If there’s one thing that I’ve found particularly interesting about a world flipped on its head by a pandemic, it’s the loss of time. Not so much the concept of obvious time lost with friends and family, but more so, my inability to grasp the days and months that have methodically drifted off the calendar in the near past two years. Much like a hat blown into the ocean, one moment a notable week or month feels five feet away from you and the next thing you know, it’s two hundred yards away amidst the whitecaps, nearly out of sight.
I suppose that’s why our year and seven months in Charlotte has been hard to describe.
How do you start to explain the complexity of moving somewhere sight unseen during a time when the world was slowly coming out of a coma? And how do you encapsulate that experience with the concurrent complexities of a new job, foreign neighborhood, arrival of a baby and departure from all that was comfortable?
Perhaps you don’t. And that’s why I’ve always struggled to provide a satisfying answer when someone has inquired “How’s Charlotte?”
How is Charlotte?
I find Charlotte to be a shade of grey.
As a banking hub, it attracts a lot of transplants who I suspect are largely from the East Coast. Yet, it doesn’t really have an East Coast feel.
At the same time, it doesn’t quite feel like the South, as I find that it lacks the southern charm that one may find in the likes of a Charleston, merely hours away. It just feels like somewhere in between, kind of like a kid in high school who is still trying to land on an identity.
Maybe that’s why I struggle to explain living here, because in many ways, Charlotte seems like it’s still growing into what it will eventually become, at least to the eyes of an outsider. I’m sure locals have a different perspective.
And that’s ok.
Because while Charlotte has certainly lacked some of the things that Lindsay and I gravitate towards, it’s also been perfect in many ways.
Life, for the most part, is a bit simpler.
Traffic, from a So Cal perspective, is light and every destination feels ten minutes away.
Charlotte provided us with the ability to afford a modest home where two people could step back and focus on giving a little baby girl all the attention and love required to make her first year of life a most excellent one.
It offered a great job, with equally good people, during uncertain economic times.
Long walks, through a maze of oak tree-covered streets at night, unveiled a stillness and welcome reprieve from undetectable anxieties that only those who live in large cities grow calloused and oblivious too. That is, until you remove yourself from the noise.
Our neighbors have been kind and waves from passing cars, when I’m walking Fallon, seem to be the rule and not the exception.
Charlotte, and North Carolina, further illustrated to me that preconceived notions are worthless exercises in projection and that there is no substitute for firsthand experience. I should note, this applies to anyone who passes judgement on California or any part of the world without stepping out of their bubble and living there, as well.
Of course, I’d be remiss not to mention the breweries and wings. Two things this city definitely gets right and my cholesterol got terribly wrong. As God is my witness, I didn’t choose the IPA and Chicken Wang Lyfe…it chose me (seemingly every weekend).
But more than anything, Charlotte was the perfect place to do something really, really hard.
That hard thing was to leave a well-established life behind with the blind leap of faith that going anywhere, for an undefined amount of time, with the right person, would work out just fine.
And it did.
And largely, I have Lindsay to thank for that, because she made the largest sacrifice of all when she decided, whilst pregnant, that she was up for plunging into the unknown to support me at a time when she needed support from friends and family more than ever.
That has never been lost on me and I love her more than ever for it.
So, there. I guess that’s how I’d sum up the chapter of our lives that has been Charlotte.
But like all chapters, it’s now nearing an end.
What awaits is a crisp page that is ready to be turned on a new chapter that opens up once again in Southern California, where a fantastic new and exciting job opportunity awaits.
Suffice to say, we’re excited.
To spend time with the friends and family that we didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye to.
For Fallon to get familiar with her grandparents and grow up with small cousins, similar in age.
To experience the diversity and options of the region through the lens of two new parents who arguably are returning as different people, with a new perspective on what we value and what ultimately matters most to us.
And maybe, just maybe, to hold on a bit longer to those weeks and months that have been escaping us as of late.
Every Christmas morning, Lindsay and I wake up early to make the quick haul from Orange County to San Diego.
My favorite part of the drive is rolling past San Onofre as the sun rises over the sea, with familiar beams of red brake lights on the 5 replaced instead by a warm orange hue that dances off the water.
Some years, I may have taken that early morning drive for granted.
This year, I plan to take it in just a little bit longer, as I think about what a long road home it’s been.
See you soon.