Monthly Archives: April 2009

The future is called “perhaps,” which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the only important thing is not to allow that to scare you.
~Tennessee Williams, Orpheus Descending, 1957

As I sit on a mound of dog beds here in a bare room with our three dogs as company, I can hear strangers in my house.  These strangers have been invading our life and going through our things since 8:30 this morning. They know way too much about us… what we like to eat, what we do in our spare time, the types of foods we cook and even what type of underwear I prefer.

They are the movers. The people who are systematically going through our things and packing them away never to be seen until… well, I don’t know.  That’ll depend on the Michigan housing market and the Washington state job market. This is the “perhaps” future Tennessee Williams was talking about.  Unfortunately, it does scare me.

I’ve never moved like this before… with all the uncertainty. I moved with my family when I was 15 to a bigger city and sure, there was definitely uncertainty there, but I was with my family. And they were a sure thing.

Then I moved away to college and while there was uncertainty there, too, there was a lot of excitement. I was, for the first time, considered a grown-up and boy was I excited to start college. And then there were the two other times I moved in college, but they were just for better apartments. Nothing uncertain about that.

The next time I moved, it was 45 minutes away, but I moved because I had graduated college four months prior and had been working at my new job for a month and needed to be closer. There was definitely excitement about being “on my own” completely and being part of the adult working world. The next move would be to leave my roommate and rent a townhouse on my own so I had lots of space.

And from there, 3 1/2 years ago, I bought my own house. While there was the uncertainty that every first time home owner faces, my life wasn’t uncertain. I’d been at my job for more than six months and had no plans of going anywhere anytime soon.

But I also didn’t have plans to meet an active duty Sailor just less than a year later. And I definitely didn’t have plans to marry the said Sailor a year and a half after that.

But here we are. And here I am. Sitting in a room and watching the dogs occasionally get up to pace because their routine has been unsettled. Every once in a while, Skah is waking up to growl at the door. He’s doing it in his sleep, but at 15 months old, I think his natural guarding instincts are kicking in. I don’t think he likes the fact that there are strange men in the house and he’s trying to protect me. The cats are remarkably quiet in the other room, but I think that’s because they don’t like strangers in their house, either, and are hiding.

Every once in a while I have to blink back the tears that are coming from a mixture of the unknown, nostalgia and the sadness that has been looming over me because of Huzzy’s impending departure without me. I know it’s the lot of a Navy wife, but this is a different sort of separation. With a deployment, I’ll have a relatively good idea of when to expect him back. With our situation, I have no idea when we’ll be able to live together again. Probably the day after he deploys on a four month mission. That would be my luck.

And it’s tough here. No one really understands what I’m going through. There are really no other military families in the area so it’s not like there’s a lot of support. Sure, I have the support of my family and friends, but they don’t understand. Not one iota. And only two people know of my situation at work. My supervisor and my maid of honor… who is a co-worker. So no one understands the stress I’m going through at the moment. And they won’t know until it’s time to leave.

Though I told my supervisor because she directly asked me when Huzzy was leaving, I don’t want to lose my job in this economy, so no one else can know. My supevisor is being great and even said she’d be reference for me for jobs in Washington. But that still puts both of us in a bad situation–her knowing about my leaving and me having to tell someone at work–and that’s not fair for either of us.

Tomorrow, the movers will return to finish their job and take all the boxes they packed today and put them on the truck bound for Washington and for a storage unit somewhere.