Because I'm Down With the State of Pennsylvania
Celebrating life at a funeral, mourning departures at a Chili Peppers concert.
Last week I returned home for Labor Day weekend.
No, not Florida. My actual home — my home home of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania.
This was my second journey home this year, and probably my fifth or sixth trip since graduating college. I try to fly up to PA a couple times a year just to save face; to make sure my little cousins remember I exist, and to imprint on the baby deer in my backyard.
Many of my visits turn out to be casual (as though I flew thousands of miles home just for dinner), but each visit runs the risk of devolving into nostalgic pilgrimages. I have no way of predicting which trips will sucker punch me in the feelings until the punch has already landed.
Sometimes I come home expecting emotional fanfare and poignance and get nothing.
Other times I come home expecting dinner and a beer with family and leave crying.
My grandmother’s 95th birthday party, for example, set the stage for tears, but my well came up dry. I hung out with family, ate some chicken wings, and hugged Mom Mom a lot.
Piece of (birthday) cake.
But on this last trip, when my only stone-set plans were to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers play at the Phillies stadium, I left feeling like a piece of my heart had been ground up and spit out as fertilizer for the ballpark bluegrass.
The wrench of emotion thrown into my plans was my great uncle’s sudden death. His funeral was scheduled for the morning of the concert.
Since I’m a PA ex-pat, there’s no real expectation for me to go to these things. Yes, it’s important, but I live so far away that no one anticipates me to fly home for every event when FaceTime exists.
Seeing as how I was already in town, however, I washed the birds nest I keep on my scalp, strapped on an old, pit-stained suit, and braced for impact.
The funeral went down without a hitch. It was trailed by a lunch reception with an open bar, featuring a parade of extended family members, many of whom I’d never met, but who insisted that they knew me from when I was this tall. There seemed to be a consensus on how big I’d gotten, which was deserved, since I turn 26-and-one-quarter soon.
The morning’s nostalgia didn’t discriminate between these strangers, who I hadn’t seen since the Bush administration, and my close relatives. Sentimentality spread faster than the last Covid strain. Soon everyone was regaling me with stories of the Good Old Days™.
Back when my grandfather was alive, he and my grandmother hosted this extended family for pool parties. There were kegs, I was told, two of them! The pool was cold and the barbecue hot. Raucous games of horseshoes were played in front of the horse pasture (no relation).
My mother’s cousin told a story about my now deceased great uncle attempting to play horseshoes, only to miss the stake and place his horseshoe in a tree, after which he surrendered back to the grill, where his skills were more aptly focused.
What a great man he was, we all laughed. And what great people, my Mom Mom and Pop Pop, for hosting those parties. What a great idea, we all agreed, another drink at the bar.
These New Days — Good or Bad, as yet undetermined — are ostensibly dedicated to discussing those Old Days. The agenda of memories leapt from the topic of death to how far away I’d moved.
The “How’s Florida?” conversations evolved gracefully into “How’s California?” It was all the same, more or less. I could’ve taken a job exterminating possums in Vietnam and the conversations would follow the same pattern:
“How’s things, you good?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“You look good.”
“Thanks, I feel good.”
“How’s [St. Pete; Los Angeles; Hanoi]?”
“Great, thanks.”
“Warmer there, huh?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Bet you don’t miss this.”
But I do miss it.
And how could I not?
You see, my family possesses an innate capability to blur the lines between celebration and mourning. The vibe at the funeral reception mirrored that of Mom Mom’s birthday, in the best of ways. There were crab cakes and Coors Light. Glasses were clinked over laughter, and teary speeches were made between jokes. I hugged more people than I could name, executing that same conversation over and over like a politician on the campaign trail.
“He’s got a good head on his shoulders,” one husband-of-a-cousin-of-a-mother-of-a-somebody said to my parents.
“Mikey knows when to come home — the important things.”
I didn’t have the heart to reveal that I was in town for a Chili Peppers concert, though, in my defense, I do come home often. And as the bar opened wider, and dessert was served, I almost didn’t want to leave the funeral. Nothing less than seeing my favorite band play at my favorite ballpark could drag me away, but I left with confidence that I’d be home home again soon.
The Chili Peppers concert was a religious experience. Not just because they melted my face off, but because they hit me with surprise nostalgia, too.
Watching these old men play songs that defined my adolescence would’ve been enough to send me over the edge after a funeral. But seeing them play songs about California, that I used to listen to as a teenager in Pennsylvania, after I’d moved to California, in Pennsylvania?
What a trip.
The first song they played, “Around the World,” has a line dedicated to my home. In it, singer Anthony Kiedis raps, “Born in the north and sworn to entertain ya, ‘cause I’m down with the state of Pennsylvania.”
Very stupid, borderline nonsensical lyrics, but when played live, the Phillies stadium seemed to leap an inch off the ground. Several thousand Pennsylvanians all threw their fists up in unison and shouted along:
Because I’m down with the state of Pennsylvania.
Unfortunately, as my Dad likes to point out, Pennsylvania is technically not a state, it’s a commonwealth.
Typical Californians.
The next day, hungover and emotionally drained, the Universe decided to test just how down I truly was with the state of Pennsylvania, as my grandmother invited us over for a low-key Labor Day barbecue.
It wasn’t lost on me that we were celebrating at the original venue of the Good Old Days™. Beneath our feet lay the grave of that infamous party pool, long since retired and filled in with dirt. Beyond the hill was the pasture, now empty of horses, their shoes collecting rust next to player-less stakes.
When Dad opened the grill to fire it up, shattered remnants of the hood fell into its grates. It coughed smoke as we lit it, no doubt remembering its own Good Old Days™ of regular usage.
As the sun set over the woods, and the fire beneath those aging grill grates grew brighter, we sank into our seats and shot the shit. The concert was great, as was the funeral, for different reasons but not as different as one might think.
John and Gigi were quick to tease my parents about my recent move. First, I moved one thousand miles away to Florida, then two thousand miles to California.
What would be next? they asked, Europe?
I delighted them by pointing out that, hey, yeah, a move to Europe has always sounded nice one day. In fact, it was while studying in London that I learned my cousin (John and Gigi’s daughter) gave birth to twins.
One week and 3.5 thousand miles later and I returned to Pennsylvania to hold those twins in my arms for the first time, cementing the next five years of regular visits from Cousin Mike.
So, yes, to my uncle-cousin-whoever-the-hell, I do know when to come home, the important things. But not just the funerals, and the weddings, and the births — but also the in-betweeners.
The impromptu speeches about late relatives at a bar.
The scathing reviews of a new cheese dog that my uncle bought.
The dances with my Mom at concerts she attended just to be with me.
That's why I try not to plan the nostalgic, sentimental moments before I visit. I just try to be receptive to the sappiness when the Universe sends it my way.
Who cares if a birthday party doesn’t produce tears when I’m so often struck dead by a Chili Peppers song, a joke over the grill, or a comment between beers?
The least important moments, I've come to find, can often blossom into the most important of all.
Shouts out to…
My new Venus fly trap, Fairway Frank, which has devoured four flies in five weeks.
The woman I saw on Spirit Airlines eating cup noodles 35,000 feet in the air. I’m not sure how she did it, but she has my respect.
Jalen Hurts, for MVP-like performances.
This is the best writing I have seen since the K.O.B. To Panama.