{Whereabouts Wednesday}

This Wednesday finds us in Charlotte, NC. While Christopher and I each spent less than three years calling this area home, his parents, and all of our combined siblings still live here, making it a full, happy stop along our tour of the east coast.

cc image via https://www.flickr.com/photos/digidreamgrafix/

cc image via https://www.flickr.com/photos/digidreamgrafix/

Our last visit here coincided with a wedding a decade ago. That means that this is the first time our younger four children have seen Papaw’s fish pond, driven past Momma’s old high school, and met aunts and uncles unable to travel to Washington. For the older children, too, it’s been an eye-opening experience. There’s really no way to define, in words, the differences between this part of the south and the Pacific Northwest, and what it’s like to look into the eyes of someone from your own generation and realize that their father is your dad’s brother. It’s a learning curve all around. A good one.

We didn’t expect things to be the same here … and we haven’t been disappointed. The city has changed seismically in the 22 years since I graduated from high school. Hay fields are neighborhoods. The house are, somehow, even bigger than I remembered. The shopping center I visited most frequently as an awkward 16 year-old–  taking my brother to Tae Kwon Do, stopping for ice cream– has now been upscaled in that way that would have run me off as a teen just looking for a place to call my own haven.

And that, I think, is the lesson of Charlotte for us. While Christopher and I both had the square peg, round hole, relocated teen trying to fit in experience here over two decades ago, our time here is about the people, not the place. The game of wiffle ball that Christopher is dying to indulge in with his siblings, the chance to sit across from my brother and tell him that I love him, the act of gathering all together in Mamaw and Papaw’s house, and eating a meal that sprawls three tables because the family is just that big … these are the pieces that fit and feel right, no matter the location.