Carolina signoff: Notes on loading day

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Aug. 31, 2021

Around two hours after this item posts, I will return my house keys to my landlord’s office and begin driving north. This will close out 17 and a half years of living in North Carolina, including roughly 13 years and three months in Durham and a little less than a decade at my soon-to-be-former rental house.

I will miss Durham. It’s a small- to medium-sized city with a lot to recommend itself. No, Durham’s arts and entertainment scene isn’t the biggest, but it’s there if you care to look for it. Yes, Durham has rough edges and communities afflicted by poverty, much of it the legacy of national and regional racism. Then again, what city in this country isn’t troubled at least a bit by financial deprivation and the repercussions of prejudice?

Back in 2019, however, I realized that there were things I wanted to do that could more easily be accomplished by living elsewhere. That I’m only now leaving Durham speaks to a bit of foot-dragging on my part, a great deal of it engendered by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has made the prospect of spending time around other people somewhat unnerving.