The last time I posted on this blog (quite a while ago), I was a Northerner and Eastern Pennsylvania
resident. This week marks one year since my husband and I became residents of
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. In that year, nothing has changed and everything
has changed. Paring down to essentials after 60+ years of collecting stuff was
painful, to say the least. And then there was the renovating/selling of the
former home and the building of the new one. The first time we saw our new home
was 2 days before closing. I do not recommend this approach to home
construction. Thankfully, we had excellent realtors who visited the site
frequently, corrected errors and sent us pictures of the progress.
For many years we had vacationed in Myrtle Beach, loved it,
and finally decided we had had enough of the cold Northern winters and it was
time to move south. So we did. The enormity of this move at the age of 65 did
not really hit me until recently when I had some time to reflect on what we had
done. We were initially too busy with all the details of the move and getting
settled, and too excited about living in a place we had come to love, to think
about the huge changes we had experienced and were still going through. I
realize now there were days when I felt embraced by the warmth of the weather
and the sweet Southern hospitality, and then there were days when it seemed as
if I had been abducted by aliens and plunked down on a foreign planet. There
are lots of former Northerners here, but most have quickly discovered that you
either “go native” or get smacked with a cultural 2 by 4.
I’ve tried my best not to say things like “back up north we
did thus and so or we did it this way.”
Southerners, no matter how sweet, do not like to be reminded that
Yankees do things differently and often think the Yankee way is better. In some
ways, being a transplanted Northerner is like being a high school student who
has moved to a new school and is trying to figure out how to fit in without
being “slushied” like the hapless kids on the TV show, Glee.
I am trying to get used to a different concept of time. The
combination of a laid-back Southern lifestyle and the perpetual vacation
atmosphere of a resort area produce the prevailing idea that there’s no need to
hurry anywhere or do things asap. The coin of the realm is the “round toit,” as
in “ma’am, don’t you worry, we’ll take care of that when we get around to it.” Apparently
it takes quite a while to acquire that coin. To an extent, this is a healthy
approach, except when it results in Northern blood pressure rising when things
don’t happen on schedule. Actually Northern
and Southern blood pressure has probably already risen because they fry
everything here, including pickles.
After a year, we are still working on some of the punch list
items we identified during the walk-through of our home last August. And we are
still waiting on new doors to our refrigerator so that it will close properly;
that’s another story. The builder’s construction manager has spent so much time
here that our dog thinks he’s a member of the family. I don’t even want to
mention the snakes, lizards, palmetto bugs, mosquitoes, fire ants, and feral
cats, who sleep on our doormat at night. I’m slowly getting used to the fact that at least some
people sitting near me in a movie theater or restaurant are packing heat.
Although I still won’t eat grits, all in all, I am quite happy
to be living in Myrtle Beach. There is very little, if any, snow, and it melts
almost as it falls. You can go Christmas shopping in December in shorts and
flipflops. There is an endless variety of things to do and restaurants to try. There’s
world class entertainment such as the Carolina Opry and other venues. Yes, July
is a big wall of humidity and tourists, but you can’t have perfect weather all
the time, and the tourists keep our taxes low. People are usually friendly and
helpful (even in Walmart), and a big smile and friendliness on your part can
work wonders when you need a strong person to load heavy items into your car.
Up north they just ignore you.
I have landed in a foreign culture, but I’m learning the
language and the habits of the people. And I know useful things like always
look for a parking space in the shade during the summer, put mothballs around
the house to discourage snakes, South Carolina barbecue is tomato-based, and the
plural of y’all is all y’all. So, all y’all, I love your city and your state,
and I intend to stay here for the rest of my life. This is now home. Sorry,
Pennsylvania. Oh, and the best part is that now when my career coaching clients
tell me they’re too old to change, or change is too scary, I can say to
them: “You can do this. I know, I’ve
been there. It’s OK to be scared. I was scared too, but when you make that
needed change, it is so worth it.”
