For this year's thanksgiving, we spent the weekend in South Carolina with Steve's family, who are lucky enough to live part of the year in a small island in Charleston's Lowcountry. Though I love leaving New York as much as I love living here, I must say I was at first skeptical my first visit down south. First of all, people in the south are....so.....nice. They never get impatient, or angry, and everyone is so damned social and friendly. I'm just not that used to it - or should I say, it takes me awhile to get out my New York City mode, drawl out my vowels, and not care if people cut me in line or walk too slowly down the street. I don't know if it was the weather (which was gorgeous! Each and every day!) or this book I was reading (Eat Pray Love) about a woman's devout journey to find balance in her life and just take it easy, that I began to, well, take it easy myself. My second day on the island I started saying hello to strangers as I passed them on my morning walks before they even had a chance to say hi first. I commented on the weather, and even remarked with strangers that Christmas was right around the corner, could you believe. I small-talked with the clerk (yes, me!) as she rang up my iced cappucino. I didn't even give her a hard time when she messed up my order switching my skim-milk for whole. Who cares!? Life on an island was good.
My brother-in-law and his wife brought their neighbor friends from North Carolina to spend the week with us as well. And though I've met this couple before, I never spent that much time with them and didn't realize how different and yet how similar we were. Though I was only the second (the second!) Jewish person they ever met, they were the first true Southerners I've ever met. It was beyond interesting to hear how different life in the South is - beyond politics and the fact they would never watch "The Daily Show" we still had a lot in common. They are a young, recently married couple as well and yes, Southern wives can be just as cool as Northern ones. (Well at least this couple was). So, despite the fact that Steve and I would never join them hunting on the weekends in Raleigh, they would probably never try gefilte fish up north either.
I tried a lot of new things this weekend - fried green tomatoes, hopping johns, jambalaya, she-crab, fried turkey...but that's the obvious. More importantly I learned how different people live - and realized that at the end of the day, once those from both ends of the Mason-Dixie line accept the fact that the Civil War is indeedover, we are more alike than anything else.
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