California Dreaming

California Dreaming

Every day I seem to hear yet another news story about the demise of the “California Dream.” From Sacramento to Fresno to Los Angeles to San Diego, people seem to be losing their homes, losing their nerve, and seeking their dream of a better life outside the Golden State. I hear their complaints: plummeting housing prices, a high cost of living, traffic, too many people fighting for too few resources, and my rational side says, “Of course, they're right; California is overcrowded, overpriced, and overrun.”

But my California dream is located in a beautiful corner the Bay Area peninsula, where the housing crisis hasn't reached the same monumental proportions that people have seen in other parts of the state, and where my memories of fog rolling over the Santa Cruz Mountains, or the sun rising over the South Bay still tug at my heart strings.

So my family is bucking the trend of the California exodus. We just moved back to Palo Alto, California from Albuquerque, New Mexico this summer, primarily because of me, a 45-year-old not-quite-stay-at-home mom. I want to reclaim my California dream, which means getting off the freeway, out of the car, and back into a suburb with a small-town feel, where I can bike to get groceries, and my kids can go to good public schools.

Huh? Yes, New Mexico did live up to its reputation as a slow and easy land of mañana, but I also discovered that getting around Albuquerque meant spending a good part of every day in my car, and ultimately I was willing to trade the beautiful wide open spaces I could see from almost every part of the city for a more densely populated suburb where just about everything is accessible on foot, bike, bus or train.

Now it takes me about two weeks to empty my gas tank, and I love that feeling that every trip I make on my own power is one less contribution to the smog that is the downside of daily life in the Bay Area.

In fact, it nearly deflated my euphoria at the prospect of coming home to see the brown haze spread all over Silicon Valley when we first crossed over from I-5 in the middle of August. I hadn't remembered the air quality being quite that bad, and after the clear, intensely blue skies of the Southwest, I did stop to think, “What in the world am I doing to my lungs moving back to this?”

It still gives me a twinge every time I climb the hills behind Stanford University where I have an unrestricted view of the valley from San Francisco to Oakland to San Jose and see the smog that hangs over the whole expanse, especially in the hot still days of late summer when there's no breeze to blow it all over to the Central Valley (another source of guilt for Bay Area residents).

But if home is smoggier and more crowded than I remember, it's also full of friends who have welcomed us all back so warmly that I can't believe my good fortune. It seems that every day I run into someone else who says, “You're back! We're so glad you're back with us!” and I think that wherever you live, the real sense of being at home comes from the community you find and build there.

Saying Good-bye, Saying Hello

Just about two weeks ago I made a major decision about my future. After spending three years in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I followed my husband (and his start-up job), I decided that it was time to return home to California with the kids.

This means leaving my husband behind for an indefinite period of time, turning myself into a single mom for the duration, and finding out what a commuter marriage is like. The prospect is both frightening and strangely exhilarating.

For months I avoided making this decision, thinking that I could make it through one more year in New Mexico even though I really haven't found full-time work that I enjoy. I had also been giving into pressure from my teen-ager who feels ambivalent about leaving, now that he's made good friends here as well as back in California.

But I soon realized that I was letting fear drive my decision-making, choosing the comfort of my safety net here with my husband and family even as I felt constricted by those same bonds.

“What's wrong with you?” I asked myself. “If there women who can endure eighteen-month deployments of their husbands to Iraq and Afghanistan, surely you can survive in Palo Alto?”

So here I am, forty-five, an unemployed Comparative Literature Ph.D. about to broach the job market in Silicon Valley with my two kids in tow, and a determination to get my career back on track again after a three year hiatus.

The more time that passes since I reached this decision, the better I feel about it, especially since I know I can count on my husband to support me, to talk to me, to sense how I'm really feeling and respond accordingly.

It was a risk moving to Albuquerque three years ago, and in some ways, it's a risk going back to California on my own, but what better time to take risks than in middle age when the worst thing that can happen to you is getting stuck in your ways? I'd rather fall on my face taking a chance on my own than hunker down in my comfortable domesticity for twelve more months. And that more than anything is the reason I'm saying good-bye to the many good friends I've made here in the southwest and hello again to the friends I left behind me.