The Moving Planner Blog

Born Yankee

OK so I’ll admit it. I’m a New Englander through and through. Snow is my favorite season and if you are fortunate enough to live in New England, you know that it doesn’t just fall in the Winter. It has its own season, hence my remark. I love the laid back atmosphere of small town New England life where everybody makes a point to know everybody and his siblings. And even though I wasn’t used to it at the time I encountered it, I also like the aloofness of New England city life. It was in Boston after all that I learned help won’t magically fall deus ex machina style onto you in times of need like it would in the country. However, in a pouring downpour with no umbrella and nylons falling as fast as the rain, if you but speak to a passing person you’ll not only receive directions to your interview but use of their umbrella as well. You see, New England is just that way city or country. And I’m still of the impression there is no better place for me than there.

My decision to leave not only New Hampshire but New England behind was a difficult one. In the Fall of 2006 I’d met the man of the dreams or the man of the hour, after only two months of knowing him I could hardly be sure which. Where he was due to be stationed in Virginia by New Year, our sprouting relationship was doomed to fail if I didn’t agree to make the adventurous 16 hour drive to visit or more sensibly to live. Neither of us wanted a distance relationship. Without a doubt the hardest part of leaving Manchester behind was the life I’d created for myself there. After four years of living in the area, I’d finally found myself in a happy, single state with an urban family to keep me occupied on the weekends when I didn’t quite make it home. My parents, who lived only three hours away would visit and would view Manchester with awe, like I had before living there for awhile. Coming from the woods to the city is quite an experience! In Manchester I had dates and dinners, invitations to bonfires and people who sung to me over the phone and urged me out on special occasions. I hadn’t experienced such acceptance since college. I had a job that paid more than I deserved for work that I loved. My best friend had moved next door. I took walks through the woods before heading to Barnes & Noble. If my life was tea, I had steeped.

In the end it wasn’t me who made the decision to move. My company announced a merger and I was laid off with severance on November 15. The apartment I’d had for just under a year would no longer be affordable without commuting into Boston and I didn’t want to commute into Boston. In retrospect I could have moved into a more affordable place once my lease expired, but what would I do for work? Could I afford a cheaper apartment? Would it be safe? Cheaper apartments are usually in the bad parts of town and I hadn’t had roommates since I graduated college in 2001. I didn’t want a roommate. Perhaps I wanted a relationship?

I convinced my boyfriend to remain in New Hampshire through Thanksgiving. As much as I love New Hampshire anyway, having him enjoying the area with me made it all the better. We shared a meal with my parents in Northern New Hampshire and all too soon I watched him start on his long drive back to his parent’s home in Alabama for Christmas. It was hard watching him go. The small studio I’d rented seemed even smaller without his few items stuffed here or there. I decided to spend as much time with my family as I could before the move and practically lived with them during my final month of the lease. Eventually I did have to make the drive to my silent apartment to start packing. Seeing everything around me gradually disappear into Public Storage boxes and tote bags felt like I’d pulled the plug on my life all too soon. It had taken me four years to create that happy life and here I was leaving it all behind for the unknown. I had very little faith the relationship would last longer than my apparent six months maximum and I’d only been to Virginia once before moving there! What was I doing?

The night before the move I received a phone call from my boyfriend. He was on his way to Virginia from Alabama and we’d meet at the apartment we’d both selected on an earlier trip down the next day. For all intents and purposes it was a done deal. My car was packed and the only thing I kept on hand was a pillow and the phone. I tearfully explained I “couldn’t do it”. I couldn’t leave my family, my friends and my life behind. Going to college was only two hours from my Mom and that was hard enough. How would I see her, my nephews and everyone else? I’d never flown and they wouldn’t fly or drive that distance. I wasn’t too keen on driving it myself honestly. I told him no. He hung up on me only after asking me the unanswerable “what am I supposed to do now?” I cried myself to sleep but felt relieved. At least I had made the right decision for me. Mom was pleased when I told her too by phone. It had to be the right decision. My best friend next door agreed it was a good decision too and he’d been the one most encouraging about giving things a chance “down there.” In the morning I awoke to the phone. It was my boyfriend. He said he’d been thinking and it was OK if I didn’t want to move but we shouldn’t be apart on New Years Eve. He asked me to come down “just for the weekend” and while I was reluctant, I felt I owed it to him. He’d been so good to me. He deserved this. I left the next morning with my car still packed. He was so good to me he agreed to drive extra into Maryland and meet me at the hotel we’d stayed in on our one and only trip down. He knew how nervous I was about getting lost on the last leg of the trip.

Seeing him again through that ground floor hotel room window (even before he threw open the door) changed everything. I knew once I’d stepped through that door that I wouldn’t be going back to New Hampshire without him. He teased that he’d force me to leave on Monday but by Sunday we were unpacking my car together. That was it. I’d arrived in Virginia Beach and I’d be here for three years. We didn’t have furniture yet but we, being happy to be reunited, had fast food picnics on our floor. We watched movies on his laptop and I called my Mom from his cell phone.It wasn’t too long before things came together down here too. He took special liberty to bring me home to get my cat who had been living with Mom during the move stress. I found employment in the Human Resources of a publishing company albeit temporary. It was only once here that I realized how very different, even Virginia is from New England.

I suppose Southern Hospitality applies even this far “North”. They’re quick to state they aren’t “Southerners” here, but I believe differently. The most notable characteristic of Virginians is their ready friendliness. Everyone talks to everyone and seems to want to know everyone. It’s happened to me in laundry mats, at bus stops and even in grocery stores. People converse with strangers here. At first I thought I’d found Mecca, a big city with small town values. Over time I learned it’s a little different. Over time I learned that the initial Southern Hospitality displayed was their way of sizing you up. From answers you gave to specific questions you’d be pegged into likable or dis-likable categories. Without the realization that this was the reasoning behind the friendliness, I answered everything exactly as I would have back home. I’ve since learned to be less open. Perhaps it’s a negative thing to say but I just simply prefer the New England trait of people only associating with people they have a genuine desire in being friends with. You’re not sized up in New England unless someone is genuinely interested in you. The sizing might not happen right away. Down here, everyone is sized up almost equally and always immediately. Like I said, it’s a bit different.

The other challenge I had to contend with was the fact that everyone I seem to encounter here is extremely conservative. In a prior job I was in the process of being sized up (unaware I was of course, I thought we were just chatting casually) when I mentioned something about having a Wiccan Gay friend back home. Jaws dropped literally and before I knew it I was back to work alone and virtually ignored the rest of the day. To this day I don’t know which part offended them more. I don’t want to say that everyone who is religious is conservative, but it seems that those I’ve encountered here want you to either be Baptist or dead. Things don’t bode so well for those of us with no religious affiliation at all. It appears you only have spirit here if you actively attend, kind of like you can only be a true Southerner if you love grits. It’s rare you travel anywhere here without hearing God spoken of as often as food. It’s a cultural thing that took a few months to get used to. Back home religion is more “personal” from my experience. I definitely never heard a coworker up North stand up and say “God spoke to me and told me I was a prophet” followed by a fellow coworker’s “Praise Jesus!” I had to hold back my quite New England reaction of “Well if you’re truly a prophet, why are you working in a debt collection’s agency?”

I’ve lived in Virginia Beach a full year now and that’s enough to make me realize that most people in this area aren’t even from this area. It’s an area populated primarily to support the War On Terror it seems and there’s nowhere you’ll be able to go without seeing evidence of a military lifestyle. In a way the area reminds me of a letter I once received from a Malaysian pen pal I once had. She praised God and her President in the same breath. It’s that way here too. God and Bush, Bush and God. My motto can no longer be “Live Free or Die”. It has to be “Love Both Or Leave”. Forgive me for saying this, but “I’m Still Here!” And as for the family and friends I left behind when I left New Hampshire…they’re still here too. Technology is a marvelous thing and I’m able to talk to Mom on the phone every morning. My friends I keep in touch with via email and regular letters and on those rare occasions I have made it home, sure it seems impossible to gather together friends in three different states for a brief period of time on a workday when I happen to be able to swing through but you know something, it happens. Sometimes I think they were more distant when I lived next door.

The point in all of this is that even when you don’t expect or want to make a long move away from life as you’ve known it so far, that life doesn’t vanish with the packing of your car or a really expensive moving truck. You don’t lose friends or family once you hop on the turnpike. Sure you may find yourself in an area with different beliefs, values or customs then you’re used to but that doesn’t mean you should rule out the possibility that even here, in an area so remote from all you love, that you can’t make another new and good life. People are downright people. Eventually you will find friends and you will find parts of your new city that remind you of your old one. I like to go to a park nearby and sit on the grass. It reminds me of the fields near Mom’s and on a quiet day I can go back without ever having to pay a toll.

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