All of the things I learned from growing up in Cary, North Carolina

Cary, North Carolina, is a city which calls itself a town that’s located a few miles southwest of Raleigh. I wasn’t born in Cary, neither was my brother, nor were my parents.

My family moved there from Winston-Salem when I was an infant, so it’s where I grew up.

The spice of life

Cary is in the thick of it all. Economically, that is. To the East and you’ll find cotton fields and pig farms. To the West and you’ll find cigarette rollers and furniture workshops.  It’s also located in close proximity to North Carolina’s famous Research Triangle Park, or RTP for short.

There are all sorts of all the jobs available there in software, pharmaceuticals, and medical technology. You can find folks from all over the globe there because of it, heck, I went to school with people from Laos, Germany, Nepal, Ethiopia, the list goes on.

There’s a Hindu Temple just down the road from where I live, and a Korean Christian Church down the road from that. Our restaurant options are just as diverse as our population with everything from Eritrean  to Tibetan cuisine.  I ended up learning a lot about the different peoples and cultures that I came into contact with.

I still credit this international diversity with developing my love for learning about and trying new things. Cary taught me that variety’s the spice of life.

The way I was raised

The largest demographic that’s come to Cary seeking work are the Yankees, folks from up North. That’s what we call them anyway. An old joke goes that a Yankee is someone from the North who comes South, and a damn Yankee is one that doesn’t leave.

Yankee transplants are widespread, and children of Yankee transplants even more so. Most of the folks I went to school with were either from somewhere above the Mason-Dixon line or had parents that were. My parents, for example, came from New Jersey—and my Dad got to New Jersey from Cuba before that.

The Cary Amtrak Station

But in my experience there was oftentimes a clash of cultures. I was raised by the land I was born into, rather than raised by the land my parents came from. My beliefs, my values, and my religion always seemed at odds with the people I grew up with. I was a Southerner among Northerners, which often made me feel like a foreigner in my own town. I faced much discrimination because of this, it made me see how intolerant my generation was despite how much they wanted to think otherwise.

So I did right by the way I was raised. I refused to become a victim and I developed a thick skin. Cary taught me that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

Cary taught me to be myself 

I didn’t always feel welcome, nor were people too friendly. As such, I never quite felt like I belonged in Cary. I’ll visit during the holidays and look upon some places with fondess, such as my neighborhood. Others, like my high school, I’ll drive by and glance at in resentment. It’s been two years since I left for college, and I feel even more out of place there than I did before I left.

It’s as if though I become a stranger passing through town when I come back to visit. I know I’m making it sound like a bad thing, but it’s not, I don’t feel like I fit in at the University of Iowa either. Truth is? Not fitting in just means I’m doing something right—that’s what I learned. Cary taught me to be myself.

The Cary Town Hall