I live in New Jersey. I've been here more than 35 years. I love living near the ocean. I love the fact that I never have to parallel park -- ever. I love driving on wide, straight, flat roads. I love that I do not have to pump my own gas anywhere in the entire state.

Home, to me, is where the Steelers play. It's the friendly city that boasts the best amusement park on the continent. Home is Johnston Avenue in Pittsburgh. It's a big, yellow house at the top of a mountain of steps in Hazelwood. Across from Burgwin Pool.

My best memories are from my childhood in Hazelwood. Everything children need in life was across the street from my home.

There was Burgwin Playground, with a double slide and swings that went as high as the sky. We played there each morning, went swimming in the afternoon. Each night, we couldn't get our dinner down fast enough to return across the street. Once the dishes were done, we armed ourselves with wax paper -- to rub on the slide and make it faster -- then chased each other up and down the steps and slide, playing tag until the sun went down. The playground teachers, who worked weekdays, taught us crafts and games and encouraged friendships that continue today.

When the pool closed for the season, we sat on the lights to watch St. Stephen's football team. In winter, Chief Bennet, the Burgwin caretaker, waited for the first signs of freezing temperatures, then sprayed a hose on part of the field so we could ice skate.

We were able to fly on our roller skates, going up into the projects, then turning and letting the skates carry us down the hill, jumping over curbs, accelerating, soaring. It felt so dangerous and decadent.

Eventually, adulthood mandated that I stop swinging, playing tag and building objects in the huge, enclosed sandbox that provided activity on rainy days. And, ultimately, I left the home of my childhood.

But I still visit. Through the years, I have seen hints of deterioration. First, the playground teachers disappeared. The high swings were replaced by more sensible lower ones. There is a single slide that will not lend itself to frantic games of tag. Then the pool closed.

The drug stores that lined Second Avenue, the five-and-ten and the two movie theaters also were boarded and forgotten. Eventually, I heard the police department is now in Squirrel Hill or Homestead. I'm not sure where. My childhood friends have moved away, although some of us are still in touch. And the reputation of my home municipality is less than stalwart. It's downright threatening.

But, yet, each time I would climb those countless steps leading to that yellow house, I would feel safe, secure, comforted, protected. It has been my Tara for more than half a century.

My father is 100; my mother is 92. It's time for them to move into someplace more convenient and appropriate, although both remain competent, capable, independent individuals. So my house, my home, my sanity, has been sold.

Every brick in that house holds a memory. It was a gathering place. My friends, my cousin, we all feel the same sense of void, knowing that we will no longer sit around the dining room table and enjoy my mom's fabulous meals.

I had lived on Lytle Street in Hazelwood until I was nearly seven and do have some memories from there. But most of my past, most of my world, is held hostage on Johnston Avenue. I was so proud of that house. So proud of my parents. Even today, so proud to have lived there, although it's impossible to ignore the fact that my hometown is different from its glory days.

I admit, I'm happy to not have to climb those steps any more. But I do resent that someone else will be sleeping in my room. That someone else will sit in my dining room. Someone else may plant the garden in the yard that my father so meticulously managed. It's hard to imagine anyone other than my mother cooking in that double oven in the kitchen.

It's amazing how a house becomes more than a building and can become a refuge from the dangers outside. It's not just a collection of bricks. It's more than walls separating rooms. It's home. It's love. It's a storehouse of wondrous times.

I miss mine.