The past month has been characterized by a lot of movement. Just how much movement has taken place at any given moment is difficult to see (and perhaps even harder to grasp) without placing it within the broader context of an international move.
Unlike my time in Rangoon, when I’m in the United States, I blend in. Or at least, I appear to, until someone scratches the surface by asking me an impossible question like “Where are you coming from?” or “What’s your billing zip code?” Suddenly, any illusions about belonging and being settled start to unravel.
There are relatively few people who understand the peculiar dislocation of a Permanent Change of Station (PCS) move, or how profoundly it can upend a life in ways both enormous and absurdly small.
It’s not just the boxes, the temporary housing, the paperwork, and everything you own being somewhere where you can’t find it; it’s the strange feeling of having a life that is technically in one place while everything about it remains in transit. Even the simplest questions can become complicated when “home” feels nebulous and “in-between.”
It’s easy and wonderful and fortunate to come home to the States and eat all the things and buy all the things and speak English. I know how to navigate this life at an expert level. It’s finally hitting the easy button after years overseas, with downsides: living out of bags and watching your mail ricochet around the world and complaining about being neither here nor there.
There is a comfortability that exists alongside a dislocation of identity in this lifestyle and it’s hard to put my finger on it or articulate it as precisely as I’d like. Sometimes I can’t tell if I am othering myself or whether I am simply being othered by the circumstances of a life that doesn’t fit neatly into the categories most people take for granted.
During the happy chaos of home leave, I often yearn to have a home somewhere, so I could empty three different storage allotments and organize all my personal and household items inside. What’s the point of working so hard to upgrade your lifestyle when you never know where your blender or your iron or your sweaters are?
And then I remind myself that all the unforgettable experiences this career and lifestyle offers are my trade-off for the inconveniences, for now. I know I would settle into a place stateside and within a year feel the itch for a life less… settled.
During the third week of August, I started a cross-country road trip, leaving my dad’s in Washington state and heading down through Oregon to California to visit my mom’s side of the family. I spent about a week, mostly hanging out with my mom and brother, before setting across the country with a fully loaded car for Virginia. I needed to be back east by a certain date to attend doctor’s appointments scheduled in the narrow window before full-time Bosnian language began.
Because I was traveling with all my luggage I’d flown with from Burma, in addition to items I stored during my Burma tour at each of my parent’s houses and items I was trying to keep or donate from my deceased stepmother’s estate, my car was very full.
I’ve taken 11 cross-country trips previously (and 10 solo), and chronicled extensively my approach to road trips and how many miles I do in a day. Driving 14 hour days, day after day, over 800 or even 900 miles at a stretch, has been my normal.
But this wasn’t that kind of trip, finally; I took things a bit more slowly. It was kind of a pain because I needed to haul all my valuables into the room each night from my car to deter a break-in.
The first day of the trip I drove from California to the Nevada-Utah stateline. The second day I stopped in Grand Junction, Colorado, where I actually spent two nights — a first for me. The fourth day I hiked the Colorado National Monument before heading to Kansas for the night. The last night I stayed in eastern Kentucky before at last making it back to Virginia.
While staying in California, someone I met mentioned to me that he was about to fly down to southern California and pick up an RV. “It’s a repositioning trip,” he explained. “Someone needs to drive the RV to Arizona.”
“Oh,” I smiled. “I’m doing something similar. But it’s a global repositioning, like a ship.” I was thinking of friends I’d served with in Australia who had once flown from their assignment in Pakistan to join a ship repositioning voyage. The ship’s journey had started somewhere near Antarctica and ended weeks later in Scandinavia.
He laughed. “Where are you coming from?”
“Myanmar,” I said. “Headed to DC for a year.”
“Miramar,” he responded, referring to the Marine Corps’ air station in San Diego.
“No, Myanmar. As in Burma, in Southeast Asia,” I explained. He looked confused. “I went to San Diego State,” I went on, “and I can promise you Burma is no Miramar.”
He laughed, still looking unsure.
“Good luck with the repositioning,” I said. “It sounds awesome. I love a road trip!”
“You too,” he said. “I hope it all goes super well for you.”
And it did. On September 2, I arrived in northern Virginia without incident.
Collecting Postcards 