In mid-June, as I finished my fourth tour, my husband V and I took a quick weekend trip to South Carolina. The occasion was an engagement party for my eldest stepdaughter A, who in April had become engaged to her longtime partner B. The following weekend, seizing likely my last opportunity for the foreseeable future to visit the west coast, I flew out and spent two weeks with my parents. I’d worked out the leave before my training schedule began in earnest by offering to stay in Children’s Issues an extra six weeks to cover a staffing gap, provided I could take time off at the end.
The subtext of both trips felt a little “last hurrah.” Obviously not in the sense I wouldn’t see family again, but because I was preparing to buckle down into more than a year of full-time, in-person pre-departure training at the Foreign Service Institute. Taking leave during training usually isn’t feasible, particularly as I was starting the first couple months of my schedule with a series of short classes I needed to attend each day of. Unless I potentially tacked leave on to Christmas when FSI was closed or a rest stop during my PCS to Asia itself, outside of holiday weekends I would be unlikely to get back to the west coast before heading to my next tour in Burma.
I had envisioned my recent travels as vacation and relaxing family time, but predictably, they passed in a blur. While I was still the master of my own schedule and had a lot of fun, the past month didn’t exactly feel like down time. As my flexibility to be outside of Washington dwindled, I wondered if my trips were the calm before the storm, or the storm before the calm.
With only two days left in my Children’s Issues tour, a quick weekend out of town and 18 hours of round-trip driving between Virginia and South Carolina felt a little grueling. But it was totally worth it.
V and I didn’t get into his daughters’ hometown until midnight the night before due to various Friday afternoon consternations. We traveled Macedonian-style: with a full car! We brought a couple cases of champagne and Prosecco, several pounds of meat to grill, and a variety of things to loan the party – tiered stands and a glass water dispenser, cheese knives and trays and baskets and vases and our large aluminum champagne bucket. We even brought a large American flag at A’s request for her photo booth.
The party was outdoors and may have been the most humid place on earth. Or, at least it felt that way to this west coaster! It was the first time in some years that I’d seen much of my stepdaughters’ family on their mother’s side, and it was a good chance to meet a lot of the couple’s friends too.
V and I worked hard helping to set up and take down, and celebrated by taking ourselves out to a nice dinner while the young people carried on with their evening plans. We met the following morning to have a Father’s Day brunch with the couple and their friends before everyone blew out of town. I was glad A had reserved that time for her dad and we had a good time. It was a really pleasant if quick weekend – another reminder of how it’s possible for us to be present for family events while we’re stateside vs. overseas.
When I returned home, my week was anything but routine. I only had Monday and Tuesday left to work in Children’s Issues. Then I had one day off (because Wednesday was the Juneteenth federal holiday) to cram in three scheduled doctor’s appointments and take V for a procedure. Thursday and Friday I was back in DC for a two-day training (which I’ll write about separately) before I went to Dulles on Saturday and flew to my dad’s.
That nonstop flight started off a little rough with screaming twins seated next to me, and a two-hour takeoff delay. I felt jangled as I landed in Portland, OR and picked up my rental car. I still had a 90-minute drive to my dad’s in coastal Washington. I felt calm and peace coming back as I made my way up the familiar Highway 4 in a rented Ford Explorer. If there’s something I’ve done a lot in the past two years, it’s drive that highway – often in my own car! I made it shortly before midnight as a soft rain began to fall.
While at my dad’s, we began the difficult task of cleaning out my stepmom’s closet. My stepmom L died of pancreatic cancer last November and left behind a significant number of possessions – something difficult for my dad to manage on his own, both in an emotional and a practical sense. He had donated most of her shoes to a church mission and bundled up around 75 of her purses before I arrived, but there was still the master closet, fully-occupied guest room closet, and coat closet full of her garments.
I went through the process of inspecting, washing, and folding up as many garments as I could, throwing out a couple of garbage bags’ worth of whatever couldn’t be mended or stain-treated. I pulled out anything I liked or thought my sister-in-law might like. My stepbrother B and his daughter A, who’s getting ready to start her sophomore year of high school this fall, came for a few days of my nine-day visit. A and me attacked an armoire chock full of L’s clothes to create some more space for my dad to eliminate or repurpose furniture.
Some of the armoire clothing items for me were the most difficult; I could tell my dad had unpacked the suitcase from L’s hospice home stay right into that wardrobe. Unearthing the stacked items was like an archaeological survey back to last fall; all the socks and hats and pajamas I’d originally packed into L’s suitcase when she and my dad moved to the home were still grouped together, bearing silent witness to the loss.
In the end, I managed to donate about a dozen paper grocery bags and several boxes in varying sizes full of neatly-folded, clean clothes to two different thrift stores plus St. Vincent de Paul charity. I also removed several dozen purses from the house and made a list of all the local places accepting women’s clothes for my dad to follow up on the rest.
My dad was happy that – in addition to the half-dozen sweaters I drove away with last fall – this time I took two of L’s suitcases and several more items of her summer clothing and toiletries. I also took back the vegan vanilla protein powder I’d left there before, and that made me feel sad; I remembered trying to sneak it into as much of her food as possible since she’d started her liquid diet in summer 2023. But she’d always tasted it and complained – except for in my 600-calorie, 28-gram-of-protein milkshakes I got very successful at convincing her to drink because she thought she was getting away with something sweet.
When we weren’t working in the house, my dad and I went for lots of walks in the surrounding area. My dad has been wearing the Fitbit I gave him and racking up over five miles most days. He showed me a new road I didn’t know about and we went there almost every day. We also went to the river in his backyard, but I was the only one brave (crazy?) enough to jump into the utterly frigid water. My dad and A were in disbelief that I stayed in for almost half an hour.
We also entertained ourselves playing video poker at the some of the local casinos and took a road trip down through Oregon. My dad came with me the rest of the way to northern California where he donated more than a dozen crates of L’s seasonal decor to the fire department auxiliary thrift shop where my mom volunteers.
It was incredibly hot in my hometown; the entire time I was in California, temperatures exceeded 100 degrees. It was too hot to go hiking and my mom didn’t want to go out to the river, so we spent most of our time indoors hiding from the heat. There was also a large forest fire an hour away that changed some of our plans.
I did get to see my niece and a few friends, and eat lots of good Mexican food, but mostly people were just laying low due to the heat. There were a couple important family members I did not get to see due to medical issues for them, and that was a little disappointing for me.
My last day – Saturday – was the hottest day, and I spent six hours volunteering with my mom at the local library’s monthly book sale before heading to the airport in Sacramento to catch my flight home.
Fortunately for me, my red-eye flight back east was a lot quieter and more timely than my flight west had been. On Sunday as I went about napping, unpacking, and errands, I decided my travels were indeed the storm before the calm. Then Monday morning arrived and a new era of my time in the Department began…
Collecting Postcards 
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