“You need to get the hell outta California”

“You need to get the hell outta California,” my uncle tells me.

He’s joking, but he’s not. We’re standing in my grandparents’ small kitchen, in a single story, white-sided home in rural Northwestern Wisconsin. Their house is crowded this Christmas Eve, with aunts and uncles and cousins crowded onto the small loveseat, spilling over into the dining room, hands dipping into the bowls of…