Three Degrees Below Zero

For many, California epitomizes the American dream. “Go west, young man,” said Horace Greely’s famous 1851 editorial, and California is as west as one can go. “California, here we come,” trills the song. They make songs about leaving Las Vegas, but never about leaving California. In fact, I bet the person who left Las Vegas in the song went to California.

Those who wonder why Craig and I left California point out that California has it all: gorgeous state parks, mild winters, and fruit fresh from the orchard. Salaries are among the highest in the nation, and if houses cost more—well, that just means they appreciate more in value too. The beach is never more than a few hours away. Roller-bladers glide beneath the palm trees, and beautiful sunbathers lie in the warm sand. A radio plays the Beach Boys who “wish they all could be California girls.”

I once asked my then-boyfriend what slogan he would put on a bumper sticker, and he said “I LOVE CALIFORNIA.” And he did. We took rambling drives to enjoy the countryside, with or without a destination. Our first dates were to grand places like Yosemite, but also to small, out of the way streams and hiking spots. I remember one March morning in particular. We climbed the winding road to the summit of Mount Diablo. We spread a blanket, munched on sandwiches, and enjoyed a spectacular view of the Bay Area on one side and the Central Valley on the other. Craig proposed on an April afternoon at Half Moon Bay. Rays of sunshine pierced the clouds that had just dropped two hours of rain on us, and we were finally able to leave Craig’s car for a walk along the bluffs.

Craig loved California so much that I marveled he had ever left. He spent three years in Kentucky getting a master’s degree, and was a hair’s breadth from staying for a doctorate when something brought him home. I’m glad he came back, because we met six months later. A native of Modesto, California since the age of six, I ran into Craig at a church group meeting and was immediately interested. We dated long distance while I finished college. When he came to visit me in Southern California, the entomology degree never failed to come up in conversation. Craig was unique among the dates and loves of my friends, few of whom were in college, much less in possession of advanced degrees. My roommates called him “Bug Boy,” and amused themselves with composing corny love poetry from him to me:

Your eyes, they glisten like June bugs as they run,
Your lips are red like ladybeetles in the sun,
I can sense your pheromones from far away,
So fly to me, and let us buzz away today.

Craig made a few periodic inquiries about doctoral programs in the following years, but nothing ever came of them. When we got married, the subject of moving never came up. Like all young lovers, we were impervious to anything the world could throw at us. No matter what challenges we faced, all we needed was each other. We would live in California, in the Central Valley, the place you touch if you point to the center of a state map. Our parents would be close, work would be predictable. Kids would come, eventually, and we would have a good life.

Craig took a job managing crop protection on a thousand-acre farm outside Modesto. While not a perfect match for his degree, it was a chance to gain practical experience and make connections in the business. Walking through acres of healthy, green vegetables sounds restful, but keeping them green and healthy proved to be an enormous challenge. California summers, so long and romantic for schoolchildren, made for a brutal schedule from March to November. There was always a threat that needed vigilance—pests in the summer, diseases in the winter—and overseeing application of chemicals meant supervising the night shift. A year into the job, he received a cell phone, and it started ringing immediately. Some nights Craig came home at eight, took two or three calls before bedtime, and woke up to the phone at one. Then he would get up and dress for a trip to the farm to solve a crisis—shredded sprayer belts, oil leaking from tractors, or ruptured irrigation lines. It’s a schedule not many could take, and indeed three of Craig’s coworkers quit in his third year of work.

What kept Craig from quitting? He had a strong work ethic and a positive attitude. He remained grateful for the job and the opportunities it provided, except for the occasional two o’clock confession that he hated his job. But he always went out the door anyway. Admittedly, I was nowhere near so noble. I knew about overwork, but I had never seen hours like this. We would both jump awake in the middle of the night at the sound of the phone. Craig changed his ring tone three times that third summer, but it only took a month for each new one to raise my blood pressure and make me sick to my stomach. Craig would leave in the dark for yet another night, and I would lay with my eyes wide open, unable to fall asleep. This was not an office job; there was heavy machinery, and dangerous chemicals were involved. Craig is the most careful person I know, but how do you remain safe after working twenty-one of the past twenty-four hours? I lived in worry that Craig would be hurt, and indeed the signs of stress-related illness told me that the job was injuring him, slowly but surely.

On these mornings, I would wake up tired with the alarm, dress sluggishly, and head to school. Sometimes Craig would be back for a morning nap before heading back to work, sometimes not. My first period class and I would wake up together, and the poster on the wall of my classroom would haunt me:

Hold fast to dreams,

Easy for you to say, Langston Hughes. I just wished I knew what my dreams were. It’s hard to hold on to dreams without a good night’s sleep.

For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

What about Craig’s dreams? Was getting a doctorate his dream? Did he give up that dream to marry me? I would stare vacantly at the mauve walls of my classroom, sucking down coffee in a show of hypocrisy (my students weren’t allowed to drink in class), and wonder if our dreams were dead. A teacher’s job is to help students find answers, and the irony of the situation never escaped me. I spent my days dealing out answers like playing cards, and had no right answers for myself.

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams go….

Three years into Craig’s job, we faced reality. California agriculture turned out to be a profitable but shrinking industry. In an economy whose main crop is new houses, farmers retire and sell off land for development. In the fall, the orchards were ripped out, and in the spring a new crop of square stucco houses with red tiled roofs would take their place. There were no better jobs, only similar jobs. Occasionally, there would be talk of improvements to Craig’s current position, none of which included a reduction in hours on call.

Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

California’s fertile fields seemed barren. They were devoid of opportunities, time, and sleep. Snow is a symbol of desolation in the poem on my wall, but the thought of snow seemed welcome and refreshing to my mental state. Winter is a time of death, but also a time of renewal.

In December, my students always dramatized “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and, while it never failed to touch me, that fourth winter’s reading moved me to tears. In the penultimate scene of the play, as the Franks and Van Daans say their goodbyes while Nazi soldiers kick down the door to their hiding place, Mr. Frank says to Anne, “For the last two years we have lived in fear; now we will live in hope.” I was trying to help my students connect to a powerful piece of literature, but this time the words on the page seemed written with a message just for me.

Deep inside, I knew that Craig would have to leave this job, and I dreaded what would follow. Months of unemployment? Terrifying uncertainty? Whatever came, could it be any worse than keeping this job? I glanced again at the poster on my wall, and in my mauve classroom with thirty-eight sleepy eighth-graders, I had a moment of clarity.

Hold fast to dreams…

Looking back on the weeks after Craig resigned, I most remember a feeling of complete and utter invulnerability. Craig lingered over coffee in the morning as if to make up for four years of throwing on his boots and rushing out of the house. We put a map of the United States on our den wall and started marking opportunities as they came: Idaho, Michigan, North Carolina, North Dakota, Canada, and finally Lexington, Kentucky. I didn’t see it as hitting bottom, but rather as giving up a scant hold on something we didn’t really want. It was better to free fall into icy water and begin the long swim to shore. What was there to fear? My fears had already happened, and they really weren’t that scary. In a way, we had lost everything—health, financial security, and our plans for the future—but it brought us simplicity and peace of mind. It reminded me of the starry-eyed optimism of our newlywed days. All we needed was each other.

A month before we left on our new adventure, we ascended Freemont Peak, the highest point overlooking Monterey Bay. We sat on a rock beside the flagpole, looking past the trees, and down over the rolling green hills. It was as if I was being shown all I was giving up. The fertile Salinas Valley is a center of California agriculture. We had given it a try, but the lifestyle was not a good fit for us. We were giving up California and all the pleasures and familiar places it had to offer. There would be no more trips to Apple Hill in October or San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square at Christmastime. California had been my home since childhood, but now we were ready to move on.

It is autumn in Kentucky, and around me I see the beginnings of the fall colors for which the state is famous. After that will come winter, and if I get my wish I will see Kentucky frozen with snow. I imagine us sitting indoors on an evening, reflecting on the past year and planning for the future. We glance out the window and see the first puffy flakes of snow drifting in the wind. We go outside and catch a few icy crystals on our tongues, glad that winter’s finally come.