Our Appalacian Tour

Having grown up in Los Angeles, I have long and incuriously harbored the notion that everyone in the United States lives in a big city or in a suburb of a big city or in the sprawl of the less expensive or more regal or sweetly rural-picturesque homes built in the distant reaches of a big city that make you think, "How do these people commute all the way to the city every day?"

It's not an attitude I'm proud of. When I went to college in Providence, Rhode Island, I considered what is a reasonably sized metropolis to be part of Boston based on the fact that I had to go to Boston every time I wanted to do any satisfying clothes shopping. Similarly, I justified my four years in Williamsburg, Virginia, as merely an extension of the previous three I had spent in Washington, D.C., and proved that my new home was nothing more than a far-flung corner of the D.C. Metro Area by stubbornly driving 2 1/2 hours up I-95 to visit friends every weekend. I even harbored a vague sense of St. Louis as a satellite of Chicago, even though in my four years living there I visited Chicago exactly once.

The point is, when you live in a major urban center, you simply can not conceive of life in a small town. You lack the raw materials to even begin to construct a picture of what people do in small towns.

I still don't quite understand where everyone goes to work every day. They can't all work in the Main Street stores that serve both locals and the tourists who choose to spend a quaint weekend at a precious B&B in the area. Surely there are plenty of residents who refuse to work at the Super Wal-Mart on the grounds of politics and self-respect. And with only one teacher to every thirty or so kids, the schools provide a meager margin of employment.

Because I am enough of a liberal to feel bad about my innate sense of superiority, I make a point of trying to learn from the small towns that surround the big town in which I now live. I marvel at the vast array of selections at Discount Shoes, many of them brands for which I used to pay twice as much in the hip corridors of Los Angeles. I wrap myself in the security of Earth Fare and tell myself it's even better than Whole Foods, even if I can't quite allow myself to spring for the six dollar guacamole. I even bow to those hipper, prettier, more urban than myself.

The real test, however, comes when I venture outside of my new comfort zone, my oasis of This-Isn't-the-South-ness that I call home. This weekend, for example, we visited Hubby's Sister and her family in West Virginia.

I'd been to Lewisburg, West Virginia, before, so I was over the shock of how little it resembles what I had come to think of as the vast emptiness of places near nowhere. I had visited the four blocks of downtown that harbor the stores where Hubby's Sister regularly buys me much cooler birthday gifts than I am able to find for her in all of Southern California. I had hidden my jealousy at the home they built, with its plethora of windows and heated floors and its open floor plan. And I had met Hubby's Sister's friends, educated liberals who favor Birkenstocks and wool caps and the common sense to dress comfortably. I was not, in short, expecting any surprises on this trip.

It was The Boy's first time in Lewisburg, and I got to see Hubby's Sister's house through his eyes. Low windowsills to grasp as he proudly shows off his standing skills. Hounds of a nonthreatening size who dash out of the house to chase raccoons with a thrilling thwap of the dog door. New creatures, called cats, who lie in Mommy and Daddy's laps, purring and making them wonder if a feline companion would help them feel this cozy in their own house. The experience of tasting goat, which his parents are unlikely ever to cook, even when it is professionally raised organic farm goat, not the pet that lives in many a West Virginia kitchen.

By the end of our first day there, I was certain that The Boy would vastly prefer growing up within the confines of Hubby's Sister's house to the Asheville home we so proudly purchased just two and a half months ago. After all, I would. It was warmer and better decorated. It had beautiful built-in bookcases with just enough books to feel comfortable but not overwhelming. It had a better kitchen and better bedrooms and better light. I felt like the college student who realizes after a few weeks at home for summer break that no one in their right mind could live in the dorm room in which she has spent the last nine months.

My sense of yawning inferiority increased on Sunday when we visited the Greenbriar Inn.

An enormous white structure with columns reminiscent of the White House, the Greenbriar Inn is a super-exclusive golf resort. We went there to buy a copy of the New York Times (sadly not available by delivery to the residents of Lewisburg, West Virginia, in case I ever gave any real thought to living there, which, I hasten to add, I haven't). We stayed to extend The Boy's nap by pushing him in his stroller about the grounds.

We managed to spend our first hour inside the enormous white structure of the hotel. There was a lobby to gawk at, with twenty-foot painted ceilings and drawling chandeliers. There was room after room of comfortable chairs and chess sets and even a writing table set up with Greenbriar Inn stationery. I wanted to take some, but I knew my cramped handwriting upon its creamy surface would be a crude advertisement of how inadequately I mastered my fourth-grade cursive skills.

Still in that vast building, we wandered an entire mall of stores selling items we couldn't afford and stared at people wearing golf-shirts we wouldn't wear if we could afford them. I munched on a lovely free apple as I checked my email, also for free. We could have purchased a good cup of coffee or even better homemade chocolate to savor with the paper had we so chosen.

Except that we plainly didn't belong. Coiffed head after coiffed head turned to look at our precious boy bundled like a papoose in his stroller, wrapped in my big, curly brown coat, a flannel hat brushing up against his slack, fat cheeks. And humorless face after humorless face looked away without smiling.

Let me repeat. Not a single person in the Greenbriar Inn smiled at The Boy.

The Boy, I may have mentioned before, is a gatherer of smiles, a magnet for praise, the bellwether of my ability to do something right in life. He is, even to one not his own mother, a really cute baby. But not, it seems, to the patrons of the Greenbriar Inn.

Plainly we were not classy enough for the joint.

Chastened, we returned to Hubby's Sister's house to play H-O-R-S-E and eat smoked turkey (another hit with The Boy) and to laugh as he shrieked with delight when his ten-year-old cousin chased him around the living room.

And with each passing moment my vision of my lovely Asheville home became darker, more twisted. Sagebrush-sized mounds of dog hair grew in the corners of the stairs, and rust stains overtook the sinks. Icicles formed on bare feet touching the no longer polished wood floors. I saw our furniture as sagging and small, cowering against the bare walls that cried out for good taste and a few trips to a gallery.

It's no wonder that, for perhaps the first time in my life, I looked forward to visiting some antique stores before heading back home on Monday. Lewisburg, I reasoned, must harbor untold treasures if Hubby's Sister could live there for so many years and create such a superior home to mine.

I still don't like the smell of antique stores -- the dust mote strewn sense of stale carpets and wobbly card tables holding tiny china figurines that weren't cute when they were new and look sad and faded to me now.

But I was able to look with new hope and appreciation at the furniture and even fall in love a little bit with the wardrobe with a big mirror on its front and rotating coat hooks inside that I thought would look perfect in our front hall (because, with all the rooms begging for furniture in our house, the front hallway should be my priority). I called Hubby over to share my appraisal of hutches and chaises and coffee tables.

And then we did it. Together, Hubby and I bought an antique -- a mirror with a frame carved with flowers and a slightly gilded finish. It was, we concluded, perfect for that spot in the entryway sporting three picture hooks on which we had promised we would one day hang a horizontal mirror. At least, I thought with a thrill, people will be impressed by our home when they first step inside.

Six and a half hours and lunch in Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee, later, we pulled up to our home.

It looked nice enough to remind me why we had stopped that August afternoon of house hunting and eagerly called the phone number on the For Sale sign.

The hounds leaping up and down behind the front French doors were happier to see us than the Lewisburg hounds, part of whose charm, after all, lay in the fact that they were not our responsibility when they chewed the blocks being saved for eventual grandchildren.

And even though it turned out that the mirror is too big to fit horizontally, it looks lovely anchored vertically to the wall by the front door. It serves as a reminder that our home is beautiful in its own right, in part because we have the courage to live in a small (sort of) town.