Bringing Our Life to Bozeman

When I was young, and let’s be honest, for most of my life, I was a California girl through and through.  I loved everything about it.  Actually, if I’m being honest, I was verging on being smug about being from the Golden State.  I remember thinking very frequently that I would never leave.  After all, the dream was always to leave your small farm town in the Midwest to make it in sunny California.  How could I give that up?  Not that anyone was asking me to give it up but, boy was I firm in my resolve.  That was, until we accidentally moved to Montana. 

As is well established, my family is gone.  Both of my parents died before Atty was much older than two.  I certainly had not planned on raising a family without the presence of my parents, but the universe had other plans.  So, we began to create our little family without the people I had wanted, and expected, to have as my support system.  This is not to say that we didn’t have support.  We had my best friends, and Trav’s family for much of the year.  But still, I felt the isolation of my idealization of my parenting life.  And then, we came to Bozeman for Haleryn’s wedding.  For the first time we felt the support and excitement that we had wanted for our growing family.  An idea that we never thought we would consider began to bloom.  We, the tried-and-true Californians, began to debate the idea of a maybe, potential move to Big Sky country.

The plan was fortuitously hatched.  At that time, Trav was working at Charles Schwab and had been for five years.  At Schwab, every five years working with the company, you are granted a month-long sabbatical.  At this point, he had just earned his free month and we decided to seize the opportunity to test out our potential life change.  We booked a month-long trip to Bozeman and began to prepare for the trial run.  We were to stay in the little house that Haleryn had purchased, when she herself had moved to Montana, and the family was excitedly getting it for our arrival.  Furniture was purchased and set up.  A trampoline was going to go into the little backyard.  The house was cleaned from corner to corner.  It was ready and waiting for our family to experience Montana.  We were to leave on the 16th of March, 2020. (Actually, we were going to take a family trip to Disneyland first and then head across the country.)

As our trip became closer and closer, the story of a strange virus originating in China reached us. First it was only snippets that patrons calling to buy tickets for shows at Lucky Penny (my home theatre) were telling me; reasons they were cancelling their trips to Asia. Then it was this virus had now reached the US and that it was far more serious than any of us had thought. A week before our trip, the situation became such that, after a long and disappointing discussion, the family decided that the only option was to cancel the Disneyland portion of the trip. Which we did, and the day after doing so, Disneyland officially closed its gates for the first time in my entire life. It became very obvious that this COVID-19 was a much scarier thing than we all had initially thought. Despite the fact that I was absolutely terrified of the whole situation, we decided that the best course of action would be to make the cross-country trek to the family that we knew were waiting for us. We packed up my big ole mom car and the day they issued the shelter in place order in CA, we drove out of our home state not to return for seven months.

I firmly believe that there was not a better decision for us to have made.  We arrived on the 18th to the sweet little house all ready for us, and the open arms of our family.  And we spent not only a month, but many months, sheltering with exactly the right people.  As I’m sure everyone remembers, the beginning of the pandemic was isolating, and stressful, and completely confusing.  Most people I knew were home with only their immediate families for company, confined to their own backyards and not much else.  By coming here, we were able to form a pod that was absolutely lifesaving.  We spent all of our time with Kristen, and Haleryn and her family.  This meant that Atty had a consistent playmate in Morgan, Hal’s stepson.  We had support when Trav went back to work, and I had to become Atty’s in person Kindergarten teacher.  We were able to spend time at Hal’s house, and even better up at the family ranch.  We had space and camaraderie, and the gratitude I have for that during that wildly frightening time is infinite.

Before I was ready for it, Trav’s sabbatical came to an end, and we were faced with a difficult situation.  Covid was still raging across the world and the idea of driving back to California where the number of infections and deaths were skyrocketing was absolutely the worst thing I could think of.  I begged him to let us stay so, he reached out to work and bravely asked them that if everyone was still working from home why not allow him to continue to “work from home” in this little Bozeman home.  To our surprise, they agreed!  Their only stipulation was, once the employees returned to office he needed to come back to the state.  And the deal was done.  We were to stay.  I was thrilled and we spent the rest of the spring and summer in our little downtown home, playing in the park in the neighborhood, taking endless walks, watching the new townhouses down the street being built, baking tons of goodies and eating a million popsicles.  It was the best possible way to spend the early days of the pandemic.

The months flew by, I blinked and it was late August.  Trav had still not been summoned home and we had a decision to make.  We were going to go home to let Atty go back to school?  We had made a life here.  It was now our new normal.  We had, for all intents and purposes, moved to Montana without really intending or making the decision to.  We were no longer Californians. We were now Montanans and to was time to make the move official. Atty was enrolled at the Backyard Learning Project, the most wonderful pod school lead by Haleryn.  We took ourselves up to live on the ranch to accommodate this exceptional school and quickly realized that now that we had made the decision, we wanted to put down out Montana roots as quickly as we could.  After all, we had been living here for six whole months at this point.  We found the best realtor ever and ended up buying a house three doors down from her.  Then it was finally time to make our way back to our former home to pack and officially leave California behind.

The strange thing about our “move” is it just felt like we came here and never left.  And more than that, we came here completely sheltered, unable to experience or start creating the life we wanted to in Bozeman.  For a very long time, it felt very nebulous, like the move wasn’t actually real.  To top it off, we didn’t tell very many people that we had actually moved so, for most people outside of our closest circle, we still lived in California.  This has continued for the almost two years that we have lived here.  Until recently I even received audition notices from theatres I had love to work at in the North Bay.  Needless to say, the “move” still felt like our permanent vacation that we had decided to take in March of 2020.  And yet, with the advent of 2022, and the relief of having had and recovered from Covid, our options have begun to open up.  I am now involved with as much theater as my schedule will allow with four kids and a husband. Atticus is no longer wearing masks at school and is signed up for several summer camps. Jasper is having regular playdates with his own buddies, and the girls have even been out in the world.  We have finally started going to restaurants, and even date nights and I went to see the newest Spiderman IN THE THEATRE for my birthday.  So, it only took almost two and half years but our roots in Bozeman are finally twisting into the earth here and this California girl is becoming a Big Sky woman.