North Carolina: Fuquay-Varina

The Princess Bed, as named by my cousin's granddaughter

I've awoken from a 2-and-a-half hour nap at 7:30pm in the princess bed at my cousin's house in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina.  Something has gotten me under the weather, when we came back from a grocery trip I came upstairs and fell asleep immediately.

I have been in NC for a week and had planned to leave today for Dante, VA, but decided to wait, I was so punky.  The constant movement has been hard to get used to. I'm discovering a near-constant irritation that seems to arise from the days of movement, groundlessness, and the natural claustrophobia of spending a lot of time visiting people I know.  I'm used to being alone in the mornings, but haven't found a way to carve out time for myself to be still before the days events, people, or itineraries get rolling.  I'm craving quiet and an environment where I can rise and practice, exercise, contemplate, comfortably and undisturbed.  My attempts to do this in the last week or so have been semi-successful a couple of times, but have not provided the space for solace and perspective that I expected to be the nature of my days. Hence I haven't been able to write anything about this past week - my mind is frozen with discursive thoughts and fatigue.  I don't know what to do about this but to keep trying to make that space.

Sal & Bob

Fuquay and Varina were two small old NC towns, now united with a group of chain restaurants and stores as the glue. Each has a tiny downtown that has been more or less preserved, and Raleigh's suburban spread has occurred around them like water around two rocks.  My cousin Sarah (Sal to me, and I am Sue to them) and her husband Bob have lived here for five years, and had another 15 in nearby Holly Springs. Their house is comfortable with an open-fenced screen porch that allows you to feel you are outside but without the bug population.  My room is furnished with old furniture that has been in my father's family for generations, and it smells of old wood and familiarity. After retiring from a Marine career that took them to Hawaii, San Francisco, and other places, Bob has had a good run in a civilian computer science job nearby. Sal has volunteered at local museums and societies and worked for American Airlines for many years.  Their kids and their kid's families are close by, and my Aunt comes down to visit a couple of times a year.

The screen porch

Sal, her sister Mar, and I grew up together more or less with only a few years between us, I the youngest.  Being without siblings of my own at home, going to their place a few times a year where I could romp in the country around their house with them and hear stories of my ancestor's escapades was a great joy. That house was the Dowlin Forge home in the Dowlin part of my family for many generations.  I wrote about it here.

Bob's early manifestation as a crisp Marine has shifted in recent years to avid Harley man.  He and Sal make regular long-distance trips and they have a group of close friends they ride with.  Bob brought a few of these fellows by on Saturday, dodging rainstorms on their way home from an event to the south.  I'd been hearing about Buck and Capp for years from my Aunt who has met them several times on her trips down here and from Sarah when talking about their gardening skills…she has a new "water feature" in her garden thanks to them.  Bob was being ribbed for having told them "clear sailing" after checking the weather radar on his iPhone before they took off this morning - as it happened they got drenched by one of North Carolina's passing thunderstorms, which appeared as a "small" green blob on the screen that apparently had been centered directly over them the entire time they were riding.

Bob and Buck

Weather check with Capp

Chloe tries to rouse the sleeping giant Streakr

Streakr awake & cracking jokes

 I left Monday after spending the morning updating ancestors on my father's side with Sal, who is along with her mother, Aunt Liz, a thorough keeper of family records.  I was headed for the mountains, and Dante, Virginia, a coal town developed by my great grandfather Tyler in the early 1900's when he was Vice President of the Clinchfield Coal Company.

My grandmother Martha Hopkinson Tyler, wedding portrait