decision smackdown

For all the talk of traveling places, there's no doubt that one of my favorite places to be is at home. I love the quiet and the peace and the peace and quiet. And I like having my stuff around, my books and pens and coffee cups and sneakers.

But when do you decide to move?

Sure, there's the job change and the landlord kicked you out scenarios. But when those aren't considerations, when?

If it were up to me, I'd probably still be living here on Rowland Road. This is our teeny tiny first apartment together, the one where I moved with ALL MY STUFF (aka: two boxes of books, a futon and a carton of clothes) into Pat's monastic space, only later to be scolded for dropping cookie crumbs on the floor.

Luckily, it worked out. But that was a long time ago. I'll not say how long for fear of appearing like an 80-year-old lady -- which I do all to often, anyway.

Now, we're living on Potato Knob, about two miles or so from this apartment and we love it here. We built it, molding it, smoothing out the creases. But we feel like it's time for a change. And since we can't move out of the area or about another year, we're thinking of high-tailing it to the city and plopping down into one of the houses Pat's just about to finish.

We can't decide. No, I can't decide. And like any good list maker, I've made a list, a pros and cons smackdown for the title of Home.

The pros (or Reasons to Get the Hell off this Mountain): walking places vs. having to drive EVERYWHERE; some semblance of a yard vs. mountain-side cliffs; a garden! with tomatoes! vs. good luck raising anything but earthworms; neighbors that come close to our age vs. all neighbors old enough to be our parents (nice when you need parental-ish assistance, but not so nice when you don't get their jokes about Benny Goodman); and Pat's personal favorite -- delivery! vs. driving to find quick meals (see above).

The cons (or What the Hell Are You Thinking?): moving all our crap vs. lazy days sitting on my ass reading a book; lots of light and windows vs. some OK light and OK windows; space to spread out vs. a slight downsizing (which is OK, really, because I just need the aforementioned books and pens and coffee cups and sneakers); the mountain view vs. the view of the neighbors' houses and streetlights and such; Pat's studio space here vs. no shop space there; Swannanoa vs. West Asheville.

OK. I had to stop with the list. Enough already. You get the picture. And so do I, but it still doesn't help. Any suggestions?

Prayers for Davie County

Like every morning, I woke up this morning and switched on NPR. Normally, it's not a jaw-dropping experience. This morning was different.

In what seemed like a 15-second spot, the news was that there was an explosion at a Davie County nursing home. One person was killed. Fifteen others sent to the hospital. In Mocksville.

My brother-in-law, Chris, has his mother in a Mocksville adult care home. I called home in panic. Got the answering machine. An hour later, I learned that it was the same home where Janice lived. She is physically OK, but really upset, understandably. The man who died was one of her closest friends and had eaten dinner at my sister's house. Another of her friends is one of the group in the hospital and, Janice told Maria, will likely not survive her injuries. Janice is without clothing and medication, which she needs desperately. And my sister, Maria, had been on the phone for hours trying to locate her medication prescriptions, her records and, most importantly, find her a new permanent place to stay.

Go here, here and here for reporting on this story.

But here, here is what makes my blood boil: It's been over 12 hours since the explosion/fire (it's not clear what exactly happened), but still NO ONE from the home has called Chris, who is Janice's emergency contact. Chris was on the road, in Eden, when a security guard -- who heard it on the news -- told him about it.

WHAT??? From news reports, the SBI is investigating. But, please, keep these folks in my home county in your prayers, thoughts, etc.

Picturing where you live

For Asheville/Buncombe County Flickr lovers (I am one, I admit), there's a "Day in the Life of Ashvegas" project in the works.

Check it out here. And there's a meet-up planned for Feb. 17 at Asheville Brewing on Coxe Avenue at 4 p.m.

crossing the fence

In the dark, when I close my eyes and try to sleep, here's where I go: the green pasture and knotted woods past this rusty gate, held by a fence where tufts of cow and deer hair used to get caught on the barbed stars, where the sycamore stands. When I'm back in Davie County and I can, I go here. I park the car next to the road, unwrap this rusty chain and the lock that doesn't work, push the fence across the grass. Every time it's different. The cedars, once just babies, are too tall to be our Christmas trees anymore. Brambles mess the sycamore's trunk. The grass is high and sharp. The old bathtub holds rainwater where the little herd of cows (mostly just pets with wholly uncreative pet names like Blackie and Brownie and Firecracker, who we got on the Fourth of July) drank. It's where Dad let me stand on the red tractor and steer as he worked the pedals. It's where my sister ran away and used poison ivy for toilet paper when she was about six years old. It's where Ed's yellow Mustang stopped for some sloppy teenage kissing. And it's where rows of chairs held my family when Pat and I married. This swatch of empty land that almost brushes against the Yadkin River is home.

At a little more than 266 square miles, Davie is the smallest county in North Carolina. Though the county boasts one of the highest speed limits on the interstate splitting the state lengthwise, ask anyone who drives Interstate 40 through that part of the rural Piedmont with any regularity. You'll likely hear a story of a dedicated Highway Patrol officer pulling someone over for speeding there. Farmington is just a blip in the county's northern part. Crossroads divide it, the Methodist church on one site, the Baptist on the other. The farm sits a mile from the community's only blinking caution light. The house where I grew up is just a stone's throw from that light, a half-mile from the farm itself. With the sound of engines bouncing off the hills, the Farmington Dragway is Farmington's only real modern claim to fame. And it is, in my estimation, the only reason it shows up on North Carolina maps, though more and more packs of brightly dressed bicyclists spin north down the relative flatness of Farmington Road toward Yadkin County.

Still, just like my ties there, the unincorporated community struggles to keep together. The woman who last owned the community's only working gas station and store died several years ago, and they closed. In high school, my one goal in life was to leave behind those crossroads, and, by default, the community that helped raise me. I, in clichéd teenage fashion, couldn't wait to leave that two-story, century-old house that's showing its age mercilessly today. There's little reason to stop there anymore, so it's not without irony (to me anyway) that the Chamber of Commerce now writes that "once people are here, they don't want to leave," even though lots of people feel passionately about the place -- my sister, who still lives in the house where we grew up and who works tirelessly to build some sort of community there, included.

This year, I'm traveling. Rome, Tokyo, Sydney, Budapest. Much of this blog will be about those travels. But walking the streets of a city where you know no one and don't speak the language or know where you are or know what to do next, that uncertainty is easy, temporary, fun, exciting. And even with its pastoral imagery, my home is messy, complicated, difficult, hard.

But I find more and more leading me back to Farmington and those green pastures. Maybe it's because a half mile from the house, my mother and father are buried on a hill under an oak tree, next to a different set of barbed wire holding in another pasture full of cattle. It's where the sycamore stands. It's where my little niece sings Christmas songs and plays with Play-dough, and where my sister and brother-in-law cook awe-inspiring meals.

For years, I've ignored exploring it, so this blog will be about that, too, because walking the roads and fields of my own home pushes against being a tourist, exposes the strings of memory that hold me in place, whether or not I know it or want it or believe it.

And that is exploring, really.