North Carolina: The Larger Story

A video I made of our trip to North Carolina

The Larger Story

When I was little, my parents took us to North Carolina each fall. A family at our church owned a farmhouse near Asheville, and they let us stay there.

I remember the joy I felt arriving at that house each year. We’d spend the first ten minutes hunting down the door key—usually buried beneath a nearby rock—and the following hour sprinting throughout the house, claiming bedrooms and making sure our favorite things were still in their familiar locations. Then we were outside for what seemed like the remainder of the vacation.

If it's true that a boy needs space to grow, then North Carolina was the perfect place.

I remember chopping firewood with an ax and playing in the barn. I remember BB gun fights in the woods with my brother, and the time he caught a fish in the pond out back using nothing but a string and a shiny bolt. I remember jumping along rocks, sliding down rocks and carrying rocks home in my pocket. I remember cotton candy ice cream, wooden souvenirs and adopting our first dog, a chow-mix we named Autumn after our favorite season. North Carolina is where I felt most alive.

It’s also where my mom died. I don’t talk about her suicide often, but visiting has a way of bringing it up.

I think about her love for those mountains. The stillness, the lulling roads, the antique shops—themselves rather antique—lining the way to towns so small you have to squint to see them on a map. I think about the flowers she pressed in her journal so she’d have a piece of North Carolina even when she wasn’t there.

I think about the morning she left. No letter, no warning. A pillow, some clothes. A bottle of Tylenol. I imagine her tucked in bed that night, quietly slipping away among a sanctuary of farmhouse knickknacks, at peace in a place she loved.

We stopped visiting North Carolina after that. At least for a time. Maybe it was the pain, or the pointlessness of it all. Maybe learning to be a family again was simply more important.

But memories and experiences continue to pile, one growing out of the other until they are no longer separate but equal parts of a new thing. Like stones placed on a wall, the shape of each defines the next, but they lose individual attention in the context of the whole.

Jenny has her own memories visiting North Carolina as a child. When we married, so did our love for those mountains. We spent our honeymoon in Hendersonville, not far from the farmhouse, and have visited the area almost every year since.

This year was special. We got to share it with our daughter.

We climbed rocks, picked apples, hiked our favorite trails and explored some new ones. We spent time in those old mountain towns and marveled at the small shops still standing after all those years. We picnicked along the Blue Ridge, recalling our favorite memories … making new memories.

The stones continue to pile, testaments to time and growth. The old stones aren’t gone, but they have become a smaller part of a larger story. And that story is still being written.

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” -1 Peter 1:6

Zion and me