Our Stories: Ashley-Michelle Papon
Despite Trials, Adopted City Promotes Gratitude
When I moved to Chico seven years ago, the last emotion I ever expected to experience was gratitude. I had spent the previous three years living in Santa Rosa, enjoying the balmy summers, easy transportation to the beach, and winters so cold that if I closed my eyes and held my breath, I could pretend I was back in my native suburb of Kansas City. Chico, with its excruciating summer heat and small-town feel, really intimidated me, especially as I had no readily available support system. Our comfortable townhome with a cottage backyard had to be traded in for a three-bedroom flat, where none of our neighbors stayed for more than six months at a time. Adding insult to injury, I was forced to leave behind my dream job at a freestanding, midwifery-owned birth center while also knowing that the move granted my husband a step up the ladder in his legal career. I should have hated Chico, but much to my surprise, I gradually grew to love the quirks that gave rise to the tongue-in-cheek, unofficial motto: keep Chico weird.
Well, as it turns out, I am definitely weird. There is no punchline there, other than mentioning that I once lived in a small Missouri town named Peculiar, and that I seem to have taken that as a call to action. Dare to be different, right? Beyond getting an easy chuckle in, I mention my time in Peculiar because as a bright-eyed teenager, I had no idea how to transition from a sprawling metropolis with a church and a Starbucks on every corner to a town with a population that could be dwarfed by the incoming freshman class at Chico State. I felt overwhelmed by Peculiar’s slow pace, in contrast to the bustling night life of brews, blues, and barbeques around Kansas City. Relocating to Chico almost a decade later, I dreaded the possible repeat of my experiences living in Peculiar.
At the same time, I found a lot of neutral spaces that allowed me to meet with people while also giving my kids the freedom to explore their new surroundings. We did rounds of Mommy and Me meet-ups at In Motion Fitness, hosted playdates at the now-gone play station at the mall, and spent hours chasing tadpoles in the waterbeds of Five Mile. These were all smart moves designed to help my children integrate into their new community, but it also benefitted me. I had built up a great support system with the other parents, people that I had come to regard as friends independent of the relationship between our kids. Two years after coming to Chico, my youngest child started kindergarten. I realized my interests had similarly shifted; I wanted to be involved with this community beyond simply participating in parenting the next generation.
While I had always maintained a semi-successful side career as a freelance writer and educator, my husband’s demanding schedule as a rising star in the legal community did not leave much wiggle room for me to adopt a more traditional nine-to-five. I decided forming friendships outside of my parenting circles was the best way forward. Much to my surprise, Chico offered as many options for parents seeking fulfillment sans bundles of joy as they did playgroups and pub crawls. Eventually, these connections brought me into contact with people who shared my values, especially through volunteering with creek clean-ups, the unhoused, and other outreach opportunities.
If I were a writer with talent matching Elizabeth Gilbert, this would serve as my Eat, Pray, Love moment. Instead, my experience volunteering with Safe Space during the unforgiving winter months often left my ungloved fingers trembling with cold as I sat with one vulnerable person after another, hearing their stories and receiving glimpses into the person hidden away inside. Those experiences forged true fellowship for me, and gradually influenced how I regarded Chico as not just any city, but rather, as my city, and with it, the responsibility to be part of the change. In fact, it was at the urging of a Safe Space board member that I began pursuing employment options that involved social work, an area in which he professionally opined that I was “a natural.” This gamble paid off with a job that I find to be every bit as fulfilling at the one I left behind in Santa Rosa.
It also shifted my mindset towards embracing Chico, and everything it has to offer. In the last few years, the timbre and tone of Chico has certainly turned, and not entirely for the better. The pessimistic paradigm is one I know well; I often remark that every silver lining has a thunderstorm closing in. As someone who tends to live in their head too much, I know firsthand how focusing on the negative with a particularly cynical lens is arguably the path of least resistance. After all, it is easy to fixate on flaws when that is all one seeks out. But somewhere between my first year in Chico and the present, I have come to value zeroing in on the gift that it is to live in Chico. Viktor Frankl, a neurologist and psychiatrist who famously penned the motivational memoir Man’s Search for Meaning after surviving four different Nazi concentration camps, argued, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
My wake-up call for change came with the Camp Fire. I, along with countless other renters, had to make the choice between buying a home I did not want, or become homeless. The tension and duplicity that defined that experience, as well as those of so many others in the same boat at that time, left me deeply shaken about Chico’s moral compass. What happened to so many of us during the homebuying game in the wake of Camp remains unconscionable, particularly as local policymakers have done comparatively little to ensure that there is no next time. Meanwhile, the pandemic rages on, creating an even more elevated level of crisis in the area of housing within our city limits. The time to act is now; a recent report by VICE predicts that as many as 40 million Americans could be facing eviction before the close of 2020.
In short, there is still a lot to be angry about, as our community remains hurting. Yet even in the hurt, there is room for healing. I learned to practice radical acceptance, making peace with my own experience by noticing the silver linings. In my backyard, dotting the wraparound patio that connects the living room to my master bedroom, there are a dozen rose bushes, all of which are around four feet tall. When they bloom, a veritable rainbow is evident from one corner of my house to the other. There are thorns, but the thorns make the bouquet of colors ranging from ivory to carnation, scarlet to meadowlark, well-worth that occasional sting. The roses were part of what made me want to rent this home in the first place.
This life as I know it would never have been possible without Chico, and I will be forever grateful for the joy that is living here and now.
