What's in a name? (first post!)
Anyway, you might be wondering, why Symphony Lane? No, it's not a stripper name (unfortunately). It's the name of the street I lived on in Blue Bell, PA until I was about 5 years old. I have very faint memories of this house, but it's the story behind it that holds meaning.
The tiny house on Symphony Lane
In Pennsylvania in 1980, a man named Jerry Starobin and his father Leonard, thought of a unique business idea: to engineer and build the first totally solar-powered home. Together with Jerry's small company, called Total Solar, they made this project come to fruition. Heat from the solar panels was transferred to a huge rock pile under the house. The floors were black slate for passive solar storage. The tables were glass so that sunshine could hit the black slate floor. There was no backup heat. They even designed a solar air conditioner. In the years following, engineering students from the University of Pennsylvania would even come to the house for tours.
A few years after the project was completed, Jerry fell in love with a pretty and bubbly woman named Debby. After getting married, they moved into the tiny solar house together to start their new life. They had 2 little boys, Benjamin and Jonathan, with a third one on the way. Although the house was meant to be an experiment, they made it into a home. In March of 1992, Jerry passed away suddenly. Jerry was my late father, and Debby is my mother. Debby was 3 months pregnant with me at the time. Her sons (my big brothers) were 2 and 5. My mother is the strongest woman I know. She picked herself up and eventually found love again and remarried. In 1998, we moved out of the solar home to start a new life in a nearby town.
My grief for my father grew as I got older. I always had a sense of wonder about him, a feeling of incompleteness from never having met him. I would sometimes ask my mom questions about him, something small like, Was he a morning person or a night owl? or What was his go-to ice cream flavor? One day, I asked about our old house on Symphony Lane. That was when my mom told me the history behind it. Before that, I didn't even know it was such a special house! I was in awe. I was born an artist and, as a child, would spend hours, holed up in my room, drawing. When I got older, my passion for art and design turned into a career in graphic design. But I always loved interiors, and had a fascination for building things; small things that are self-taught, like building a simple bench, or finding innovative ways to decorate my room. The idea of creating things is awesome to me. So when my mom told me all about how my dad loved to build, and built our actual HOUSE, a part of the puzzle connected – So THAT'S where I get it from! Even though it was mainly a hobby, this connection motivated me to really pursue it and make an effort to do small projects. In honor of my dad. This blog for me is definitely a creative outlet, but also has a deeper meaning in that a lot of these posts are in honor of my dad. I’m actually writing this on his birthday, which I swear was not intentional! But definitely serendipitous. This isn't a topic I talk about often, so I'm a little nervous to even post this. But I'm also VERY excited to start this blog, which was a long time coming!
-Abby