The house on Pine Street was a place to gather. Now, home is safe because it?s not shared. Most of the time, eight of us lived in the house on Philadelphia?s Pine Street. Between semesters, it sometimes dropped to seven; one semester, the large front bedroom became a triple, making us ten. Often, we were more: In the summers, the futon in the living room hosted a rotation of friends, friends of friends, and out-of-town relatives. Sometimes, guests occupied both the futon and the overstuffed sofa we?d lugged in from the curb during move-out.
I lived in the house on Pine Street for two years, from June after my sophomore year of college to the end of May when I graduated. In my current home, a two-bedroom apartment close to downtown Mexico City, photos of the house ? which we referred to only as 52, the last two digits of the address ? hang on my bedroom wall, from one of the first days I stepped into the home. The summer I was 19, the first residents moved in, among them my older sister, though she?d move out before I entered. We spent a weekend painting the living room pale pink, the vestibule midnight blue, and the kitchen yellow. I wouldn?t live there until the next year, and probably half of the other housepainters never would, but the home worked like that. We didn?t want the cramped high-rise dorms, where we had to swipe our IDs to enter; we didn?t want the looming sorority and fraternity mansions, where arrogant sophomores in designer sneakers sized up anyone ho...