California 2019

What's not to like? We decided to be adults and stay in a motel, rent a car. We had maid service, breakfast was included, friends took us out to dinner or cooked for us. The rain stopped, as it usually does at the end of May. I glanced at e-mails about the water pipeline and annexation, looked at the Charleston newspaper, but not the one from Morgantown. Joe freed himself, at least a little, from his rabbi persona, and relaxed.

In San Francisco we stayed at My Usual Chain, where we got a free night, at the foot of Russian Hill and walking distance to Fisherman's Wharf. It's a touristy area. In Los Angeles, we stayed in Pasadena, where we have friends, but away from the noise of West Hollywood, the expense of Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles. Parking was free, but we drove 600 miles in a week just to get around.

I had several goals for the trip: generally to get away after the toxic City Council election, which I won by a large majority, to get Joe away from the crush of responsibilities, and his contract negotiations (even though both he and the congregation want him to continue as Tree of Life's leader). More specifically, Joe has a long-time friend in San Francisco who is ill, and I wanted to make sure Joe saw him again, and Rabbi Lisa Edwards, of Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles, who I met when she was a student rabbi, who mentored Joe as her student rabbi for two years, and who married us in 2008, was retiring, and the annual BCC brunch was honoring her and her wife Tracy Moore. So, a week in San Francisco from May 23 to 30, and a week in Los Angeles from the 30th to June 6.

We hiked, we danced, we saw lots of friends. I went off to the East Bay from San Francisco to see my cousin Eric, his wife Karen, their son David, his wife Julia and their daughter, not yet a year old. They all migrated from Long Island to Contra Costa County, and they had that look that people have when their life markedly improves.

Joe and I gave up lifetimes of friends to go first to Crescent City, which was at least still in California, then to West Virginia, closer to his birthplace in Buffalo and mine in Baltimore. For Joe, it was a career choice; for me, a chance to support my husband.

I learned some things that I can use as a Councilor in Morgantown. San Francisco planned years ago to cut auto traffic, tearing down an earthquake-damaged freeway and not building parking. People with money use Uber and Lyft to ride to and from work to avoid the lack of parking; tech companies run a private bus system while BART, Muni and the busses continue to crumble. There are bike stations around town, and electric scooters, proposed for Morgantown, but not implemented. I never saw anyone wear a helmet while riding an electric scooter, and although the speed is supposed to be limited, they seemed to go fast down San Francisco's hills. I would not want to see them here.

Homelessness is up in Los Angeles. Many freeway overpasses have people living in tents beneath them, a disgrace in a city with as much money floating around as Los Angeles has. A proposed school levy for Los Angeles Unified School District, where I worked for more than eighteen years, Proposition EE, which would have added nurses and counselors to the schools and reduce class sizes, was defeated while we were there. Rich people in Los Angeles don't send their kids to public school. People in Los Angeles told us the subways and busses are dangerous or unpleasant and they avoid them, which is too bad. There is now a good basic system to get around, and a new line is being built to Inglewood and the airport. While I have many friends in the Los Angeles area, and the weather is nearly perfect most of the year, it is a bit like in "Blade Runner," not an entirely functional place.

Many people in West Virginia said "Be careful!" when I told them we would be in Los Angeles for a week, but the only time I was scared was navigating the freeways in our rented Ford Escape. And maybe I was frightened when we hiked up Eaton Canyon north of Pasadena, crossing a stream several times, and, in my case, falling in once and banging up my already injured wrist. Lots of people were hiking up the canyon, even though signs warned us that it was dangerous. Most of the hikers were in their teens and twenties.

We met with two women rabbis in Los Angeles who graduated with Joe, each with a husband, a house, and two children born in the ten years since ordination. One flies to a smallish town in Texas monthly to be the rabbi; the other works as an educator at a synagogue. Both stayed in Los Angeles for their husbands' jobs. Joe feels they are underemployed, but I can see how they care for their children, and I doubt they regret their choices.

And I don't regret our choices either. Yes, we gave up a lot. Some of Joe's friends in San Francisco go back to his college years, and I saw when I first met them that they grieved losing Joe from their circle. I had several communities in Los Angeles, from BCC, from Israeli dancing, from Great Outdoors, a gay hiking group, from the schools where I worked, and the temples where I sang and the one where I worked with bar and bat mitzvah kids. I divided my close friends into two categories: "stuck" and "moved on." One of my gay friends married a beautiful and accomplished woman, who moved him into a social circle that was more appropriate for his own accomplishments. Another gay friend married a man, bought a house and adopted a child, now a teenager. My "stuck" friends never found the right guy, although they are smart, not bad looking, and financially stable, if not wealthy. I thought of them when I met Joe, how easy it would have been to say "I'm not leaving my life here," and then letting him go. I was old enough to make a rational decision, although there may have been more emotion there than I care to admit.

Beth Chayim Chadashim has hired an interim rabbi, a course recommended when a long-time and much-loved rabbi like Lisa Edwards leaves. Maybe after a year or so, a new rabbi won't be compared,  perhaps unfairly, to the former rabbi. Many people asked me at BCC's brunch if Joe would like to come back to Los Angeles to be the rabbi  in a year. We've talked about the possibility, and I know Joe has spoken with Rabbi Lisa. Sure, it would be easier to live in California: the weather, the politics (compare Shelley Moore Capito to Kamala Harris or Jim Justice to Gavin Newsom), the people we love and who love us.

But we've been in West Virginia for seven years now, and Joe is revered at Tree of Life, and I've been reelected to Morgantown's City Council. Traffic here is backed up for one mile on two streets, as opposed to being backed up on 45 miles of eight-lane freeway. Nine years ago, at sixty, I took a giant leap with Joe to move away from the people I knew; he had leapt five years earlier when he left for rabbinical school. As I approach seventy, I'm feeling more settled, and more risk-averse. Morgantown has become a much more gay-friendly place in the years we've been here, and we have helped make that difference, even if we are two generations older than the LGBT activists who are continuing to transform our town.

To travel across the country is hard now, and I don't know when or if we'll get back. I would love to be closer to my cousins, to see my long-time friends more often, for both of us to be more comfortable in our surroundings than we are in West Virginia. But Morgantown is our home now, and I can't complain about the people we've met, especially at Tree of Life and in liberal politics, where we have love and respect.

Yes, it was great being in beautiful San Francisco and Los Angeles with our friends and family, but I understand that our life now is here in Morgantown.

With my Polk family cousins in Walnut Creek, Contra Costa County

Windows on Castro St. in San Francisco celebrating the memory of Harvey Milk

Joe's friend Randy from college, his husband Greg with us in the Castro District, San Francisco

With our friends Glenn and Caroline in the Outer Sunset, San Francisco

Lunch in San Mateo with Joe's long-time friend Paul and his husband

Near the entrance to Eaton Canyon County Park, Altadena, CA near Los Angeles

At BCC's brunch at the Skirball Museum in Bel Air, Los Angeles

After a hike in Griffith Park with thirty mostly older gay men, Twenty of us dined at an Italian restaurant in Los Feliz, Los Angeles. Photo is with John, Mark and Rob, long-time friends, and Steffan (seated), a new friend.

With my long-time friend Jonathan at Dominguez Gap Wetlands in Long Beach,  Los Angeles County

With my Israeli dance partner of Many years, Reva at "Dance With  Orly"