I’m not leaving in a huff. Just leaving. Chapel Hill was good to us.

Life is easy here. That’s part of the reason we’re leaving. It was too easy. Easy like sinking into quicksand. There was nothing challenging about Chapel Hill. It presented no difficulties. The housing is reasonable, the weather is mostly good, the people are smart, civil, moderate overall. It’s easy to get in to see a doctor or dentist or hairdresser. (That last no longer being a concern of mine.) There’s almost no traffic. There are good public schools and better private schools for the kids. There’s a good mall, a wide array of boring but usable kid-compatible restaurants, and the occasional dash of haute cuisine. There are more coffee shops than even I require.

This place was good to us. It left us alone, didn’t get in our face, didn’t irritate us. It did bore us. But that’s not Chapel Hill’s fault, Chapel Hill never pretended to be New York or Paris. It’s just a little college town in North Carolina. It never claimed to be sexy.

We might come back, a thought that gives us both the willies. Of all the places we’ve lived together, we’ve almost never repeated. We did repeats on Ocean City, I think that was it. Two tours in OC. Every other place — Austin, Annapolis, Alexandria, Orlando, Cape Cod, Richmond, Portland, Sarasota, Johnson City (WTF?), Minneapolis, Chicago — we’ve never moved back. But the ease of life in Chapel Hill might seduce us again, some day, when we’re tired, broke and out of ideas.

Or not.

But either way: Chapel Hill was alright. No hard feelings.

This entry was posted by Michael Reynolds, on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. You can leave your response.