Leaving America

I moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1995, with my husband, and a baby and toddler in tow. It seemed like a good place to raise children, I was thinking vaguely of going back to school at some point, and it was halfway between Chicago and Florida, where we had relatives. Neither I, nor my husband, had jobs. It was a leap of faith.

Twenty-five years later, now divorced and children grown, I moved back to Scotland, my home country. As a dual national-dual resident I was able to fly during the pandemic. I have returned to North Carolina each year since then to work for a few months, see friends, and visit my daughters. I maintained an official US address at my friend’s house, and a hypnotherapy private practice office in Chapel Hill.

Last week I closed down that office, after almost 13 years in that space. After all the furniture had been moved out, there was a strange object on the floor, dirt brown, the size of ping pong ball — a tiny shriveled apple. I also picked up something that looked like a dark green olive. To my surprise it was a tiny stone with a heart painted on it. I remembered a client had given me a handful of them years ago, to pass on to other people. It seemed this final one was for me.

I loved opening the office door on quiet mornings before anyone else was in the building. Often the sun would be streaming in. I had a higgledy- piggledy line of letters hanging on strings and tacked to the wall, spelling out the word “hypnosis.” There were three large square canvas art prints of mandalas — my own work — done obsessively over a two-week period in 2009 when I created almost 800 pieces of digital art. And my magnum opus of embroidery, a cross-stitch of a Turkish rug finished in in those distant days before I had children and had so much more time.

These things have been cocooned in bubble wrap and consigned to my storage shed for the time being.

I would look out of the window as I ate my lunch. I got to know the squirrel, the robin, and the wood thrush whose patch of ground this was. The highway, a river of life behind a line of trees, was only visible in winter. But the low hum of traffic was present in the background. Sometimes motorcycles or ambulances would disturb the quietness of the room.

This space has seen so much drama, so many tears. My clients and I have waded through boxes and boxes of tissues. In that space, I have witnessed the reliving of past lives, and many retellings of old stories.

I have seen people who vomited while processing trauma, or rolled on the ground singing Native American chants, or shouted at me in anger, or asked me if I were married. Some people brought me gifts: chocolate croissants, a magic wand, tiny flowers in tiny vases, a sprig of pussy willow, a stone painted with a swallowtail caterpillar, and a framed picture of a man leaping over an abyss.

There were those who came accompanied by support dogs, or who listened at the door to eavesdrop on what their child, husband, or wife was saying. One person paid for their session with a pound of ostrich meat and a Ptolemaic coin featuring the head of Zeus. There were hugs and smiles, heartfelt thank yous in both directions, and the occasional no thank you.

This office acted as an anchor. I could come back here after my travels, or after living in Scotland for several months, and step right back into my American life without missing a beat, seeing my clients face to face again and reconnecting with the person I was there.

My accent would change between Scotland and the US. When I first moved to New York people would say “Oh, you’re Irish!” After a while, when I got fed up of this, I would just tell them I’m from County Cla(i)re. But I slowed my speech down and over the years developed what might be described as a mid-Atlantic accent. It’s a form of code-switching, and my Scottish accent returns as soon as I hear the taxi drivers speaking at Edinburgh airport.

Last October, the church that rented me the room announced they would not be renewing my lease. They wanted to rent the whole suite plus the classroom where I used to teach, to a single tenant. I was sad at first, but having been ambivalent about keeping the office for the past few years, now I can admit to myself that it feels right to be leaving.

As well as losing the office, I am losing my US address. A few days ago I awoke for the last time in the house in the woods where I have lived on and off for almost ten years. It belongs to my friend Liz, who is selling her house this spring. Another anchor gone. When I left my husband, in 2015, she and her husband kindly invited me to stay with them. I was their tenant until just before the pandemic, and have returned to live in that house, for varying periods of time, most years since.

At the end of the road, a cul-de-sac, I could still see signs from when a twister came through several years ago, cutting a narrow path of destruction, downing trees, destroying barns, and injuring a cow at Maple View Farm, a few miles up the road, where they make ice-cream. I had huddled in an interior bathroom with Liz’s daughter and her new baby. Intrigued by the sound — like a train coming although almost a mile away — we looked out of the front door to see the air was sparkling and green.

I have been driving and walking around Chapel Hill for the past few weeks, remembering the past, and saying goodbye. I have had dinners, drinks and walks with decades-old friends. So much of my life has been spent here. These memories stitch together the past into a patchwork of narratives that interweave and overlap. They are the threads that make up my adult identity. Each memory tugs at one of those threads. Changes have come imperceptibly or all at once. Seamlessly, or with great violent rips in my fabric.

Here, on the UNC campus is dental hospital where I ran a clinic, here is where I worked as an academic librarian, here is where I sat on the wall waiting for my bus home, as a master’s student, watching the goings-on at the frat houses across the street. Here is where I graduated with my PhD, cheered on by my daughters and friends.

Here is where my older daughter rode her red-white-and-blue decorated bike in the Fourth of July parade, and my younger daughter, just a toddler, sat on her dad’s shoulders waving a small American flag. A journalist took a photograph of her that graced the front page of the local papers. These memories are superimposed faintly, like tracing paper, on what I see here now.

Here is my first house, a townhome, looking small now. The tree that I grew from a seedling has gone, in the almost-20-years since we sold it.

Here is where my older daughter practiced scooter tricks. Here is where my girls would climb into the big yellow school bus that took them to elementary school. Here is where they had lemonade stands. Here is where we invited everyone at pre-school to a Halloween party and, to our great surprise, eighty people showed up.