Sure, Livermore has a paper
– two, in fact, but they cover several cities sketchily rather
than one well.
Two years ago March, my husband slumped on the couch and glowered at me from under his eyebrows. “The company is moving to Livermore,” he said.
“Well,” I replied, “In one more year, as soon as our daughter goes off to college, we can move to Livermore.”
My husband sat up. His eyes shone. He touched my hand.
“You’d move to Livermore for me?”
It has been two years, not one: two years of a brutal commute for my husband, two years of getting the house in order, selling it, moving furniture, and saying mental goodbyes for me. Last fall I raked the last leaves from my mulberry. This spring I cut the last irises. This month I harvested the last apricots. This is the last column, my last farewell.
I led a wandering, peripatetic childhood and early adulthood, living in 15 different places in my first 24 years. But for the past 21 years, we have lived in the same house in Gilroy, and I am going to miss it.
We have raised our kids here. They grew up climbing these trees and digging for treasure in this backyard, playing soccer in Orchard Valley Youth Soccer League, exploring Uvas Creek, delivering the Dispatch, working at Bonfante Gardens and the Outlets. Their heights were marked annually on the back bathroom door jamb. Now their heights are covered over by a fresh layer of paint, their childhoods are neatly boxed up in storage. I hope the new owners have as much joy raising their children in that house as we did.
I will miss my friends: my church friends at Trinity and the dispersed remnant of Gilroy Bible Church. I will miss my homeschooling friends, with whom I shared the great adventure of educating our own, supporting each other when our various kids stalled or sulked, and rejoicing when they succeeded.
I will miss my neighbors, past and present: Jennie, the world’s best neighbor, Bill who gives me oranges, Mary who sits my dog, Alexia and Aliya who brighten my days by asking politely if they can pick my flowers, Frankie and Isaac who helped me load the truck for the last dump run.
I will miss my morning walks with Debbie along the quiet streets of Gilroy, admiring the gardens and sunrises, stopping always for cappuccinos served with wit and good cheer by Karen Covington at Sue’s. I will miss hiking up Sprig Lake Trail, looping around the Valley View campsites and down Contour Trail. In March, we see fungi and California newts; in June, we enjoy columbines and lupine. Always, we are treated to redwoods and tan oaks and bay laurel, and the long vista across the valley to Hollister hills.
I will miss the Dispatch. Sure, Livermore has a paper – two, in fact, but they cover several cities sketchily rather than one well.
Long ago, before I started writing this column, I attended a school board meeting where, late in the evening, then-superintendent Ken Noonan made an ill-advised remark. He then scanned the audience and inquired, “Has that damned reporter from the Dispatch gone home yet?”
This is the proper function of the local press: to be that damned reporter, to observe, to report, to criticize, to publish, to blare, to expose every governmental folly and indiscretion to the harsh glare of public scrutiny. There can be no democracy when the public has no knowledge of how the public sector is conducting its business.
Acquaintances ask if I will still write my Gilroy columns from Livermore. No. I have always despised the people who move away but continue to write from other cities and states. Why should they weigh in on the issues, when they will not be suffering under the policies they push?
Then they ask whether I will write columns in Livermore. I doubt it. There is exactly one thing I am looking forward to in moving. I am tired of being recognized in Nob Hill and the post office as that notorious right-wing columnist. Even when the recognizer likes my columns, it is embarrassing. When they hate my columns, it is downright uncomfortable.
Anonymity, sweet anonymity, is the silver lining on this dark cloud of moving.
Cynthia Anne Walker is a homeschooling mother of three and former engineer. She is a published, independent author. We bid her a fond farewell after this, her last column for The Dispatch.
