I believe that when we leave a place, part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in the station when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while, you will hear the echoes of all our conversations, every thought and word we’ve exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me that is going will very much miss the part of you that is staying.
G’Kar – “Objects In Motion” – Babylon 5
PCS
In military parlance, “PCS” stands for “Permanent Change of Station” and for those of us who have been or are in the military family, it happens usually every two or three years when orders arrive that tell us where we’ll be living for the next two or three years.
If you were in school on the military base, you could always tell the kids who just got a surprise case of PCS in their near future.
They didn’t have to even say a thing…you could see it in their faces that they weren’t really looking forward to having to leave just when you’d really gotten to be mates with a few cherished friends and even less thrilled at having to start the whole process of finding some new mates in a likely brand new base or city.
There was always the chance that you might catch up to your current mates somewhere down the road so there was always this mental conflict of trying not to get too close to friends who might well be leaving tomorrow but desperately yearning to have close friends to help you survive the rigours of life in the military family.
To be sure, a PCS isn’t a complete pile of suckage.
Oh, the suck factor was usually impressive…having to pack up your household goods and hope like hell the civilian contractors whose job it was to get all of it to your new home in one piece (sometimes with hilarious results we can laugh at now a few decades later!) could keep their wits about themselves and not screw things up too badly.
Then there was the “fun” of keeping up with all of the moving parts and paperwork that start with the many copies of the actual orders for a PCS that were required to make sure we got paid for the travel and moving expenses as well as get any of the entitled services from the support groups who could be really awesome and on the ball…or more often, not so much.
Seriously…we’d have *KILLED* for anything to make the administrative processes of a PCS so much easier and convenient.
Sadly, smart phones and an app weren’t really a thing in the 1970s and 1980s when Dad and I were doing the compulsory dance of moving from place to place.
But in spite of all the things about a PCS that did suck with the prospect of figuring out the friends situations on both ends of it…there was the underlying excitement of moving to a brand-new place and getting to explore the cool differences of life in your new home for however long you’d be there.
Even if it was a place you’d been before, often enough time had passed that it was all brand new to you again!
Either that, or it was the short attention span of the average military kid. 🙂
If you were on base, you’d often see the other cool aspect of a PCS which is everyone in the neighbourhood in the vicinity of the house where the household goods lorries had parked to either load out the family that was leaving or to drop off the goods of the family who would be your neighbour for the next couple of years or when your own PCS came up (whichever came sooner) dropping *EVERYTHING* and popping over to the house to offer to help and either say goodbye or hello as the case might be. More often than not, food and drinks would be brought aplenty to make the unloading/loading a much more pleasant activity.
A PCS would bring our neighbourhood together in ways you don’t often see in the civilian world because you never knew when those orders would come (though typically May and June were the hot months for getting orders) because it was one of the occupational hazards we all had in common.
Your parents did know when those orders were coming because they’d spend a month or two prior to the cutting of the PCS orders trying to sweet talk (if not actually bribe!) the “detailers” (the people who decide where you go and what you do when you get there and how painful the process of the transfer is going to be!) to help them avoid places like scenic Fort Dix or the joys of life serving on McMurdo Sound.
Them sharing that info with you…yeah, not so much until it’s already a done deal.
And the next day, every kid in that cafeteria knew exactly what happened to you and were often sympathetic to your plight.
They’d been there and done that, too!
That shared experience of a PCS is usually what kept the kids at the new base from giving the new kids in town any grief on their first days at school. For the bullies who had a learning curve that was essentially flat, even the thickest ones of those cowards could usually be persuaded quickly and quietly that hassling the new kids who are already scared enough was a really poor choice on their part and a judicious application of “extra individualised training for unit cohesion” was often effective in getting them to understand that the new kids aren’t the enemy nor were they fair game.
Sometimes quietly watching your military parents comes in handy! 🙂
By now, I’m sure you’re wondering what in the world prompted this trip down memory lane.
That’s because PCS #41 is happening next door right now with my Puerto Rican family leaving their home of nearly thirteen years next to this pain in the arse as they’re moving a bit up the road to a new place in Wendell that’s much more suitable to their needs than their current place.
#41 you might ask? I had reckoned that the PCS that brought me to my current (and as far as I’m concerned *FINAL*!) home was #40 over a period of 40 years.
Yeah, this is the part that really sucks when you’ve gotten truly attached to people who started out as new neighbours that progressed to a friendship and finally a sense of “mi familia” who are just as cherished as those who were born to the family.
There aren’t enough words and certainly not enough really wonderful words to convey just how interesting and fulfilling having the privilege of living next to them and learning far more about the culture and traditions of Puerto Rico to the point that *I* get insulted when I encounter a case of some idiot being blithely unaware that Puerto Ricans are *AMERICAN CITIZENS*.
From the many times they’ve opened their dinner table to an enthusiastic interloper from next door and shared all of the really cool family things with their grandson JoJo through the years to the countless times they’ve made my life a bit easier than I’d have ever imagined possible, one couldn’t help but be forever changed for the better.
So yeah, it’s going to suck rocks (no pun intended…if you know, you really know!) when they’re completely packed up and off to their new home.
I’m sure the new neighbours are going to be wonderful and as I understand it, I’m about to have the chance to learn about the culture of Taiwan (take that People’s Republic! 😉 ). My only requirement was if they’re buggering off that the new neighbours can’t be assholes because I’m getting way too old to train up neighbours properly. (UPDATE: As it turns out, I did get a chance to meet my soon-to-be-neighbours Rich and Jill after their final walk-through and they are truly delightful and I think they and their daughter who I’ve yet to meet will definitely like our little cul-de-sac’s vibe. We’re a pretty diverse lot round here that looks out for one another and that’s the way we like it! 🙂 )
When I roll in and I don’t see the vehicles that I’m expecting and know that it’s not going to be anywhere near as easy to get together whether it’s for a massive pile of paperwork or just shooting the breeze about the general silliness that is modern American life…it’s going to suck.
When I know that all of the stuff that made their home rather unique is gone…yeah, it’s going to be kind of hard not remembering the inside of that house next door about as well as I do my own.
But the beauty of them just going up the road a bit is that I’ll still get my Puerto Rico fix from time to time and we’ll just have to take maximum advantage of our time together.
After all, if you think I’m letting a family that in a fit of madness chose me and that I’ve come to love for almost thirteen years isn’t getting rid of me that easily…you’ve got several new thinks coming your way! 🙂
So even though I’m the one that’s staying and they’re the ones that are going, G’Kar was most certainly right as he usually was.
The part of me that is staying is going to miss the parts of them that are leaving very much.
