It Takes a Year

It’s been a little more than a year since I retired and just shy of a year since my husband, our dog, and I pulled into our new driveway and new life in North Carolina.

I still feel like a newcomer in this town, a near-northerner in the south. I know Washington, DC, is not the north, except to real southerners, and western North Carolina is not the south. Our house is just minutes from Appalachia.

But, there do seem to be more syllables in spoken words and more air time is required to say hello. And, everybody waves.

Commercial transactions are more than mere exchanges of cash or credit card information. There’s humanity at the checkout. “How are you? Do you need help with your bags?” You don’t hear this at many grocery stores in the Washington metropolitan area. At other stores, and with the tradespeople who come to our house, everyone is consistently friendly.

Amy at Talbots is a gem.

There are so many positives to life in a smaller town, but here’s a downside after decades in DC:  you have a bigger choice of grocery stores in a large metropolitan area. After a few months, I developed a Lowes Food phobia. I will go great lengths to avoid their stores, even shopping at the Ingles on the way home from the airport. One Lowes remains a conundrum with all those islands and peninsulas and other odd shapes, no direct routes, and no logical product placement.

Could the bread be any less convenient? Maybe that’s why I’m going gluten free.

On the other hand, there’s heaven on the Square with a glorious farmers market and local produce, meats, cheese, baked goods, and more.

Life is slower here. Except the cars, which drive too fast on streets with no sidewalks. Bikes are not so welcome. I keep riding mine hoping drivers will come to accept non-motorized vehicles. Twelve months in, it seems unlikely.

Speaking of roads, I am still amazed at how quickly I adapted from living in the region with the nation’s worst traffic to being annoyed at turning left without a light onto 127, or Center Street, or 2^nd Street, or whatever its name is.

But, I don't get as lost as I used to. I even know some shortcuts. Well, I think they are shortcuts. I know a lifer would laugh, but I feel pretty smug knowing what to do – sort of – around Highland Avenue. My husband is impressed.

After four decades in the nation's capital, I understand quadrants and street-naming conventions. Washington has numbered and lettered streets as well as avenues, many named after states, but it doesn’t have avenues and avenue drives and streets and street places, circles, and courts and who knows what else. Recently, I was totally flummoxed at the intersections of 24^th Ave. NE and 24^th Street NE. There is one friend’s house that I have only gotten to on the first try once -- and I wasn’t even going there.

I now know people here don’t talk in terms of street names, it’s all landmarks, but how is a newcomer supposed to know which Lowes is the one that used to be Harris Teeter?

Twelve months in, I’m beginning to feel more at home. I now see people I know at the farmers market. The vendors recognize me. The meat lady knows I favor the raw ground-up chicken for our dog; the cheese vendor knows her frozen entrees are my weekly lifesaver (my husband likes her cooking).

Like so many other things, it takes about a year to grow accustomed. I still miss my dear friends and old haunts. Yet, we like it here. Hickory just may be on its way to becoming home.