(Illustration by Stripes Okinawa)
After 11 moves, our PCS days are over. My Navy-retired husband and I bought a drafty old money pit of a house on a speck of land in Rhode Island. We’re staying here forever.
Or, at least until we’re so ancient that our children move us into assisted living.
My own father reached that threshold recently. Last week, I flew to his newly-sold home in North Carolina to oversee his move to an assisted living facility. I’d expected a civilian move to be similar to a military PCS move, but it was very, very different.
While my father was in post-surgery rehab last week, I managed three phases of his “PCS” to Brookdale Senior Living Facility. First, I identified the items to be transported to my father’s apartment at Brookdale. Then, I marked the items to be sent to storage. Lastly, I hired a junk hauler to empty the house for the new owners.
“I want my treadmill. That thing is worth some money,” my father said.
“Dad, you can barely walk. You don’t need the treadmill — Brookdale has a nice physical therapy center,” I reasoned.
“You mean that place you’re sending me to, where my friends won’t visit me,” he moped.
“I want my gun cabinet put beside my —,“ he started, referring to his collection of rifles, shotguns and handguns.
“— Dad! You can’t bring guns to assisted living!”
“They don’t need to know,” he growled.
On the morning scheduled for packing, I expected a fleet of friendly women to show up to efficiently wrap and pack while chatting. But instead, only one woman arrived with a scowl on her weathered face, clearly annoyed.
“Well, uh, hello!” I stuttered, intimidated. “Help yourself to bottled waters and —.” Before I finished talking, she put in EarPods and turned away.
Other than her smoker’s cough, the packer moved around silently. When I encountered her in hallways, I laughed nervously and apologized for no reason. “Hee hee, I’m sorry you’re waiting for me to get out of your way,” I spluttered.
“I don’t wait for anyone,” she said without blinking.
After two days of packing, a young foreman and two crew arrived. The skinny crewman smelled of hard liquor from the previous night, and a chubby guy had the jacked-up teeth of a meth addict.
Despite my fears, the crew was quite convivial. In fact, they were so friendly, they frequently stopped to chat with anyone about anything and everything.
“Looky, one of them old-fashioned school desks,” the chubby guy said with a smile. “Take a guess how this works,” he quizzed his boss, who accepted the challenge. They stood discussing the mechanics of my father’s antique desk, while I calculated the exorbitant hourly rate the mover was charging.
“Sorry this isn’t much,” I said when the job was done, handing over a meager cash tip.
“Don’t be sorry. Nobody tips us. This’ll pay for drinks!” the skinny one grinned.
The junk hauler’s name was Nick, and I knew right away — Nick was shady. He came with a two-person crew, one of which was sometimes accompanied by his 9-year-old son. Nick frequently left, saying he’d be back in 20 minutes, only to be absent for hours. I was usually left with Gary, the crew member who, due to physical deformities that rendered one leg longer than the other and his neck unable to move, couldn’t lift anything over 20 pounds. Needless to say, the job Nick said would take less than one day, took three.
When the last trailer of junk left the premises, and I paid Nick via Zelle because he “needed the money right away,” I’d gained newfound respect for the military movers to whom we entrusted our worldly possessions over the course of 23 years of marriage.
As I stood in my father’s empty house, exhausted and lighter in ways I hadn’t expected, it dawned on me that military movers hadn’t just transported our furniture — they’d carried us through entire chapters of life with a level of competency I’d taken for granted. It’s a system that, for all its flaws, worked. After one civilian move, I’ll never complain about our military PCS moves again. Some lessons, like some moves, take a lifetime to unpack.
Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com
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