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Last week when I visited the assisted-living residents at a retirement home where I volunteer here in Missoula, I was afraid to answer their question, “Where are you from?”

I took a deep breath and cringed as I told them, at which point one piped up and the others unanimously agreed, “What difference does that make?” I loosened in their gracious acceptance and exchanged stories of background and belief.

When I was a young girl, at bedtime my grandfather would tell me stories of the ranch he built and labored on for his family during the Depression, of the hardships he endured while putting himself through law school so that he could one day fight for water rights in Los Angeles. Born and raised a third-generation Southern Californian, I was one of the rare citizens of the City of the Angels who sprouted from roots.

When I was packing up the beloved family home, the only one for miles that hadn’t been remodeled seven times since construction, to move to Missoula, half-century-old but cosmetic-surgery-young friends were astonished, angry, confused.

“Is there anything you will miss about Southern California?” they asked, their voices raised in exasperation.

“Only what I already miss,” was my reply.

The place had become a hopeless fantasyland, layer upon layer of lascivious luxury n everything from glittering automobiles to trendy tennis shoes. Nothing aside from memories of childhood was worth remembering or passing forward. The climate, even if never the weather, had sadly changed.

I emptied my cupboards, divided among family and friends who loved him the handmade furniture my father had built with his own two hands for nearly a century, and drove out the driveway in search of a place where I wouldn’t be judged by the tone of my tan or the designer label on my jeans.

I had struggled as a single mother to raise my two daughters in an unconscionable environment of excess and conspicuous consumption, where birthday parties resembled movie-star weddings with helicopters and celebrity guests. All three of us had been victims of abuse at the hand of their father, my ex-husband, but I somehow managed to get us away from him. In Los Angeles, I channeled my awkward intellectual curiosity by working at the Los Angeles Times. In Orange County, I taught high school literature and journalism. Summers found me behind the counter of a small grocery store, working my way into the office where I kept the accounting books.

I sent the girls to college on merit scholarships. Gratefully, they have secured jobs in Arizona and New York. One is a teacher, the other ensconced in a nonprofit organization. They report to me that they constantly battle the “Southern California Prejudice,” as they call it. “It’s odd to be so looked down upon,” they say. “We dare not whisper from where we came.”

When first I moved to Missoula, I was admonished by many to do the same.

“Whatever you do, don’t tell them you are from California!” people warned, as if, were the truth set free, I would be placed in stocks at the Carousel in Caras Park.

At first, I was wary. Then I met so many people here who hailed from every part of America that I loosened my tight grip on the secret story of my birth. Soon, I was embraced by citizens not only from other parts of the country, but those who had been born and raised and lived and labored in Missoula. Home, again.

“You can reinvent yourself!” remarked one old friend from California as an idea for how I might survive what she considered such a bold move. I listened to her Hollywood script for me, starring some rhinestone cowgirl n just another false image.

“Better yet,” I replied, “I can just be myself.”

Ah, Missoula! A breath of fresh air both literally and figuratively! When I write about the good life here, it is because, at last, it is.

Missoula is a melting pot of dedicated survivors from all over the country. They work day after day to support families and farms. They are emblematic of the America that embraces all creeds, colors, origins and ages n even those who have retired here to call this place home.

Kathleen Clary Miller is a writer who lives in Huson. Her column appears every other Friday on the Missoulian’s Opinion page.

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