only parking spot across the street. It's as if the yuppies have been replaced by the Jetsons.

Otherwise, remarkably, the block looks and feels the same. And, thanks to our always-opinionated neighbor two doors away, it sounds the same, too. After 30 years away, there's only one question on my mind about going back to the future: What are we going to do with all our stuff?