Outdoor enthusiast loving life in Washington
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one in a monthlong series about the people who make up our community, in celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Of all the towns in all the world, they live in Washington.
“My family’s from the Dominican Republic, but I was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts,” said Priscilla Nazario, an older millennial. “My husband’s family is from Puerto Rico. He was born in New York City, in Brooklyn, but was raised in Puerto Rico. He moved back to the United States when he was in high school – to New Jersey. That’s where we met.”
Nazario was finishing high school in Newark, New Jersey, where she’d moved with her mother following her parents’ divorce. She met her husband, Ruben, in the laundromat his father owned.
“One day I walked in. He’s like, you always come in and wash clothes, but you never talk to anyone. We started talking, and from there…”
Theirs was a whirlwind romance that led them to the local courthouse, where, 24 years ago, the couple wed, before Nazario’s 18th birthday, and despite her mother’s disapproval.
“Now she loves him,” Nazario laughed.
Her husband, she said, is a good man, a good provider, and a good cook, three of a myriad of reasons Nazario is still so in love. The latter is part of what keeps their spark alive.
“We love to cook. Food is literally what we live for,” Nazario laughed. “We are big foodies. We travel just to eat. When we go places, we are always looking, where do we eat? We try everything,” she said.
The secret to finding the best food?
“We would go to the worst areas,” Nazario said, “because that’s where the best food was.”
Once, the couple flew to Thailand just for the street food (a slight exaggeration: they’d promised their daughter a trip to anywhere on the map, for her quinceanera).
“The food is amazing. The people are incredible. And you can eat, it’s so cheap. The food was so good,” Nazario said, adding they enjoyed more than just culinary experiences abroad. “We really enjoyed our trip. We went zip lining. We went and saw the elephants. We went to an island called Karachayai, which was gorgeous. It was beautiful.”
The family returned from the splendor of Thailand to Upper St. Clair, where the Nazarios first settled in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Their route east of the Appalachian Trail began as newlyweds, when the couple left New Jersey for eastern Pennsylvania; when the steel company for which Ruben worked closed and offered to relocate the Nazarios to Pittsburgh, they packed their bags.
“We decided, sure, why not? What do we have to lose? We never really had been to Pittsburgh, but we said, let’s go,” Nazario said.
Upon their arrival, Nazario, who grew up in bustling cities, noticed a lack of diversity.
“Now, there’s more Hispanics, and there is more diversity. Pittsburgh has a lot of work, a lot of jobs, so there’s a lot of people coming and traveling over,” she said. “Our experience has been so great. We haven’t had to deal with any, um, difficult situations due to being a minority. I know not everybody can say that. I think we have been so blessed to have been around really good people.”
Following their daughter’s graduation from Upper St. Clair High School, the Nazarios began looking casually for a new home. About five years ago, Nazario fell in love with a charming house in East Washington, now a home from which she runs a small day care she pours her heart and soul into.
“I love children. I told (my husband) I want, like, 10 kids. Well, I didn’t know what it was to have one,” she laughed.
During the early years of motherhood, Nazario (who for about a decade worked the night shift at a hotel, so her daughter would not have to be in day care) admitted she often felt like a single parent, because her husband traveled frequently for work. She didn’t want to split her attention between work and children, but now, she said, she has the joy of making kids her work.
“What better way to still have kids, when you can take care of kids? I don’t have the stress of doing everything on my own, of raising them, but it’s nice to be able to still enjoy them.”
She did, though, enjoy every blessed, exhausting minute of raising her daughter, Krystal, to whom she’s passed on an enthusiasm for outdoor activities.
“My dad was just big on always having us outside. We were always at parks. I did go to Martha’s (Vineyard) a lot, in Cape Cod. I do remember a lot of fond memories of doing things and being out,” Nazario said.
So Nazario and her daughter go out: They paddleboard at local lakes, bicycle along trails in Washington County and beyond, ice skate in wintertime. With each passing season, Nazario’s roots grow deeper in Southwestern Pennsylvania soil; she has, after all, spent about half her life here. But sometimes small-town living still amazes Nazario, who returns eastward often to visit family in bigger cities.
“Everybody I have talked to, it’s like they’re born and raised here, never have left here. That’s so strange to me,” she said. “I have family all over, but I can’t even imagine growing up in a place and never leaving it.”
Perhaps her experience with settling in one place, in this place, Little Washington, is best surmised by a playful admission: “Boston,” Nazario – who sported a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap – said with a smile, “has my heart.”
But, “We love Pittsburgh, honestly, I really love it. I love everywhere we have been.”