THE ROADS WE HAND DOWN

Rumor is you can’t go home again. Which may be why my most recent return to the North Carolina of my younger years was less halcyon than previous visits.

Maybe it was better because it was less wistful, and less sad. Maybe it was because I wasn’t trying to return to a place long since lost to me.

I was creating new memories.

When I was younger (and depending on who I was talking to, circa 1982 to 2005), my dad and stepmother (Amy) lived in her father’s old house on Greenhill Road, or just across from Treva and Leonidas, or near Snow Camp, or just a bit south of Burlington, or Saxapahaw.

The last one because it just felt exotic, though it just means “hill” in the language of the Sissipahaw tribe that lived along what is now called the Haw River in Alamance County.

I’ve probably driven Old Greensboro Road a thousand times heading to Chapel Hill — and beyond that, Richmond — or back to the 37 acres I considered a second home growing up. And with apologies to the tiny village of Saxapahaw, I never once thought to turn down Whitney Road.

I’d driven past Saxapahaw hundreds of times and never been.

Now I was going to visit. And I was taking the kids with me.

My compass had been pointing toward Saxapahaw for a while.

A pinched nerve had canceled our first planned vacation of the summer. I’d wanted to see the Saturday market for years. My novel is set in a fictional Haw River town, and I wanted to compare imagination with reality. My dad and Amy’s neighbors weren’t getting younger.

And I’d only visited my father’s grave three times since Amy died.

It felt like the right time for this particular road trip.

It was fast. Seven hours of driving, because Route 360 of course. Eight hours of restless sleep. And about twenty hours of hiking, petting sheep, talking up cute shop girls, and exploring the humid edges of Saxapahaw. With a side excursion to Greenhill Road to leave flowers on a grave, and visit with Treva and Leonidas.

The drive south was unremarkable. Lemonade in South Boston, followed by gales of surprised laughter as we passed a quirky patch of real estate — a vast, rolling field with maybe an old car on a mound of dirt, perhaps a playground, possibly a water feature, scattered like ideas on a landscape. Rooster’s Run read the sign. The one that kept us from detouring.

We sailed past Mebane, the best branded town in North Carolina, and in short order pulled into TerraStay Farm — rows of blackberry vines, a field of asparagus gone to seed, a dozen or more sheep. And four tiny houses in a row, the first of which we had the access code to. Settled in and decided to drive, not walk, to Saxapahaw.

If you took the time to draw Saxapahaw on a napkin, there’d be room to pen a love letter. Which is pretty much what Jack wanted to do by the time we left.

It’s sort of small town you can really get your arms around. An old mill turned music hall. A coffee shop. An island crisscrossed with trails. A restaurant. The general store. A vinyl-and-art collective.

By the time we’d had dinner, browsed the indoor farmer’s market, bought drinks and flowers at the general store, and flirted with the cute woman at the art collective, we were ready for bed. Back to the tiny house we went for a late evening stroll down to the river, and some quality time with Bigfoot, the six-toed Hemingway farm cat.

And after a night when no one slept well — the snoring, the air conditioner, the creaky rollaway bed — I walked into town for my morning coffee. (Thea and Jack followed in the car.) We hit Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, then raced back to the farm for a tour and a lot of aggressive sheep cuddling.

Then it was a quick dash up to Graham, then back down 87 to Chatham Friends Church (formerly Chatham Friends Meeting).

As we got closer, I narrated my childhood, my teen years. The punk rock kid being welcomed into a Quaker farming community.

We drove over the creek where I’d gone frog giggin’ in a flat-bottomed boat. The red clay mud pond where we’d swum. The stretch of trees where I’d tagged along on an actual raccoon hunt. (The raccoon won.) Dad and Amy’s house. Kermit’s barn. Scott and Linda’s house. The barn raising.

The cemetery.

There amid a tidy field of granite markers — mostly McBane’s, Newlin’s and Guthrie’s — a single stone stood out. SARVAY.

John Faris “Jack” and Amy Hutchison. An engraved river stone and a crystal resting by the base.

We placed some flowers on top of the stone. Stood quietly for a minute. Then got back in the car and drove down the road to visit with Treva and Leonidas, and their son and daughter who were my friends and playmates long ago.

I waited all day for the lump in my throat. The rising ache in my chest. Tears, or a sob that I’d choke back, but none came.

Not because I wasn’t sad, but because for the first time I was returning to a place without asking the past to become the present again. Simply introducing my children to the places where some of my stories happened.

Now they have a new story.

Driving north toward Richmond through torrential rainstorms, I realized that Saxapahaw was also theirs now.