Photography by Lori K. Tate
The other day my 9-year-old daughter asked how far back our family goes in North Carolina. I’ve thought about this before, but I didn’t know the answer off-hand, so I started thinking about it some more. I’m at least fourth generation on my mother’s side, and I think I’m sixth generation on my dad’s side (we really need to send in our Ancestry.com kits). Needless to say, I have some roots in the Old North State.
As transient as the world is now, it seems strange to have a long lineage in one state. Though I’ve lived in seven towns across this state, I’ve never lived outside of it, which makes it hard for me to understand/relate to how frequently people move these days.
This summer my children lost two friends (a boy and a girl) to out-of-state moves. My daughter is taking it hard, as the girl is one of her best friends, and I’m taking it hard, as her mother is one of my best friends. Though I have no doubt that we’ll keep in touch (social media and texting are godsends in this situation), and they’re only in Tennessee, it’s hard not seeing your friend every day because the day-to-day of friendship is the best part. It’s comforting when someone can share their latest toy with you in person or read your mood in carpool line just by looking at you.
I’m struggling with how to help my daughter because I don’t have a good frame of reference for this from my childhood. I grew up in a small town where folks didn’t (and still mostly don’t) leave. I remember only two friends moving during my 13 years of school there.
The flip side is that a lot of people moved into our area during those same years. They hailed from exotic places such as New Jersey, New York and Vermont, lured by an IBM campus only a 45-minute commute away. Suddenly our neighborhood had folks who ate bagels for breakfast, used carports for storage and mowed grass on Sundays.
I was thrilled to learn about these new cultures and quickly began altering my speech patterns to mimic theirs. “Ya’ll” morphed into “you guys,” and “hey,” I soon learned, was something you fed to cows (even though it was spelled differently). Because their identity was new, I assumed it was better and that I needed to make it my identity.
Fast forward to now, and I have a completely different take on that. I recognize that newcomers to North Carolina are indeed different, but I also realize that it’s not better or worse because I can learn from them and they can learn from me.
For example, I’d never heard the term “UP” before I met my friend, Julie. Turns out this means the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, her native state. When she told me this, I reciprocated the knowledge by telling her that North Carolina has three regions — the mountains, the Piedmont and the coastal plains. We both took something away from the conversation, and we’re better for it.
I’ll admit that I get angry when people move here and tell us how things are done where they’re from. Most of the time my anger is rooted in their presentation. It comes across as a put down to our way of life and not the suggestion that it was hopefully meant to be. Of course, some things can be done better, but folks also need to respect that there is probably a method to our madness and that mac and cheese most definitely should be considered a vegetable side.
This week, I’ve spent time with two families who moved here this month from out of state. Neither has family here, and neither knew anyone here before they moved. As someone who has decades of friendships and connections in this area, I am in awe of the courage these folks have. I doubt, rather know, I couldn’t uproot my family and move across the country and start from scratch. It’s taken me a long time to realize it, but this is where I belong.
Though I’m not an official welcome wagon (I don’t have a basket filled with coupons), I try to help these folks navigate the area and find what they need to feel at home because that’s what I would want if I were in their shoes. I can only hope that someone is doing that for my friend and my daughter’s friend as they make their new life in Tennessee.
If you know someone new in your area, send them a Wink of Goodness to make them feel at home in their new home. It’ll do you as much good as it will them, and you might just get a new friend out of it.