I've lived in the Aycock Historic Neighborhood since 2012, first sharing a tiny apartment with Elizabeth (who had at that time recently made the foolish decision to agree to marry me) and then later in the house that we bought together after we were married. We love this neighborhood for a variety of reasons. It's close to downtown without feeling too busy or crowded. It's got a lot of character (it's often described as the weird step-sister of Fisher Park). But mostly, we love it because of the people that live here.
It's an ecclectic mix. There are people that live in the home that they were raised in, and there are people that have been transplanted here and never plan to leave. There are new families and empty-nesters. The one unifying theme is that, for the most part, our neighbors really like to have a good party.
Last night, Elizabeth, Elliot, and I went around the corner to celebrate one such party (it was our neighbor Shawn's birthday). While we were there, I got to sit down with Paula, Shawn's wife, who was hosting the party.
Paula
Paula, her husband, and their two daughters moved into their new home right around the time that we moved into ours (though they had lived in the neighborhood for almost 10 years before that). Their house is beautiful and giant, the kind of place that you find in our neighborhood and not in the pre-fab subdivisions that you see in other areas (Elizabeth was excited to learn about the servants quarters that the house had that could only be accessed through the kitchen).
Paula was born and raised in Greensboro, and did what most intelligent students from the Gate City did after high school: attended UNC. Unfortunately, that did not last long. "I was a great student in high school, but not so great at UNC," she said, smiling, "I just didn't like it there. So after a few years I ended up coming back home and finishing up at UNC Greensboro."
When she returned home after her stint at Chapel Hill, she started working at Lox, Stock, and Bagel, a local deli that's fabulous and one of my favorites in town. She met her future husband, Shawn, there, and the two of them ended up traveling for several years around the country. They went to New Mexico to pursue graduate degrees, which lead her to becoming a senior lecturer in the English department at Elon University.
"I work with a lot of the freshmen composition classes, composition was my specialty throughout my programs," Paula said, "I love it there!"
Though academia is something that she gravitated towards, her original passion was writing and editing. She worked as a magazine editor, and, like many English majors, had wanted to go into book publishing. This lead us to a conversation about books (her house is filled with them, which I loved).
Lars: What's a book that you read over the last year that you recommend to people?
Paula got up and went to a stack of books. She came back with a slim black volume. Paula's incredibly intelligent, so it was great to hear her go into her recommendation.
Paula: Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit. I had read a bunch of stuff by her already. When I find an author I like I tend to binge on them. But this one was really great. It's all about how when the world is chaotic (kinda like it is now) how you get through it really is a choice for you to make. If you hold on to the hope that change will happen, then it will. You just have to keep holding on to that hope. That's something we could really latch on to after this year.
What is your favorite joke?
Paula didn't have a favorite joke, but said that anything really punny was up her alley ("I think that's standard for readers and writers," she said). However, one of our neighbors that was sitting next to us did share his favorite joke:
Why couldn't the bike stand up?
Because it was too tired.
What's the meal that reminds you most of home?
Paula: Lasgana, the kind that my grandmother made. Growing up in the South, something as simple as lasagna felt exotic.
If you could bring back one musician, who would it be?
Paula: Gram Parsons. He had such an amazing career that was only done in what, three years or something like that? I'm a huge Emmy Lou Harris fan, and he was a big influence on her. I feel like he had so much more to do and he didn't get the chance.
What is the most significant event that you've witnessed in your life?
Paula: I've witnessed a lot of the events that have affected our daily lives as Americans. The Challenger disaster, Columbine, 9/11. Personally, there's one that springs to mind. I took my older daughter, Josie, to see Barack Obama in Greensboro in 2007 or 2008, before he was the Democratic nominee.
(I can only imagine how cool this would have been, to see someone like that right before they made history)
Will the world be a better place in 20 years?
Paula: Oh yeah, absolutely. It's always getting better, even if it feels like it's worse at the time. It's interesting to reflect as an adult. I look back at my 30's and I'm doing much better now than I was then. And when I was 30, if I had looked back at my 20s I would see I was doing better at that time too. Things get better over time, I believe that.
I was happy to get the chance to sit down with Paula, even for a little bit. We do the neighborly "hello" when we're out on our walks, and we chit-chat at other parties. She was even one of the first people in the neighborhood to see Elliot after we took him for a walk after he got home from the hospital. But we hadn't gotten the chance to really talk before, and Paula was very kind to take time out of her party-hosting duties to do this.
It's telling the kind of people that Paula and her family are by what they did with the birthday party they hosted. Instead of just an excuse to get together to drink and eat good food (which we did!), it was requested that if you came to the party that you brought with you food and clothes for a local shelter. I thought that was really cool and really indicative of our neighborhood. It's full of good people that want to help and want to do good things. Paula is no exception to this, and I'm happy to be able to call her my neighbor.
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