It’s been a while, almost a year since I updated this website.
Much has happened, and most of my half-dozen or so readers have seen me within the past two months and will not need this update. But in case someone is strolling by and we haven’t been in touch recently, I’ll give the quick holiday card version.
After returning from Europe, we lost a beloved parent (John’s dad, who passed away at age 96), and for various family reasons, we decided to return to North Carolina after 35 years away. We’ve kept our house in Michigan and rented an apartment in Raleigh for a year.
The view from our apartment building’s rooftop terrace.
My home state’s most famous author, Thomas Wolfe, is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel, Look Homeward, Angel, set in his hometown of Asheville (recently devastated by Hurricane Helene). Later, he wrote You Can’t Go Home Again. I understand what he meant by that, and I don’t disagree.
Home changes. People change.
When we left Raleigh as newlyweds 35 years ago for John’s dream job as a political reporter in Washington, D.C., he promised me that if I didn’t like it there, we would come home. I didn’t dislike our nation’s capital. I instantly found a job I enjoyed and was doing very well at it, and I made lifelong friends. But it was a grind, a workaholic life that I couldn’t reconcile with our wish to start a family. I wanted to go home. John inquired about newspaper jobs in North Carolina, and one editor suggested that before he came home again, he should try getting some broader experience. See the world, or at least the country.
So we moved to northern Michigan, a place we’d never visited. It was meant to be temporary, but we stayed for 32 years. Our perspectives changed, much as that editor recommended. We learned to cross country ski and to shovel snow. We made friends who didn’t give directions as “over yonder.” We made friends who hugged as a greeting if they hadn’t seen you in a week, or sometimes if they hadn’t seen you in a day. Many of these became very good friends. Slowly, we became midwesterners.
Yet, in my mind I was often gone to Carolina. John, not quite as much.
When John and I were planning our wedding, my daddy told me some advice he got from his own daddy, who died just before my parents’ wedding. The granddaddy I never met told him, “Son, get out a map and stick a pin in your bride’s family home and a pin in your family home, then draw a circle with a radius of 500 miles from either of those pins. Move outside that circle.” My daddy didn’t take that advice, and as it turned out, he regretted that we did. Whenever I would phone my parents, the first thing Daddy would ask was, “when are you moving home?” The saddest part of our return is that he’s not here to celebrate it, nor are John’s parents.
Daddy never strayed far from his Warren County birthplace. He rests in peace there.
John’s parents, who would have been equally delighted to have us close again.
When I met John in 1986, I was fresh out of college and dreamt of being a foreign correspondent like my mentor, Robin Wright (the journalist, not the actress). I was on the fast track, having secured a job with United Press International, which still had bureaus circling the globe. As John Lennon sang, “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
My wanderlust never abated. I still want to live in France! But home base has always been, and will always be, right here in North Carolina.
We shall not cease from exploration
T.S. Eliot
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Some things have not changed, and others have changed significantly. Most of the changes I love.
Many times over the past three decades I thought I could never again live in the Triangle (that’s the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill metro area). Maybe I could live in Durham, if I had to pick a place in North Carolina. I always liked Durham, during my four years at Duke and then for another two as a reporter for the News & Observer before John and I left for D.C. But mostly, the massive suburban sprawl that characterizes the Triangle metro area was no longer for me.
Sometime during the past few years, that feeling started to change. Most surprisingly, I started to feel like perhaps, just maybe, I could even imagine living in Cary again, the epitome of Sunbelt suburban sprawl manicured boulevard mini-mansion hellscapes. This feeling came while escaping Michigan’s brutal winters, living in my childhood bedroom and taking care of my elderly mother, being completely car dependent, and yet not totally hating it. I noticed that Cary was attempting to get a bit of a pedestrian feel going in its “downtown,” such that it was, and the rebuilt library had a nice apartment building right next to it, and there were restaurants and a wine shop and a cultural center within the pleasant pedestrian area.
I went to a Turkish poetry reading that packed a large room at the downtown Cary arts center. I couldn’t imagine going to any poetry reading that packed a room, and this one was all in Turkish (with translations). My brother-in-law, who is Turkish, invited me.
It wasn’t just Turkish poetry. When I was out and about in Cary, I would see so much ethnic diversity and hear so many languages. The high-tech Research Triangle Park, often referred to as Silicon Valley East, along with the major universities in the region, is a draw to people from all over the world. And many of them bring their families, some of whom open restaurants. Cary is a hub for Indian and Asian cuisine. It even supports ethnic supermarkets, such as the Korean H-Mart and the Indian Patel Brothers.
When we moved from Raleigh 35 years ago, ethnic cuisine here was largely limited to Italian and Chinese. Tonight we’re celebrating our daughter’s birthday at a fancy Laotian restaurant, and it’s not even the only Laotian restaurant in town. We can now eat around the world here as easily as we did in Washington, D.C.
I love the multiculturalism that has infused the metro region with its vibrancy and made this one of the most desirable places in the country to live.
The downside, of course, is traffic and expense. We could reduce the latter by moving well outside of Raleigh, like to Warren County, where at least 300 years of my ancestors rest in cemeteries. It’s cheap, for sure, but there’s a reason for that. Warren County doesn’t even have a hospital, and as we’re both over 60 now, that’s a negative amenity.
Instead, we’ve forked over our cash to pay the high rent to live in one of Raleigh’s most walkable neighborhoods. Our address has a walk score of 88, almost as high as our son’s Chicago address. If we didn’t have relatives who all live in places with walk scores of less than 10, we’d probably not even need a car here. But we do, and we’re here to be part of their lives, so one of the first things we did was buy a new Toyota Corolla hybrid to replace our 2010 Versa. It’s primarily used to transport my mother to her many medical appointments.
We’re living in the same neighborhood in which my mother lived when she met my dad, and where she purchased her wedding dress, later my wedding dress. Back then it was called Cameron Village. Recently it was rebranded as The Village District when it was brought to the attention of the current owners of the large shopping plaza at the center of the neighborhood that the original antebellum owner of the land, the eponymous Cameron, held hundreds of enslaved people. Another good change.
John also lived near this neighborhood during his student days at N.C. State, which is about four blocks to the south of our building. We’re happily taking advantage of the offerings of a major university. We joined an extended education community for people over 50, which came with a university library card. I’m in library heaven, with a large branch of the Wake County Public library system just two blocks from my door and the flagship library of N.C. State an easy half mile walk away. Both libraries host interesting events. I’ve joined a knitting group at the county library, and last week we went to a packed auditorium at the N.C. State library to hear a talk from a professor who recently published a book on the beer-making culture of ancient Sumeria, followed by a tasting from N.C. State’s beer lab. At N.C. State, students can now get a minor in beer making. It’s science.
The N.C. State belltower, a heartwarming homecoming symbol for John.
We’re making new friends and reconnecting with old friends. Leah is taking classes at Wake Tech, finally ending her gap decade after high school. She’s also taking acting classes for fun and enrichment at the nearby Raleigh Little Theater.
My mother is struggling with the ailments of old age-it seems all of them, and all at once. I’m grateful that I can be part of her care and support team.
We’re also thrilled to be a regular part of our siblings’ lives again. We can go to family weddings and birthday celebrations. I can stop by my sister’s house just to chat.
The cost of this family togetherness is steep: we lose the ability to be a regular part of the lives of our dear friends in Michigan. We mourn that.
We may return to our house in Michigan for summers, although I must confess that I’m currently enamored of apartment life, where home maintenance is non-existent. Sometimes I miss my backyard herb garden, but it was only good for summers anyway, and my potted herbs here are thriving in their (usually) sunny window.
Also, surprisingly for someone who doesn’t like heights, I’m enjoying living on the fifth floor. It’s a different perspective on the world from here. Hawks fly by the window, almost looking me in the eye. Hawkeye! The sky seems bigger.
Now more than a year since John officially “retired,” we are embarking on our next phase. In a few days, we go to a new member gathering for our N.C. State senior learning thing. We’re starting to talk about travel. I’m thinking of taking a pottery class at the nearby arts center if I can justify taking on another hobby. I’m planning to do a lot of holiday baking this year and may even string some lights around the apartment. With two libraries at my disposal, my to-read stack has exploded and I know I’ll never miss the hundreds of books I gave away before we moved. I don’t even need to use inter-library loan! If I want something so obscure that it’s not at Wake or State, I also have free access to the Duke University libraries with my alumni card.
We don’t know what the future holds, but it seems as if it has finally started.
Stay tuned.
