Golden Years In the Golden State

driving our kids west . . . our past life vanishing in the rear view mirror I don’t recall many details about our move to California. My husband’s job had transferred him two states over to California where he’d been working for several months in commercial building. We faced the inevitable, and decided to sell our first home and move our entire family to the Bay area. The year was 1986 – a wonderful era of video, dance aerobics and fun fashions. I had given up a nice part-time teaching job when I followed with some trepidation behind my husband who hauled all our belongings in the bed of his truck as I drove behind him in my sporty blue Camaro carrying three cats, our age 10 daughter and age 7 son. We started out in Richmond, living in a great apartment complex on the bay and began looking for a place closer to my husband’s work. We ended up south of Oakland in a city called Hayward, living in Orange Tree Apartment Complex, not too far from San Francisco. My husband was making great money, and though I did not need to work, I trained for and got work at different gyms teaching a few little aerobics classes. Also I studied for a teaching license in California (which I barely got to take advantage of), and worked one year as a part-time secretary. Our four years in Hayward were prosperous and fun. We bought a boat to take our kids to different lakes on weekends. I became addicted to thrift shops, which abounded in Hayward, and to frequenting the movie theaters. Because the weather was always nice, I could swim my laps nearly all year round in our apartment complex pool. We also enjoyed little outings to San Jose’s beach/ boardwalk and places in and around San Francisco. My confidence increased from learning new skills, driving in big cities and being involved in many interesting new activities. As beautiful as our life was for those four years, we noticed the environment was not too good for our children. Our son was not getting adequate education in his unruly classroom, and he’d begun hanging out with little hooligans. By the time of the big S.F. earthquake of ‘89, we were looking at homes in Sacramento. However, something was telling us to go back to our home state and start all over. My husband’s big job had ended, so we packed up all our stuff and moved back home in 1990, taking the money we’d saved to use for a down payment on the house in which I am still living today! Even though we loved our time in the golden state, we feel that we did the right thing by moving back to a state safer for our children. We had to live again with the stress of my husband being self-employed, but our two kids are now adults enjoying their lives with children of their own. re-planting ourselves - despite many ups and downs . . . our family thrives