God is in the Details: Follow the Move Part 4

When you’re in the zone, the moving zone, you’re focused on the tasks at hand. 

Picking up school records. Check.

Picking up the last of the dry cleaning. Check.

Dropping off another round of donations. Check.

Getting the POA (Power of Attorney). Check.

Getting a specified POA for being able to pick up my (MY!) car. Check.

Wrapping those Yennies. Check. Taking them to the bank. Check.

Wrapping U.S. coins and taking them to the credit union. Check.

Picking up medical records – well sort of check – they will only send them to the next military medical facility that we will be attached to and it takes more than 4 weeks to catch up with us.

Picking up dental records. Check.

Picking up the last two of our five bikes that I dropped off for tune ups so they will be good to go at the other end. Check.

Garden tools and pots, emptied, scrubbed, dried. Check.

Grill cleaned. Propane detatched. Check.

Emptying all the food storage containers and cleaning them out. Check. (Thank goodness for my daughters helping hands on that task! Her brothers, who have managed to jet out of yet another move and are already stateside and they owe her big time).

There is more to moving than just having the packers show up and pack out your goods – as if that wasn’t enough – there are all the details that need to be taken care of, the ins and outs of what keeps a family running.

I try, very hard, during our moves to wrap up lose ends. To make my endless lists, stick my stickies around the house. Last week I was writing a note to myself on the back of my daughters Eight Grade Promotion exercise program – “contact USAA re: car insurance; contact AAA for Roadside Service.” My friend sitting next to me at the during the ceremony leaned over to see what I was writing, I’m sure wondering where was her ADD friends brain going to now?

“Oh” she said, “Can you write me a note too?”

She is very savvy about the Navy system. A former Navy Nurse, she is caring, calm, compassionate. Even though I’ve clocked in the hours with the dubious title of “spouse” that follows my name on all forms military, I have looked to her this go round for guidance on an overseas move. She and her active duty husband have done more than their fare share of moves and she certainly has the system down. Happy to offer this small gesture, I handed her a stickie the next time we were together with the “note-to-self” about the car.

I believe it’s the details of these moves that stresses me out. The fear that as we get ready to depart, we will encounter some sort of detail that dropped off our radar that will thwart our departure. Or worse that we’ll get to the other end and I won’t be able to: register my kids for school, accept our HHG (Household Goods) shipment, or our NTS (non-temporary storage) shipment, or ….

At some point I have to let it go – the move will be what it will be. The packers as my husband has so often said to me “are showing up whether you're ready or not.”

And so they have. I’m sitting at my computer – the computer I asked not to be packed away until the last possible second of day 2 of our pack out – with the sound of packing tape ripping through the air – trying hard to keep the PTSD urge to curl up in a ball on the sofa and throw a comfy blanket over my head at bay. I’ve been here before, different house, different location but same situation, the packers have arrived and will begin the deconstruction process. The prep work, the purging, the endless stickies, has come to an end. Now it’s time to release control and hope that in 8 weeks time we’ll see our possessions – in tact and the reconstruction phase, the putting a household back together again will begin once more.

Till next time …