Revisiting Raleigh

I used to live in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I am ashamed to say that the only time I've been back since I moved away in 2001 was a couple of weeks ago, near the end of my cross-country road trip.  I felt a little nervous about visiting again.  What if it had changed and was awful?  What if I loved it, and then regretted ever moving away?  Well, like most of my fears, neither one came to pass (the bad parts, at least).

Raleigh has changed during my 10-year absence.  There were some new buildings downtown (which is to be expected) and some new stoplights and intersections (same, alas!) but so much of it was recognizable, it was more like I'd never left than I'd been gone for 10 years.

And, as I remembered, the people in Raleigh are super nice.  When I first arrived in town, I drove around the downtown area (no one lives there, but I wanted to check it out anyway) then headed to my old apartment building.  I worried before I got there that it had been knocked down and replaced with some new shiny structure, but it was still there, quaint and shabby as always:

There was a man on the lawn next door with his kids.  We got to talking and it turns out he lives in the building now, and thinks it's great.  It was nice, just getting out of my car and starting a conversation with someone.  Raleigh is not the only city I've done that in, but I am pleased that Raleigh is like that.

I spent the rest of my first day in Raleigh walking around my old neighborhood.  The biggest changes I saw were to the traffic patterns and the rebuilt YMCA.  Most of the buildings and even businesses were the same.  I never thought that crappy little market on the corner would still be in business, but it was!  And the library where I used to work is still going strong, although it's been remodeled and expanded (looks nice).

My second day in Raleigh started with a trip to the Leg Caf (pronounced "ledge calf", short for Legislative Cafeteria) where anyone can get a tasty and inexpensive lunch, apparently because the food is subsidized by the taxpayers (or maybe it's just inexpensive).  I'm not sure anything at all was new about the Leg Cafe, which was fine, because it meant I could still make my favorite salad.  Sadly, I was there on a Monday and not a Tuesday, so I missed by favorite soup (lemon chicken rice).

As I was leaving the Caf, I got to talking with a stranger.  And we wound up sitting on the grounds of the capitol for 45 minutes, talking about Raleigh and my travels and my upcoming job search.  Turns out the guy is a lawyer in town, and so knew some of the people I used to work with at the Court of Appeals.  In addition to being glad I met yet another really nice stranger, I'm glad he encouraged me to stop by the Court and hunt down some people I used to know there.

So my next stop was the Court, where I stared at John Connell through the window until he noticed me, then he smiled and waved me in.  We talked for a while about all sorts of things, then he found Judge Wynn's contact info for me.  I recently learned that Judge Wynn (who I clerked for right after law school on the North Carolina Court of Appeals) had (finally!) been appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  For those of you who don't know much about the appointment of judges, that is a very prestigious appointment!

Fortunately for me, Judge Wynn was both in his new office and had some free time, so I walked over to see him (looking my best!  Ha.).  He hasn't aged a bit, and seems very happy and proud of his new position, as well he should be.  So we caught up for a while, and I chatted with an old fellow clerk I knew from back in the day.  Then I had to get going so I could meet up with another old friend for dinner...

Me & Judge Wynn.  He always manages to make it into the middle of the photo!

Dena Roberts is one of the kindest and biggest-hearted people I know.  When I was a student in Durham, I was in her consignment shop one day and when I went to buy my items, she asked "You're a student, aren't you?  Would you like to come in and work this weekend and pay for your clothes that way?"  So I said "sure!" and working at Closet Classics Consignment became my part time job during the next two years of law school.  I really liked it there, although it was only a slightly-above minimum wage position.  I met a lot of locals there and had many laughs.  And of course, made friends with Dena.  So I went to her home for dinner with her and her family.  It was great catching up, and made me feel less guilty for not keeping up the friendships I made in N.C.

Me & Dena

See, since I left Raleigh in January 2001, I had not been back once to visit, despite knowing people there and it being only about 4 hours away from D.C.  I didn't even keep up on the phone or email with people I cared about, like the Judge and Dena.  I felt so bad about it, in fact, that I almost skipped visiting Raleigh at all.  I know that doesn't make any sense, but I spent a long time looking at my map, and at the roads between Charleston, S.C. and Washington, D.C. (where I was scheduled to house-sit Nicky's cats) and wondered if there were any way I could reasonably avoid Raleigh.  Well, first of all, there wasn't, short of taking the really long way to D.C.  And second, I didn't really want to avoid Raleigh anyway.  I just felt this weird trepidation about returning after so long.  Fortunately, I liked what I saw and the people I got to visit seemed quite happy to have me.  I'm just sorry I took so long.  [Hmm, I just re-read the start of this post and realized I expressed some of the same thoughts twice.  I've decided to leave them in both times to emphasize how nervous I was about visiting Raleigh, and how glad I was that I did.]