The Reluctant North Carolinian

When I was a kid, I made it clear to anyone who would listen to me that I was NOT a southerner.

“My family moved here from New York,” I would exclaim proudly. “We go back to visit a lot, so I’m more like a New Yorker than someone from North Carolina.”

That was true.

Just before total economic collapse, my parents, who were both born and raised in New Rochelle, New York, bid tearful goodbyes to their families and friends, packed their two young children into a car, and left their home. After a nine-hour journey south, their car pulled into the steep driveway of their new southern, suburban paradise.

I don’t really remember much from that time. I think I had a belated birthday party that year because of the move. I have a hazy, fleeting memory of Dora the Explorer-themed decorations littering the new house. I made friends with the other girls in my neighborhood and attended preschool. I guess moving is easy to adjust to when you’re three.

Years passed, and eventually I turned six. I started elementary school having lived half of my life in North Carolina. Despite this, I was adamant that I was not a North Carolinian. I was a New Yorker who was forced to live in the South against her will.

I made sure people knew that I was in year-round school SPECIFICALLY so my family could go back to New York during track-outs. I was very clear about the fact that nobody in my elementary school could ever truly be my best friend, because my REAL best friend was back in New York. Even though my parents had no intention of moving back to New York, I felt that my residence in North Carolina was sure to be a temporary one. I would move back to New York for college or my certain career on Broadway.

I maintained this northern attitude throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school. It persisted even after the death of my paternal grandparents, the first fraying of the thread that tied me to New York. Looking back on it now, I’m not entirely sure why I was so determined to hold onto this New York state of mind. I think it’s probably just because New York is so much cooler than North Carolina. Everyone knows New York. It’s the concrete jungle where dreams are made of. It has landmarks that all kids recognize. North Carolina doesn’t have anything that compares to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the New York Yankees, or New York Pizza. And as if that wasn’t cool enough, the 2000s established New York as the home of my literary childhood hero, Percy Jackson.

But slowly, I started to unclench the fist that had held tight to New York for all of these years. I think it started during COVID. Lockdown coincided with spring in North Carolina. The weather was sunny and getting warmer each day. I would walk downstairs to find my parents sitting on chairs out on our porch. I would sit next to them and cross my legs, and look around at the North Carolina that lay outside the screened-in windows. The Southern air filled my lungs, and my parents and I talked about how lucky we felt that we were able to sit outside.

“Zia says they still might get some snow,” my mom would say. My brain couldn’t comprehend that. Snow in March? That didn’t feel right to me. I never wanted to experience a cold, snowy March. Maybe there wasn’t any glory in fighting through the bitter cold. Maybe I preferred the softer warmth of a southern spring.

As COVID-19 raged on, I went to college. I had decided to go to NC State. I knew my family didn’t have the money to send me to a school out of state, and I knew that NC State was pretty well-respected. I think this was where my icy heart really started to melt. I remember hearing our alma mater song for the first time during a hot day in the spikey grass of the quad. The first lyrics are

“Where the Southern winds so softly blow, o’er the hills of Caroline”

When I heard these, my heart exhaled. What a lovely sentiment. The New York ice in my chest was melting in real time. Because honestly, New York was always just cooler to me in theory than it ever was in reality. It was where I was from, it would always be part of me, but it was never home. I raised my white flag in surrender and started saying the word “y’all”, which I had made a conscious effort to avoid in favor of “you guys” for my entire life.

I was surprised to find that the young girl who once stuck up her nose at Raleigh's skyline was now a woman who said things like “It’s not that North Carolinians are bad at driving in snow, it’s just that we get BLACK ICE, which is DIFFERENT than regular snow and is actually more dangerous.”

Now, I feel like a confusing jumble of New York and North Carolina. Cheerwine is my favorite soda, but I don’t like to eat watermelon with salt. I prefer biscuits to bagels, but I like Dunkin' Donuts more than Krispy Kreme. I love spicy collard greens, but I have no idea how to cook them. I don’t wanna spend my 20s in Cary or Raleigh, but I can’t fathom moving farther than four hours away.

I’m a walking contradiction, made of a northern nature and southern nurture.