Day 316...who sez you can't go home again?

This past weekend, I headed to my home away from home...a/k/a Kinston, NC. It's a little town, fairly unremarkable, really, in the eastern part of the state, about halfway between Raleigh and the coast. Unremarkable, that is, unless you've ever lived there.
I have.
This place gets under your skin like no place I've ever been, much less lived. And that, my friends, is saying a lot. It's coastal flat land, mostly sandy farmland, which spawn rich crops of corn and soybeans, and tobacco. Always tobacco. It IS North Carolina, after all. Home of the Tarheels, from whence came the name.
Aside from the beauty of the place, the climate is warm and mild, with crystal blue skies and balmy breezes that drift in from the ocean to warm your heart. Sometimes, you can even see a seagull or two floating on the currents, or plucking seeds from someone's field, or even snatching a quick drink from the birdbath in your back yard. Yes...it's that close to the ocean.
But by and large, the best part of the town is the people who call it home. If you know one person in this town, you know everyone. Believe me, I know. Either they're related, or they know someone who is. This comes in handy when I visit my dear friends, Bonnie and Scott, who live there, and insist...God bless 'em...on dragging me to every single function they can find to drag me to, anytime I visit. They show me off with great pride as their Best Friend from GA Who Now Lives in TN, and I cringe inwardly at the awkwardness of having my pedigree trotted out for inspection yet again, even as I smile and shake hands (or more often hug), outwardly pleased as punch to be able to add another notch to my ever-widening web of contacts that I can claim to be aquainted with.
You may wonder how a girl from the sprawling metropolis of Atlanta ever got hooked in with such a rural outpost. My dear late husband can claim this honor...it was his hometown, you see. The place that molded him into the man of strong values that I fell in love with, even though he was not a small-town man in the slightest. No...my Bill was a city man if there ever was one. But as much as he hated to admit it, he loved that little town, and was so proud to be able to show it off to me, albeit behind a manufactured scowl. He thought it would be enough to throw me off...but I knew him. And I knew how much it secretly meant to him when we moved back there for a short time just after we married in 1994. I have to say, I've never been so happy, and I think my children would agree. It was a wonderful, Mayberry-like life.
The friends we made there were lifelong..friends like everyone should have at least one of in their lifetime. We have laughed and cried together, raised kids together, worked and ate together, shared all we had together, scraped up communal money to pay a bill together, fought...and loved each other fiercely...together. When my beloved Bill died, they were there to help me scrape the pieces together and bring him home to Kinston to rest in peace. For that alone, I will always be truly grateful. But more grateful yet that I am honored to be able to call them "friend".
Because of all of that and so much more, no matter where the road leads me in the future, a piece of my heart will always live in Kinston, NC.