Around Duke

Last summer Jami and I visited friends in Durham. Paul, pictured with Jami in the middle photo, toured us around the campus, showing us the new things that had been constructed with the library and the divinity school. The top two photos are of a bistro attached to the library, and the bottom photo is a new chapel in the divinity school. In the background, in front of the piano, you see Jami, with her large pink handbag that she bought at a yard sale here in Decatur for two dollars.
What impressed me about both spaces was how airy they are. Light from outside fills them, and the abundance of windows allows me to feel like I'm in nature. The chapel's space has a great freedom in it. Behind the pulpit I don't experience the widening gulf between myself and the congregation that's typical of most church architecture. It's a space that combines formal elements (Gothic patterns of building common to Duke, the organ ranks, the pulpit/congregation split) with intimacy. Last summer I thought, "what would it be like to have coffee here? What would it be like to preach here?"
I remembered how 17 years ago I had lived in Chapel Hill, finishing my Library Science degree. I remembered that just as I had finished my coursework and had begun writing my thesis my mother died. How disoriented I was when I left this place to move back to Georgia.
When I was six, in my first year of school, a big headed skinny kid with horn-rimmed glasses, I remember thinking how far away graduation seemed: twelve years - that's forever. Now I'm throwing up decades and twelve years, much less seventeen years, don't seem like much at all.
Jami and I marvel that we both lived in the Chapel Hill/Durham area around the same time. She lived there longer than I did, but we both left in 1990. We never met, or we're not conscious of meeting, in the years we were there. Perhaps I cut her off in traffic; Perhaps she glanced at me as I visited friends at Duke and thought, "what an odd fellow" - if as much as that.
What would it be like to live there again? In 17 years Durham's not the same place. Neighborhoods have gentrified; the Durham Bulls play in a new ballpark for a different major league team; the basket ball universe has altered, if slightly. But there are continuities: our friends who live there came to our wedding; Carolina bar-b-que is still superlative (although Georgia Brunswick stew continues to be better - why is that?) and abundant; and the place is awash in culture: the universities, libraries, museums, music and theater venues.
Atlanta is a dear place to us. Our families are nearby. We've tons of friends here and a very supportive church. And Atlanta hops with culture too, even more so - it's just a big sprawling place that's really a bunch of little places butting up against each other. And we're comfortable in our little place here in Decatur. We've got our creek outside (it's called something like Peace and Love creek, and now its course is fixed in a concrete bed - but its gentle curve under the trees behind us is beautiful, bucolic) and we walk to church. The seminary's five minutes away. The Midtown movie theater is 20 minutes driving, and the Tara, with Varsity chili dogs waiting across the street, is about 20 minutes as well.
I like having lunch with my friends: going to Twain's and playing shuffleboard with Bob as we down copious diet coke and wings and nachos; talking sermons with Joe and trying new beers. It's a joy to go with Jami to a major league game, even if the Braves are disappointing.
Two months ago, Jami and I went to a game, and as we crossed the bridge over I-20, she looked at me and said, "isn't it nice, just the two of us with the kids out of the house." Yes, we decided then, we're like some couple that's discovering each other once the kids have left.