Finding the South in New Suburbia
October marks my anniversary. I’ve lived in North Carolina for twenty-one years now. That single realization brings introspection: a mapping of time that reveals I have now lived here longer than any previous place I ever called home. It forces a fundamental question: Is this my home now? Does its distinct sense of place now define me?
When you move into a modern neighborhood carved from the Southern landscape, you are forced to grapple with what the South actually is. Looking out at identical vinyl siding, manicured lawns, and cul-de-sacs bearing names of cleared-away woods, you wonder where the true spirit of the South resides. Can it truly be found amongst the neatly aligned rows of suburbia, or has it been swallowed up entirely by development?
There is always a bit of adjustment required when moving here. I still remember trying to purchase wine at the grocery store on a Sunday morning during my initial visit to North Carolina, back when strict Sunday Blue Laws still barred wine and beer sales before noon, only to be greeted with the local wisdom: “Son, you ain’t from around here, are you?” That night over dinner, my wife and I asked ourselves, what are we getting into?
Upon returning to California to pack the moving boxes, however, North Carolina extended a hand. A couple of my clients were from this state. When I told them of the pending move, they gave me phone numbers, told me to get in touch when I arrived, and assured me how welcomed I’d be. There was a spirit calling that softened the disorientation of starting over, even easing the memory of that failed Sunday wine purchase.
The week after arriving, a lunch invitation from one of them took me on my first road trip down to Raeford in Hoke County to the Edinborough Family Restaurant on Main Street: a fifty-year-old institution where you can join in sharing prayers before meals and witness a community where everyone seems to know one another with warm familiarity. It is genuine, deliberate, and authentic.
I consider that lunch the moment when I realized my place in the South wasn't passive. Our need to belong connects the life we build at home to the wider landscape, inspiring us to step outside and look after it. Not long after, a second invitation arrived and I found myself in Johnston County, participating in the preservation of Bentonville Battlefield, which saw the largest Civil War engagement in North Carolina. I remember fondly my former client’s immediate warmth that morning meeting him in person for the first time. After a hearty handshake, he announced gregariously, “A new North Carolinian has joined us and together we’re going to restore this battlefield!”
Years later, a remarkable detail surfaced: this was the exact battlefield where my own ancestor had fought as a Union cavalry officer. I hadn't merely helped preserve a piece of local history that day; I had unknowingly helped salvage the very ground trod upon by my own family line, solidifying a connection far older than I first realized.
Over the years, I have found the South just as much in its living culture as in its archives. As an interracial couple (my wife is Gujarati and I am a Caucasian mutt), we felt an instant cultural resonance reading about James Beard Award-winning Chef Vishwesh Bhatt in Garden & Gun. By infusing traditional Southern mac and cheese with Indian spices, he mirrored our own life: connecting us more deeply to the region by honoring my wife’s ancestral roots half a world away. We didn’t move here to remain insular transplants. We came willing to contribute to the South’s evolving story, creating a space where the next generation belongs to both the old and the new.
Because life here is built on those kinds of layered connections, our roots refuse to be pulled. Whether gathered around a table at the Edinborough, sharing stewardship at Bentonville Battlefield, or enjoying the cross-cultural comfort of a plate of Chef Bhatt’s spiced mac and cheese, the framework of our daily lives holds firm. My roots are here now. The transition from outsider to inheritor is complete not because I erased where I came from, but because North Carolina made room for my story, weaving it into the historic, complicated, beautiful tapestry of the South.
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Photo Credit: Nate Goetz
