Neighbors around me are on the move.

Is it me? I hope not.

I have been in the same house for 28 years, and on the same street for 34 years.

Moving always makes me sad. Even when I don't know the people leaving the neighborhood, I sense a changing of the guard, and I am reminded nothing remains the same forever.

None of the neighbors are having foreclosures, thank goodness.

The moves are good moves -- for them.

I'm sad for me.

My next-door neighbors, a couple I have come to regard as extended family, along with their yellow Lab, are moving on.

Their son, Nicholas, who just turned 2, was born here.

The move is filled with mixed emotions, they say, because of having their first born in this house and loving Pittsburgh.

But good jobs take them back to Albuquerque, and on top of that, and most important, it's where their families live.

That's a good thing. Why am I moping?

Starr Lujan is a pediatrician and her husband, Don, an orthopedic surgeon. I hate that Pittsburgh is losing them as much as I feel the personal loss.

I would like to see such young people make up Pittsburgh's populace and give the city's future a boost.

I have been wandering to backyard house sales and feeling sad, even knowing the families might be going to a better job, a bigger house, a bright future.

A neighbor on the other side of me recently got married and I am so happy for her. But she's moving away, and while I seldom see her or have long conversations with her, she has been a constant for more than 20 years, which seems rare in a neighborhood where moves take place so regularly.

The row houses across from me, where I once lived and rented before becoming a homeowner myself, change annually because most are now occupied by students. They move on.

I never really get to know any of them, but I know them by their cars, which are parked on the street each day.

Still, I'll miss them and await the next SUV, sports car or truck, as the case may be. On a good day I'll even miss their music.

Starr and Nicholas were watching a home video in which their house, now on the market, was in the background.

"Nick's house, Nick's house," her 2-year-old kept saying as he pointed to the video. It was emotional for his mom.

We wondered how much he would remember about this house as he grows up in a different state far away from Pittsburgh.

I can remember almost every house I ever lived in growing up.

We never owned our own house. In my hometown, Uniontown, we lived in four different houses. I am a bit fuzzy about the first house because I was very young, like Nicholas, and I probably only recall what my parents told me about it.

But whenever I have driven past it on visits there, I have images in my head of being in a playpen on the porch. Real, or imagined, I'm not sure.

But I always think, there's my house. It is at once, and forever, mine.

The other three houses have more vivid memories, especially the house where I spent most of my grade school and high school years.

I heard the news about Pearl Harbor one Sunday morning in that house. My first pet lived there with us. Santa brought me my Shirley Temple doll to that house. I learned to skate and ride my bicycle and "went steady" as a teenager while living there.

I cried when we moved across town my senior year.

Perhaps it is less painful when you don't have so many years of memories. Or, unlike so many of us, you just aren't emotionally attached to living space or brick and mortar.

Love for a particular house isn't always about its architecture or furnishings, although awnings, floral slipcovers and criss-cross curtains have always spelled "home" to me.

It's the memories.

The neighbors moving to New Mexico have been showing the house for a few weeks. The day the sign went up in their yard was the reality. I went to a movie.

Two doors away, the "sale pending" sign has changed to SOLD in bold letters. I've watched this family add two sons to their family since they arrived on the street, the fourth of the home owners I have seen come and go from that house.

The neighbors I never knew across the street, although I knew two previous families who lived there, have moved to Manhattan. How exciting is that?

I plunked down $2 at their yard sale for a basket of fake ivy I didn't need.

Why? I don't know. It now decorates the top of a kitchen cabinet and doesn't need watering. That's a good thing.

In reality, maybe I just felt it was the neighborly thing to do.