I’m sitting here at my computer, “thinking out loud” as I type about the current tragedy in New Orleans. Once again — a city devastated by uncontrollable water. People leave quickly, in droves. And yet — maybe not so quickly, maybe not in droves — they will trickle back. Because that city is their home.

What is it about home cities that drives us back? Not literally, always, although we may return for an occasional visit. We may be responding to nostalgia, or to family connections that remain, but whatever it is — the call comes, and we go. Home is home. Always…

I still wear, quite proudly, my Pittsburgh “gear,” although I lived there only until I was 20. Now I’m closer to 90, yet it’s still “home,” calling to me — with memories as well as remaining family connections — to return, at least for an occasional visit. It’s an “itch” that returns persistently, even after it seems to have been sufficiently scratched.

Will there be more people coming to our part of Texas now, as they did during the last New Orleans flood? Are they still on the road, even as I write this, driving as fast as possible to get away from the rising waters? And after they arrive, how long will they stay? My “souvenir” of that time is a little book titled “1 Dead in Attic,” a compendium of search-and-rescue crews’ findings as they plowed through the high waters soon after they rose.

And what happened with and to those who sought shelter here the last time: How many are still with us, settled down to a new life in this new place for them? All those I knew, especially the women I met who almost immediately picked up their old attachments to organizations like NCJW and BBW right here and began taking full part in them, eventually returned to New Orleans. Is this a sign of human flexibility? Or of equally human nostalgia? Have today’s research psychologists even begun to study this phenomenon? Forests burn with regularity in California; people lose their homes, yet they return to rebuild them. No matter where they have sheltered during their current crisis, they will go back ASAP afterward to rebuild again. And yet again, during the next crisis that they can be sure will occur, later if not sooner. Floods and fires come regularly within certain territories; fleeing is the immediate response; returning is the later one that overwhelms all else…

The street on which I grew up in Pittsburgh — a hilly place — features a “high” side (the hills are behind the houses and end there) and a “low” side (the hills continue downward after the houses). When I visit today, the house I grew up in is still happily occupied by a family much like mine was when I lived there, but the house directly across the street has been deserted; the hill behind it has started a downward slide and taken the residence with it. Who might have imagined this in time to prevent it, if indeed there might have been a way to do so? Living with hills has turned out to be as predictable in the long haul as living with recurring forest fires. So far: Folks have routinely returned to their home places after both floods and fires, but nobody has figured out a way for safe return to houses perched on top of downward-sliding hills…

When I return for a Pittsburgh visit — as the pandemic’s passing will allow — I’ll visit that childhood site, and cry more than a bit, then report to you about it…

Harriet P. Gross can be reached at
harrietgross1@gmail.com.