When I first moved down to Chapel Hill, people were fascinated with my decision to go to school there. Granted, 82% of the students HAVE to be from of North Carolina, as mandated by state law, so there’s not exactly an abundance of adventurous out-of-staters. We’re far and away the minority, and I was a Yankee to boot. Very exotic. Consequently, people were fond of asking if I would return to the Northeast when I graduated. Half of them were insinuating that their homeland was infinitely superior and of course I should immediately fall in love with the antebellum South, never to go back to the land of the heathens again; while the other half were subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) implying that their land* was already overrun with Yankee devils and I better get the hell off their property when I was done. (Can you hear the rifle being cocked in the background?)
And for years, I insisted that I would, one day, return home to my beloved Taxachusetts. But as seasons changed, and I went home for Christmas time and again, I became more and more appalled at the climate differences. I started rubbing it in when I called family and friends back home. After spending a summer in London, I realized that I had the “travel bug” gene, and I had it bad; when people would ask me about returning home, I started to say, “Oh, I’m sure I’ll settle down there, but I’d like to live in a few different places first.”
Now, a few years later, as a newcomer to D.C. and still enjoying the lovely temperate weather down here, I think it’s safe to say I will probably never live in New England again. Mah blood done thinned. At home with my family this past December, we went to pick out a Christmas tree… and I had to go back and sit in the car. I just couldn’t do it! I can’t believe after just a few years down here I could become such a pansy. I used to wait outside for the school bus in sleet, snow, hail, below-freezing temperatures with below-below freezing wind chills. Granted, sometimes I would wait in the garage for 5 minutes, run back inside the house and tell my mother I’d missed the bus just so she’d drive me to school, but for the most part, I just picked the icicles off my eyelashes and tried not to get hit down the neck with a slush ball. (Ah, the flirtatious ways of 5th grade.)
Anyhoo, my point was, it’s SPRING!!! It’s spring and it’s green and it’s cherry blossoms and it’s 75 degrees and there’s baseball starting and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. My fellow Massholes have at least another month of on-again, off-again warm-day-teasers alternated with whatever the hell mother nature decides to throw their way- an ice storm, a blizzard, a hurricane, whatever she feels like. Meanwhile, I am going to go put on a cute little skirt, have margaritas out on the patio at Lauriol Plaza, and enjoy the lazy breeze of Spring in the Mid-Atlantic.
*Cary, NC: Contained Area for Relocated Yankees. This acronym is common knowledge in Carolina.
