Year Two from 12/28/1983 – 12/28/1984
New House
During our second year of marriage, I taught science and yearbook, the latter class actually used my photography skills, and Dale taught science and choir, which included an entire football section of tenors and basses, large Samoan boys who liked to wear their lava-lavas to school. We lived in a wonderful, old Craftsman style home on Pine St., where yearbook spreadsheets littered our living room floor, which is just as well, since the carpet was a hideous shade of olive-green. Each night, I brought home mock-ups of our yearbook, with photos glued in place and typing in columns dotted with “White-Out,” since both school and yearbook company had yet to convert to technology. I decompressed with afternoon runs through Asilomar and along 17 Mile Drive–relishing the thought that I was no longer in Los Angeles. Dale contemplated golf, as golf courses with $300 playing fees surrounded us. What a dream. We planted a pear tree and delighted in the first fruits that spring. We watched the “butterfly parade” pass by our house and helped a frantic little boy in need of a bathroom before he marched. In evenings, we strolled to town, a few blocks away for coffee at the bookstore. We woke to a drunk peeing on our African violets at two in the morning.
Our tiny house was directly across the street from the elementary school. Two bedrooms, one bathroom worked for two people, and the empty lot next door fueled our dreams of owning it. It would be perfect; we could fix the steps, rip out the carpeting, add-on to the existing split-level. Our future children could run out the door to classes and not be late. But it was not to be, the owner in San Francisco was not interested in selling. We channeled our search to areas we could afford, such as Prunedale. There, we found a home on a hill with a view to the bay, three bedrooms, two baths on an acre of land, then interest rates climbed to 18% by the end of escrow. We backed out on the last day, ruefully realizing another lost dream. We finally settled a few months later in a new development on Stevenson St. Our new home was a blank canvas; we perused catalogs picking colors and carpet and tile. We photographed every stage of construction from framing to wiring to stuccoing.
During this same year, I worked as the liaison with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I watched more construction as workers installed the behemoth filters below the tanks, barely clearing the ceiling by an inch. As a docent during the November opening weekend, following publicity by Sunset magazine, thousands of people paraded through. I recall people pointing at fish asking what they were, but I had no way of seeing what anyone was pointing to. I saw only a sea of heads in front of the tank. In the meantime, Dale spent his “extra hours” studying second year calculus at the Naval Postgraduate School, a requirement for a bachelors degree in computer science. This was a hectic but exciting time in our lives.
Love is Complicated 