4336

According to "The Free Dictionary” on line, one of the definitions of number is: one of a series of symbols of unique meaning.


For me, 4336 embodies that definition. That number is the house number of an unassuming row house ("twin," actually) on a neat little street in an enduring Philadelphia neighborhood. To spare this unique address any unsolicited attention, I am leaving out the street name. But for me there is no other place like it in the whole wide world.

4336
where I was whisked when my sisters Diane, Theresa and Barbara were born.
where I watched Shirley Temple movies afternoons sprawled on the living room floor and "Double Chiller" late nights in bed with my cousins and the covers up to our chins.
where I first had galompkis and kruschiki and pierogies.
where I watched teenagers dance to The Geator in the basement "rec room" and yearned for the day I'd be one of them.
where I learned to apply false eyelashes and to put a bra on "backwards."
where I emigrated when I had a fight with my parents or my best friend.
where the middle bedroom became "my room" when I came to visit after moving to Cape May.
where I have always been welcome, along with all of my dogs and most of my boyfriends.

You see, I had already lived in five places by the time I was nine years old. And my parents moved twice since I have been all grown up. Now, my mother lives in a very sensible, small apartment.

I, too, travel lighter than most people I know. I have always kept moving. My houses have been more like "rest stops" than "home," especially in the Martha Stewart sense of the word. I often wonder if all that moving at such an early age is what set me in motion for the rest of my life.

One recent afternoon, though, as I settled in for a nap at 4336, it hit me. Though my own life has been one of seeming perpetual motion, this address has never changed.

For over 50 years I have dashed up the same front steps, sat at the table in the same kitchen (with a few renovations), and looked out the same front window at the same row houses across the street. I can find my way through these rooms blindfolded. Even my dogs, every one of them, sensed when we were approaching. Each would awaken from a dead sleep whether we were coming off of I-95 or over one of the Delaware bridges: they, too, knew the magic of the place.

My Aunt Renee and Uncle Nicky had been married 60 years before she died. They spent every one of those years at 4336. Even the phone number has been the same in all the years I've known it. Through births and deaths and love and loss, this little place has embraced their history. Such constancy always amazed me: so antithetical to all I have become.

And yet...
so much a part of all I have become.