Straight Outta California

December 3, 2021

We departed our suburban stucco track home for the last time. I’ve lived in the city and suburbs my whole life. Surprising for a hermit, isn’t it? Most people have a vast network of friends and family, but I only had a few in each category, so there weren’t a lot of ties holding us there, I suppose that made the separation easier. Ganesh and I often casually joked that we should move. Ganesh wanted a “homestead in Alaska” and I joked that he would live there by himself if he did that. But as time went on, we were increasingly tired of the stress of the city, the constant traffic, having to watch Winston at the park every second, feeling like you are going to get mugged at any moment, have to watch your back while you load your kid into the carseat. It just isn’t healthy to always be on guard like that. The palpable attitude of people sauntering across the street as you wait for them to cross. The snappy rudeness of the clerks and employees everywhere. People getting shot while on their bicycle around a path I used to walk all the time. People passed out on the corner from a drug induced stupor. Bums panhandling at everywhere, in parking lots as you enter stores, and more. When you go into the city, everywhere there is filth and tents and crap like a city of homeless people. A few weeks before we moved, there was something like one road-rage shooting every week for a month on the freeway by our house. One of which particularly pulled at me because this woman’s six-year-old son in the back seat was killed by a bullet. The crime was out of control, and we couldn’t take it anymore. I had always been the odd ball growing up, but I really started to grow tired of being the odd one out. The only one to want a home birth, the only one to want to homeschool, alternative medicines, slightly more spiritual world-view, etc. Ganesh too, colleagues at all his various jobs were wonderful people but were really into traveling and buying expensive stuff and partying, which is fine but we just don’t resonate with it. Does anyone just want to be homeschool parents? Just for once, I would like to have a culture where I fit in better, is that too much to ask? 

Then when we found out our second baby was on the way and I was making arrangements with the hospital and my doula that I had before, the hospital told me that I had to wear a mask through the delivery and that there was only one person allowed in the delivery room, either the doula or my husband. We felt like our doula was our life-saver the first time around, and the thought of going to the hospital without her was crazy, but so was giving birth without Ganesh there. Anyone who has had a baby knows how ludicrous it is to purport that a woman in labor should wear a mask. That’s pure insanity to me. Then the inhumanity to only allow one person in with you. That’s lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut. That’s it! That was the moment we snapped. 

It was a strange feeling to pull out of the driveway the for the last time, most likely never to return to my home state. Leaving the city for the homestead out in the prairie.