"Californians don't transplant well," my grandmother warned me soon after I finished college and moved east to Chicago. I had developed some quibbles with the Windy City, no doubt influenced by the fact that my boyfriend, a Chicago native, had just dumped me and my job was so stressful it made me want to eat my own flesh. Having grown up in Calistoga, a sleepy spa town in Napa Valley, I was unprepared for Chicago's wilting summer humidity and lack of mountains. This last defect was not mitigated by the presence of Mount Trashmore, a former landfill covered in sod that served as a dubious winter playground for sled-toting neighborhood youngsters.
And so I went home to California, to the mixed blessings of the parental nest. The highlights of that nine-month phase included free room and board, approximately 7,000 games of Scrabble and exclusive use of the remote control after Mom and Dad began to snore in their armchairs. Determined to make up for lost time, I moved on to Palo Alto to take a job at Stanford. There I plunged headlong into what I hesitate to call "the dating scene," since the result was that I learned more than I cared to about the world unification potential of linux but little about romance.
Those moribund Silicon Valley suitors may have been part of the reason why, when the Chicago boyfriend begged my forgiveness and asked me to marry him, I considered his proposal. There was also the fact that I was still in love with him. What's more, my parents liked him, and so did my cat, and there was less than a 1 percent statistical possibility of their opinions lining up like that again.
But with the ring came the condition that we live in Chicago.
I weighed the drawbacks of returning to the city by the lake. First, the paucity of fresh, tasty Mexican food. (Even the bean burritos in Chicago have bones in them.) Second, the need to swaddle myself in woolens for half the year. Third, and most troubling, the midwestern landscape, which to my eye lacks the natural majesty of California's seascapes and lofty peaks.
On the other hand, going back would put an end to that late-afternoon farce known as "walking the Dish," wherein a friend and I would ascend the Foothills directly behind campus at a snail's pace, stopping at one-minute intervals to complain and retie our sneakers. Subsequent drinks at a local bar helped to relieve the pain in our tendons but canceled out much of the walk's pound-reduction benefits. With no hills in Chicago, I would not be expected to do much climbing and could move directly to the bar component of the evening.
Moreover, by returning to Chicago I would escape the most ridiculous housing market known to humankind--the housing market that compelled me to drive miles into the redwood hills along Skyline Boulevard in search of a rental that promised open space at a reasonable price. At the end of a rutted dirt road, I found two dilapidated geodesic domes. One featured a small bedroom and private bath for $900 a month ("house privileges" not included). The other was inhabited by a breeder of poisonous snakes.
I agonized over the marriage proposal, but in the end love won out and I went back to Chicago, grateful that I hadn't tossed out my winter coat and boots after the first try and determined to find a decent burrito.
Now, approximately eight months after my move, it's 20 degrees outside. After repeated snowstorms, residents are sparring over their carefully shoveled parking spots. My Christmas wish list consisted mainly of clothing designed for Antarctic expeditions.
But the train is warm, and my new downtown job is only a few minutes' walk from Union Station. Each day I cross over the Chicago River with the crowds of commuters and find myself a little more at peace with my adopted city. True, there are no mountains, but the city has some of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen, full of history and industry. And yes, there's no ocean, but when you can't see the other side of the lake, I guess that's good enough. And as for burritos, well, I've learned to make my own.
Heather Murphy, a former development writer at the Law School, now works for software company SPSS Inc.
