About North Carolina

Hey y'all. I miss North Carolina; were you aware? I've been thinking about all the things I miss and that I can't wait to have when we visit Raleigh in two and a half weeks. It's going to be amazing. We're going to hit up the NC State Fair, and eat lots of horrible food (both at and outside of the fair), and see our friends, and I get to drink Caribou Coffee and Cheerwine and Cottonwood Pumpkin Ale. I love October in North Carolina.

And I love all the other months, too, because the weather's not too cold in winter and the leaves are beautiful in the fall and the summer is so oppressively hot that you want to jump in a pool--you don't even want to sit inside all day in the air conditioning, because you know you should be in a pool--and in spring, the pollen is so thick that it coats your car and turns it this funky greenish-yellow and you have to wash it but it's cool because you do that outside, with the hose on the side of your house, and somehow the pollen exacerbates my allergies a little bit less than it does up here, and there's that weird sulfuric smell from the Bartlett pear trees but they look so pretty.

You know what I miss most about North Carolina, though? My family is there. My friends are there, all the ones who came out and helped us move just over a year ago. There are so many new babies for me to meet and hang out with and get to know. There are weird local things, like fish camps, that you have to live there to understand. There's the beach on one side and REAL mountains on the other. The beach has dunes and proper waves and soft sand and afternoon thunderstorms, and the mountains have the Nantahala River and hiking trails and campgrounds and scenic overlooks and waterfalls and Canyons, oh dear God I need to go eat at Canyons again before I die.

I love North Carolina because they do barbecue two ways, and then South Carolina has its own equally awesome way, and I can go visit someone I like and get a different kind of barbecue every time. I love it because people actually wave at you when you walk down the street, and you don't feel like you have to cover it up when you talk like a hick because no one makes fun of you for it. I love that you can buy Martha White cornbread mix, and that you can get proper biscuits and gravy, and when you order breakfast you can choose home fries or grits. Not that I ever choose grits. I don't actually like them. But my dad does.

I want my son to grow up a little slower, a little sweeter, because he lives in the South. But I also want him to know what's wrong with it, and not to be caught up in the backwards ideology that tends to overshadow everything that's so great about my state. I want him to learn to respect people, regardless of how they look or what they believe or who they love. I hope that I can raise a child who becomes a man who can help change the things that are wrong, or at least support that change, because I think that then North Carolina would be perfect.

Of course, we have to get back there first. But we're working on that.