Driving home this week I came down my street from a different way and saw the white house painted gold in the evening sun. That was the same way I saw it a year ago when I moved here, except I was in a huge mom-owned van and scared with possessions packed in liquor boxes, an ironing board, and sister all in the back seat.

"Oh, this is a possibility," my mom said when she saw the house.

For all we knew, it could have had no floors and been inhabited by pelicans. I was on the brink of failure. We had become increasingly desperate as all the locations we visited were deemed uninhabitable or inhabited.

I particularly liked the one that had an obvious bug problem, a cleaning problem and a caving floor problem. That was the one my mom told me I was not going to live in. It was as if she had met a buck-toothed, tattooed and smelly stranger that I had announced was Mr. Right and she had said "uh, no." I think that's how my family viewed the city. Maybe driving down Ehringhaus Street first was a bad idea.

But then the possibility-house came, and other possibilities followed. While nowhere close to endless, these possibilities have been mostly unexpected with some unfortunately expected touches.

"Growing up" didn't mean that I always wash my dishes. At least I don't never wash them. I didn't start having it all together or feel more confident.

I still hate going to the Laundromat and there is no possibility of not going. And while I move to the epic journalistic dance trying toward skepticism away from the dark shade of cynicism, cynicism can be so seductive.

Adventures are scary places where you give good cards away in the hope that you won't get a bad hand. It hasn't been a bad hand. But the brilliant sleepy sunset over the Albemarle Sound was mixed with the dusty, smoky sunset searching for the fire that was barely there.

It was in Elizabeth City that I killed my first mouse (don't ask), where I started compulsive-guilt gift giving, where I first saw snow fall, where I first witnessed a sobriety test, and where I had my first two traffic checkpoints.

When I went to Cape Hatteras, my soul soared on a strong rush and a little wave of quiet joy. It hadn't been my longtime goal to go there, but a lifetime of tracking along I-95 made this surprising and satisfying.

The buck-toothed stranger called Elizabeth City has changed a little in appearance. The teeth still look like that, but there's something in the eyes when the sun sets that says to me: "You know you like it."