My twin baby granddaughters have become apartment dwellers. I’m talking 18th floor in a recently constructed, uptown Charlotte high rise. It makes me dizzy to look out the window when I visit.

This choice of a place to call home, even temporarily, has me thinking about where all three of my daughters live. They grew up in a brick Cape Cod in a suburb of sorts, a neighborhood called Northgreen. We lived on a cul-de-sac. There was a country club pool, tennis courts, and a golf course. They could walk to friends’ houses and ride their bikes. It was a wonderful life. They had a great childhood.

But strangely enough, not one of the three, now married and with children of their own, lives in a neighborhood like the one where they grew up. My oldest daughter chose country living. She has a house with a pond behind it instead of a golf course, and her family goes for walks on country roads rather than suburban streets. She can see tractors in the fields near her house.

It’s beautiful out in the country. And so quiet. There are neighbors nearby, but not what I’d call next door. Everybody has a few acres.

My other two daughters have gone in a totally different direction in choosing where to call home. They both live in Charlotte, the largest city in the state. My middle daughter resides in a 1920s renovated bungalow in the Dilworth neighborhood.

Back in the day of trolley cars, this area was considered a suburb of Charlotte. With the growth of the city, Dilworth today is valued for its proximity to uptown. My daughter and her family walk to the local park and restaurants. The daycare is just down the street at the Methodist church. My son-in-law often rides his bike to his uptown job at a skyscraper bank. The house next door is only a few feet away. City life.

My youngest daughter, currently the apartment dweller, has a house two blocks away from her sister’s. The 1910 Victorian she and her husband bought six months ago is in the process of being approved by the historic commission for renovation. It will be a huge project, but like her sister, this daughter loves an old home. She’s willing to spend a couple of years in an apartment while the house undergoes all sorts of repairs and possibly an addition.

I can trace these two daughters’ love of old houses back to me. I’ve always wanted to buy an old home and fix it up but never saw the opportunity. Now I feel I’m too old. Huge renovation projects take energy. Still, I can live vicariously through these city girls with their historic homes.

As for my oldest daughter, country living also hearkens back to me. I grew up in a brick ranch on sixteen acres of mostly woodland out in Edgecombe County. The view outside those windows in that knotty pine den is fuzzy, but I can tell you it was a backyard with a clothesline and farther out, a big garden. It certainly wasn’t a city skyline. By the way, that’s my handsome daddy with our dog Duchess many, many years ago.

If you have adult children, have they chosen a different type of place to live than where they grew up? Mine sure have. But come to think of it, I did too. I’ve never returned to country living.

I will leave you as I began, with the tiny apartment dwellers, who are currently practicing their crawling in the long hallways on the 18th floor…or gazing at the Charlotte skyline.