Do you crave change and upheaval? Never knowing what’s next or where you’ll be in 2 years? Well then, let me tell ya…Military life is for you!
One of the most interesting and exciting (and annoying) parts of this lifestyle is the PCS. For those of you not privy to the ol’ lingo, a PCS is a “Permanent Change of Station,” which is fancy talk for “you’re moving again, solider!”
I myself have always found this to be a bit of a perk of military life because I hate being stagnant. I hate being tied down; hate getting too used to a particular routine. Now, I do like a good routine, which we’ve clearly discussed before, but I also like to change things up a bit before life gets stuck in what I have always considered to be the inevitable rut waiting just around the corner. So a little PCS every two or three years isn’t the worst thing to me. You meet new people and see great parts of the world. And people always have a new vacation spot to come visit you. (Side note: In the 21 years since leaving my parents’ house for college, I have lived in 14 different apartments/ houses. And that was well before J and I got hitched. I am no stranger to an ever-so-slightly nomadic lifestyle.)
Military spouses wear the number of PCSs they’ve endured like a badge of honor (for good reason—it’s a colossal pain in the ass.) I was at a change of command luncheon for military spouses not too long ago (yes, and that’s a story for another time) and one of the first biographical facts given to help us get to know the new General’s wife was that she had had to pack up her household goods and move 18 times over the last 24 years. Don’t remember her name or where she grew up or went to school, but God Bless the woman who’s had to pack out her house 18 times.
The good news about all this moving is that you get really good at boxing things up. And every couple of years, you get to do a substantial stuff purge: Stash the things away that you care about (read: reevaluate what it is you care about), and toss the things you don’t. Using this philosophy you would assume that J and I would have infinitely less stuff in our house than we do. Alas, we still have a metric ton of shit.
“Well, at least you don’t have to pack it yourselves!” is the recurring cry of all my non-military friends who always try to “glass-half-full” the constant moving process. And to some degree that is true. And it IS a good thing (Believe me, I’m not trying to wrap up all my dishes *again.* Ever.)
But let me tell you my friends, the pack-out process of your home is one of the most stressful parts of moving regardless of the fact that you’re not the one doing the packing. No, instead, you’re the one standing in the corner, trying not to get in the way, wondering why on earth they are putting three items from your bathroom, one from your bedroom, and one from your front lawn all in one box labeled “stuff from the rooms.” (Seriously, whomever it is teaching these folks packing and labeling skills has a sadistic as hell sense of humor.) No rhyme. No reason. And often handwriting and spelling are bad enough that they might as well have not labeled the boxes anyway.
This process is also never door-to-door, by the way (yeah, they don’t share that little tidbit very often…) Rather, a semi-truck that is half-full of other people’s things arrives at your house, they fill it up as best they can, realize that, like, two pieces of your furniture won’t fit, call a small moving van for those random things, and off drive(s) the truck(s) cross-country, without you, to a storage facility somewhere in the town to which you’re moving, to be unpacked unceremoniously with less rhyme and reason than when packed. And then you’re given a “target date” upon which a different team of movers goes back to the storage facility, puts your stuff in another random truck and it is delivered to your door, where you will be joyfully reunited with all your earthly belongings approximately 6 weeks after you have last seen them.
But let’s be honest. It never actually happens that way. That’s a pipe dream. It’s folly.
The target date is typically pretty right on, though never when you want it to be (What do you mean I’ll be living in an empty house sleeping on an air mattress and ordering take-out for three weeks before my stuff arrives? Didn’t you leave my house, like, a week before I did?) And then they show up with…meh…80% of your stuff? (Whoops, forgot those two pieces in the other truck…we’ll find them somewhere…) And without fail, one of your boxes fell off a truck somewhere in an Iowa cornfield never to be seen again. And at least one box *may* have been featured on Mythbusters in a “What happens when we drop this moving box from a helicopter from 100 feet in the air onto a bed of glass shards?” episode. And you’re definitely going to be missing one of the legs of your dining room table (THIS is one of the great mysteries of the world to me. I watched you take the table apart… You put all the legs in a pile together. You wrapped said legs. How did all the legs not get into the same box at the same time? Seriously…how does ONE LEG decide to just say “eff this noise, I’m going to live with a family in New Jersey!”?)
Anyway. All of this is by way of saying that SOMETIMES, you sorta wish you were the one doing the moving. You’ve got no control. And you have no idea where you stuff is, what your stuff is, or whether or not you’re ever seeing it again.
In our last house, we had a huge basement. It could have been livable if we really worked at it, but we didn’t need the space, and so it became storage by default. Like, whoa storage. I could not have told you what was down there any more than I could have recited Atlas Shrugged to you by memory. I had a vague sense that the basement was the black hole where things we weren’t using right now were living; things we needed to hold on to, for sure, but that we definitely weren’t touching on a daily basis. But I couldn’t have laid my hands on those things if you had paid me.
The basement then, was not a part of the pack out process that I supervised. I was upstairs trying to make sure that the mattresses were labeled “master bedroom mattresses” instead of “padded wall hangings from the hallway.” The basement was already an amalgam of random. Labeling it “basement stuff” was probably as close as we were going to get, and more accurate than any of the other labels in the house might be.
When we moved into our new house, all the “basement stuff” got dumped into the spare bedroom that we weren’t using. We likely didn’t use this stuff at the old house; it probably wasn’t necessary to open it immediately here either. And so there it has been sitting since April when we first descended upon this locale. Basement stuff in the guest bedroom.
Now that we’re closing in on D-day for 2.0 (how did I get to be 7 months pregnant already, by the way?) we figured that the we should start cleaning out the guest room, that sooner than later would become the nursery for Little Man. J took Ellie yesterday for a playdate while I was left with a large, unkempt room and the three traditional moving piles: Toss it; donate it; wrap it back up and save it for later.
I had been making solid progress with the room of random yesterday (and it was mostly all completely unnecessary stuff to donate or toss…) when I came upon a totally unmarked box. No real label. Just “basement stuff” written on the side.
I was unprepared for the contents.
When I opened it up, the first thing I opened was a box of correspondences from my wedding. Shower invitations; cards; gift tags; our save the date postcards and wedding bulletins; my bouquet of bows from my showers, and a list of all the people who had sent us well wishes along the way.
And then it was box of all the correspondences I had received when my mother passed away. Newspaper clippings and unexpected greetings from long-ago friends.
And three photo albums of my family from my youth that I haven’t looked at for ages.
And my birth announcements for Ellie, to include pictures and cards from my surprise baby shower. And a photo album that my father had secretly been putting together of every picture or note that I had sent to him about Eleanore.
And all of my father’s funeral documents. And pictures. Hand written notes to me from mom and dad.
And a box of mix tapes that were made for me from my best friend from high school and college, artifacts of my youth that were, for much of my formative years, my most prized possessions. (The stories those songs tell…)
And a copy of my dissertation that I had given my dad that he had hand written notes in the margins of. Questions for later.
Clearly, there was no way that the movers would have known that what they should have labeled this box was “Fragile. Open with Care. Your whole life is inside.”
As I dug, I just kept discovering more and more and more, and I found myself reduced to tears. So many amazing and wonderful and beautiful and heart-wrenching little items all in one box, the collective so overwhelming that I had to put the lid back on.
Physically, mentally and emotionally, I don’t think I’m quite ready to unpack that box just yet.
But I like knowing it’s there. And I like that my first memory of the new kid’s new room is that of overwhelming love and amazing good memories.
Someday, maybe after we’re done with the Army and we’re done with the moving for good, it will be time to open up the box again. And it is my hope that at that point, I’ll have even more amazing and loving memories to stash inside.
But I’ll need a bigger box. And I’ll probably just label it “Happy.”
One of the most interesting and exciting (and annoying) parts of this lifestyle is the PCS. For those of you not privy to the ol’ lingo, a PCS is a “Permanent Change of Station,” which is fancy talk for “you’re moving again, solider!”
I myself have always found this to be a bit of a perk of military life because I hate being stagnant. I hate being tied down; hate getting too used to a particular routine. Now, I do like a good routine, which we’ve clearly discussed before, but I also like to change things up a bit before life gets stuck in what I have always considered to be the inevitable rut waiting just around the corner. So a little PCS every two or three years isn’t the worst thing to me. You meet new people and see great parts of the world. And people always have a new vacation spot to come visit you. (Side note: In the 21 years since leaving my parents’ house for college, I have lived in 14 different apartments/ houses. And that was well before J and I got hitched. I am no stranger to an ever-so-slightly nomadic lifestyle.)
Military spouses wear the number of PCSs they’ve endured like a badge of honor (for good reason—it’s a colossal pain in the ass.) I was at a change of command luncheon for military spouses not too long ago (yes, and that’s a story for another time) and one of the first biographical facts given to help us get to know the new General’s wife was that she had had to pack up her household goods and move 18 times over the last 24 years. Don’t remember her name or where she grew up or went to school, but God Bless the woman who’s had to pack out her house 18 times.
The good news about all this moving is that you get really good at boxing things up. And every couple of years, you get to do a substantial stuff purge: Stash the things away that you care about (read: reevaluate what it is you care about), and toss the things you don’t. Using this philosophy you would assume that J and I would have infinitely less stuff in our house than we do. Alas, we still have a metric ton of shit.
“Well, at least you don’t have to pack it yourselves!” is the recurring cry of all my non-military friends who always try to “glass-half-full” the constant moving process. And to some degree that is true. And it IS a good thing (Believe me, I’m not trying to wrap up all my dishes *again.* Ever.)
But let me tell you my friends, the pack-out process of your home is one of the most stressful parts of moving regardless of the fact that you’re not the one doing the packing. No, instead, you’re the one standing in the corner, trying not to get in the way, wondering why on earth they are putting three items from your bathroom, one from your bedroom, and one from your front lawn all in one box labeled “stuff from the rooms.” (Seriously, whomever it is teaching these folks packing and labeling skills has a sadistic as hell sense of humor.) No rhyme. No reason. And often handwriting and spelling are bad enough that they might as well have not labeled the boxes anyway.
This process is also never door-to-door, by the way (yeah, they don’t share that little tidbit very often…) Rather, a semi-truck that is half-full of other people’s things arrives at your house, they fill it up as best they can, realize that, like, two pieces of your furniture won’t fit, call a small moving van for those random things, and off drive(s) the truck(s) cross-country, without you, to a storage facility somewhere in the town to which you’re moving, to be unpacked unceremoniously with less rhyme and reason than when packed. And then you’re given a “target date” upon which a different team of movers goes back to the storage facility, puts your stuff in another random truck and it is delivered to your door, where you will be joyfully reunited with all your earthly belongings approximately 6 weeks after you have last seen them.
But let’s be honest. It never actually happens that way. That’s a pipe dream. It’s folly.
The target date is typically pretty right on, though never when you want it to be (What do you mean I’ll be living in an empty house sleeping on an air mattress and ordering take-out for three weeks before my stuff arrives? Didn’t you leave my house, like, a week before I did?) And then they show up with…meh…80% of your stuff? (Whoops, forgot those two pieces in the other truck…we’ll find them somewhere…) And without fail, one of your boxes fell off a truck somewhere in an Iowa cornfield never to be seen again. And at least one box *may* have been featured on Mythbusters in a “What happens when we drop this moving box from a helicopter from 100 feet in the air onto a bed of glass shards?” episode. And you’re definitely going to be missing one of the legs of your dining room table (THIS is one of the great mysteries of the world to me. I watched you take the table apart… You put all the legs in a pile together. You wrapped said legs. How did all the legs not get into the same box at the same time? Seriously…how does ONE LEG decide to just say “eff this noise, I’m going to live with a family in New Jersey!”?)
Anyway. All of this is by way of saying that SOMETIMES, you sorta wish you were the one doing the moving. You’ve got no control. And you have no idea where you stuff is, what your stuff is, or whether or not you’re ever seeing it again.
In our last house, we had a huge basement. It could have been livable if we really worked at it, but we didn’t need the space, and so it became storage by default. Like, whoa storage. I could not have told you what was down there any more than I could have recited Atlas Shrugged to you by memory. I had a vague sense that the basement was the black hole where things we weren’t using right now were living; things we needed to hold on to, for sure, but that we definitely weren’t touching on a daily basis. But I couldn’t have laid my hands on those things if you had paid me.
The basement then, was not a part of the pack out process that I supervised. I was upstairs trying to make sure that the mattresses were labeled “master bedroom mattresses” instead of “padded wall hangings from the hallway.” The basement was already an amalgam of random. Labeling it “basement stuff” was probably as close as we were going to get, and more accurate than any of the other labels in the house might be.
When we moved into our new house, all the “basement stuff” got dumped into the spare bedroom that we weren’t using. We likely didn’t use this stuff at the old house; it probably wasn’t necessary to open it immediately here either. And so there it has been sitting since April when we first descended upon this locale. Basement stuff in the guest bedroom.
Now that we’re closing in on D-day for 2.0 (how did I get to be 7 months pregnant already, by the way?) we figured that the we should start cleaning out the guest room, that sooner than later would become the nursery for Little Man. J took Ellie yesterday for a playdate while I was left with a large, unkempt room and the three traditional moving piles: Toss it; donate it; wrap it back up and save it for later.
I had been making solid progress with the room of random yesterday (and it was mostly all completely unnecessary stuff to donate or toss…) when I came upon a totally unmarked box. No real label. Just “basement stuff” written on the side.
I was unprepared for the contents.
When I opened it up, the first thing I opened was a box of correspondences from my wedding. Shower invitations; cards; gift tags; our save the date postcards and wedding bulletins; my bouquet of bows from my showers, and a list of all the people who had sent us well wishes along the way.
And then it was box of all the correspondences I had received when my mother passed away. Newspaper clippings and unexpected greetings from long-ago friends.
And three photo albums of my family from my youth that I haven’t looked at for ages.
And my birth announcements for Ellie, to include pictures and cards from my surprise baby shower. And a photo album that my father had secretly been putting together of every picture or note that I had sent to him about Eleanore.
And all of my father’s funeral documents. And pictures. Hand written notes to me from mom and dad.
And a box of mix tapes that were made for me from my best friend from high school and college, artifacts of my youth that were, for much of my formative years, my most prized possessions. (The stories those songs tell…)
And a copy of my dissertation that I had given my dad that he had hand written notes in the margins of. Questions for later.
Clearly, there was no way that the movers would have known that what they should have labeled this box was “Fragile. Open with Care. Your whole life is inside.”
As I dug, I just kept discovering more and more and more, and I found myself reduced to tears. So many amazing and wonderful and beautiful and heart-wrenching little items all in one box, the collective so overwhelming that I had to put the lid back on.
Physically, mentally and emotionally, I don’t think I’m quite ready to unpack that box just yet.
But I like knowing it’s there. And I like that my first memory of the new kid’s new room is that of overwhelming love and amazing good memories.
Someday, maybe after we’re done with the Army and we’re done with the moving for good, it will be time to open up the box again. And it is my hope that at that point, I’ll have even more amazing and loving memories to stash inside.
But I’ll need a bigger box. And I’ll probably just label it “Happy.”
