Mother Water

2006

In Thailand, I swayed with the throng of commuters on the Chao Praya River Taxi. In India, I joined the procession of pilgrims at the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna. I watched the sunset over the Mekong River in Laos. I made an effort to descend the banks of every river I encountered in a year of traveling. I met rivers smooth and wide, stately, or playful in their shallow patches. Rivers of distinct character. Some with momentous roles in world historical events. And yet they were all the Allegheny, the Monongahela and the Ohio to me. Ultimately its all the same water anyway, isn’t it? Always on the move, flowing, running even. In a hurry to complete its unconscious journey to circum-navigate the globe – so it can start over again.

Surely at least a few drops of the Mekong once flowed between those forested banks of the Allegheny; paid a visit to Pittsburgh’s point to mingle with the fine waters of the Monongahela; merged into the fast-lane of the Ohio and set their sights south on the Gulf of Mexico. But who knows which sunny day intervened, perhaps even before they reached the Mississippi, and reduced these drops to vapor - introducing them once again to the endless cycle of their existence. And who knows what lands they floated over in cloud form. What other rivers they ran with. What windows they pounded against. What cool glasses of beer, in whose hands, they condensed upon - before making their way here.

In Pittsburgh there’s a low-level fear of crossing rivers. It’s a fact generally mentioned as a joke, but in truth it’s a fear. I’ve heard explanations of where this collective fear came from – that it stems back generations. Now it’s like any irrational misgiving - unexplained, un-probed, accepted and accommodated. But some say that in the old days, when the work along the rivers was hard and dangerous and performed by immigrant communities, it was known that if you crossed a river you might never come back.

Pittsburgh’s work was in iron and steel. If a strike was on or the plant in your town closed, you had to go to another town to look for work. Often that other town was on the other side of a river. Often the people there didn’t speak your language. And if you died on the job (work related casualties were not rare in those days) you were just another Slav or Pole to them. They didn’t know your name or where you came from or how to contact your family. So you were gone across the river and your family had no one and nothing to blame except those wide waters that carried you away and never returned you.

Fewer and fewer people work in iron and steel these days. And nearly all Pittsburghers speak English by now. But fears are generally not assuaged by facts such as these. They are passed down through generations and while they remain fears at base, they are transformed as well. They become jokes, local traditions, and modalities for living. One might call them sage knowledge. They become a matter of pride. Evidence of a proprietary claim to place. For Pittsburghers this fear is imbedded so deeply that most don’t know where it comes from, but we know what it means – this is home.

Of the three rivers the Allegheny is most mine. It was the first one I came to. I grew up in the hills north of it. In my teen years I gathered the courage to cross it. The lure of the city was strong enough to push lingering, ancestral fears aside. Over the years I’ve come to know each of the rivers in their own right. I’ve come to claim the whole triangle they encompass and neighborhoods on either side as my regular stomping grounds. But I’ve never shed that original orientation. I came at it from the north. For true Pittsburghers, no matter where you move in the city (IF you move within the city, IF you work up the nerve to cross a river or even just a neighborhood boundary . . .) you never forget where you came from. You never stop looking at it from that angle.

It’s true for the wider world as well. Pittsburgh is a place that many people never leave. The fear of river crossing being what it is, it’s a place that many people never even move around in. For some the rivers literally encompass their world. Those of us who do leave break the geographical mold, but the rivers simply expand their embrace. I flew thousands of miles away and still never crossed outside the reach of the Allegheny, the Monongahela and the Ohio. The place holds me. It defines my orientation; I approach the world from a Pittsburgh angle.

In Thai the word for river is Mae Naam – literally “mother-water.” Pittsburgh’s three rivers, the point where they meet, that is my mother water.