We Are Not Lawn People

This I have learned after a week in Charlotte. I suppose this shouldn't have surprised anybody. Aaron grew up in a desert and I grew up with no front yard and a back yard that was mostly marsh. The intervening years for both of us have been mostly in cities. Neither of us felt any sort of hankering to get back to the land, if anything we'd prefer to be closer to take-out.

Our neighbors on all sides and across the street have well-tended yards, indeed since I have been here all have mowed at least once. Our backyard is a jungle in comparison and we don't own a mower. Every day or so we look at it and comment that we really need to do something about it before it rains again. I have more than once not been able to find the dog because she was laying down in the tall grass and therefore out of view.

We are probably not going to do anything crazy -- like buy a mower -- but we haven't even asked a neighbor kid if he wants to make some extra money by doing our lawn occasionally. There just seem to be so many better pursuits.

Our first week was marred somewhat by Olivia getting sick with a virus and spiking a temperature. Of course we hadn't yet found a pediatrician, so we ended up at the ER with her shaking and vomiting and Aaron and I scared and unsure. Four days and four sleepless nights later she is still not back to her old self and the house remains in a state of neither here nor there. Everybody is tired and disoriented. Boxes are unpacked in each room, there's a big bare spot in the kitchen where a table and chairs should be and instead a trampoline sits.

I feel like an anthropologist at times. In some ways Charlotte seems more foreign than some other countries I have been to. Quite a few times I have been completely unable to understand what someone has said beneath their southern accent. At those times I have this sort of split reaction of feeling idiotic on one hand and on the other wondering "was that just English I heard? What the...?"

A series of "you're not in the Bay Area anymore": This week the NRA had their big annual conference here at their HQ and NASCAR is having it's season opener as well. The Charlotte Tea Party had a rally. Rednecks and redneck wanna-bes are everywhere with slogan t-shirts and incomprehensible placards. There are more churches than you can shake a stick at, and yet my uncharitable thought upon seeing so many was to wonder why Charlotte still has a higher-than-average crime rate?

In that same anthropologist vein: people are much nicer here. They take time to answer questions and acknowledge you with a wave and a smile when they drive by and you are walking. They say "how you doing?" rather than hello. The pace is slower and transactions are less -- well, transactional. The drivers are generally polite and somewhat hesitant almost, rather than trying to get somewhere as fast as possible.

I expect, when in Africa say, to not expect things to be like home. In the southern US I kind of expect more continuity. Example: I have been hunting for my favorite snack, freeze-dried apples, which are readily available in California or CT. Went to 4 different grocery chains -- from high-end to discount -- looking for them and found nada. I finally asked an employee in the produce department if they carried freeze-dried fruit and he thought I meant just dried fruit. When I clarified it he said, not meanly but not smilingly either, "you must be from California or some such place."

I got back in my car frustrated at not being able to find something that is not a specialty item, it's just fruit for God's sake, and a simple pleasure for me. Ended up almost in tears at feeling again like the new kid in school after so many years of it. I really want friends here and a community for us. There have been so many desires deferred these last three years that waiting, even to orient, is a rock in my shoe.