The Canadas
|
|
1997 A New Career Spring Baseball NCAA Women’s Basketball "Incunabula: The World of
the Fifteenth Century" Mark’s Graduation Richmond, Virginia Baltimore, Maryland Our New Home Mark Murphy’s Visit Independence Day Asheville, North Carolina Charlotte, North Carolina Nashville, Tennessee Indiana Home Improvements, Part 1 Memories of a Gremlin Mark Turns 30 Indiana comes to Carolina Back to School Say “Cheese”! The Triad Charleston, South Carolina Home Improvements, Part 2 Great Expectations Thank You, Henrys Christmas New Year’s Eve Updated August 7, 2002 |
A New Job, a New Home, a New Family
In fact, this year was a culmination of the first eight years of our marriage. We loved that time together, but I think we felt as though we were still on our way somewhere. In some ways, 1997 was the year we arrived. Over the past five years, I had been reading, writing, and studying in graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While I was earning my master’s and doctoral degrees in English, I was also working, sometimes in five part-time jobs at the same time. Meanwhile, Lisa was serving as the family’s primary breadwinner, doing public relations for the Morehead Planetarium and then Carolina’s Department of Nutrition. All the while, we were renting an apartment or small house, sometimes dreaming about owning a home. In April, we bought that home and settled down to a wonderful new stage of our lives in Laurinburg. We spent much of the year painting, sawing, and nailing, as we strove to make our home fit what we saw as its potential. In May, we celebrated my completion of graduate school by attending commencement ceremonies at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill. We enjoyed our first year in Laurinburg, where we experienced some wonderful weather and entertained several guests, including friends, family members, and neighbors. As usual, we also traveled quite a bit. One of our favorite trips was the one we took to Nashville, Tennessee, which we saw for the first time with a lot of help from our friend, Brian Carpenter. Brian, who attended Carolina with me, introduced us to some of his hometown’s restaurants and took us on a driving tour of the city. While in Nashville, we also attended a show at the Grand Ole Opry and visited the Parthenon in Centennial Park. During this same year, we visited a number of other cities, including Charleston, South Carolina, Baltimore, Maryland; and the cities of the Triad in North Carolina: Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point. Amongst all of this excitement, the biggest news of all
was that we were expecting our first child. For the second half of the year, Lisa suffered the
hardships of pregnancy, and we both anticipated the arrival of our daughter,
who was due in January. |
When
the year began, we were living in a rental house in Chapel Hill, where I was
finishing up my graduate work and looking for a job as an English professor.