“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 nuts and plates of crackers and cheese my grandmother always lays out before Christmas dinner. The dinner before dinner, my father likes to say. My uncle, in his mid-50’s, has a large white beard and an even larger round belly. If he weren’t so grouchy, he could pass for a dressed-down Santa Clause.

“Too many goddamned taxes,” he says gruffly, “I thought Minnesota was bad, but we’ve got nothing on California.”

I don’t know what to say to this, so I just point outside, at the heavy piles of drifted snow and say, “Yeah, but we don’t have to deal with any of this.”

He laughs, “What, are you going soft now? Can’t handle a little snow? Tell me,” he pauses, taking a long drink from his third can of soda, “whaddathey got ya payin’ in rent?”

This is a valid question, considering I live in a 250 square foot studio with a sagging shower floor and a miniature oven that leaks propane. I sleep with…