I start calling every number I can. All I get on repeat is “We did everything legally required of us per military regulations.” and “You should have been there to meet the truck. This is what happens when it goes into temporary storage.” We tried to give everyone involved lots of time and advance notice for our goods. But no one can do anything. We get put on a ‘cancellation list’ for an earlier date if one pops up. That’s all there is. Five weeks in storage because the lowest bidder moving company can’t get it out on a date that was arranged in March.
We decide with the animals and the kids the best choice is to split up. He will live in the RV park on base in Alabama with the dogs and the pigs and I will take the girls to my parents’ house in WV until our goods arrive. Since he will have already started his classes, I will be solo to set the house up. We are fortunate. We didn’t ship the van like planned so we have two cars. We have family 10-11 hours drive away. My mother is retired.
We leave my in laws and I am still livid. We stop in Little Rock for the night. I get bit by more bugs my first 30 seconds out of the car than I have in the last 2 years in SoCal. We clean cages. It is 96 degrees and so very humid. Everyone from dinner to a store run to breakfast is moving so slow to me. It’s the way of the south. I’m resentful, so resentful I am back here and without any of my belongings I couldn’t fit in the camper that when my youngest daughter who learned how to talk from a sweet very Alabama speech therapist opens her mouth and draws her words out like molasses I want to yank them out, twist them around, mold them closer to my husband’s quick Pittsburgh speech, and make her speak again, without the accent.
I’m fortunate after not saying any sounds until 22 months she is even talking as well as she does.
We are welcomed to Alabama with a horrid downpour that leaves us going 40mph with our 4 ways on driving the interstate. The storm matches my mood. I see my first Confederate flag in 2 years just over the border.
We stop overnight in Birmingham. This is the point where I will head north to stay the night in Kingsport, TN before arriving at my parents. My husband will continue as planned to Montgomery. I spend my last night with my husband watching guinea pig videos on YouTube and researching portable A/C units. We can’t keep them in Rubbermaid containers for a month in a camper. I barely sleep, plans and mental notes of what not to forget during this time spinning in my head. He won’t even have an address for mail.
It’s already over 80 in the morning as we are trying to re-arrange car seats and pack the car for our extended stay at my parents. We try to have one last breakfast together but the wait is too long and my husband is worried about the dogs and pigs in the camper without a generator to kick in. We say a tearful good bye in front of a Cracker Barrel. I am trying to make it seem like just another extension of our adventure, another vacation, but the girls aren’t buying it. They aren’t going to see him for at least a month. Saying good-bye to him so soon after he gets back when we hadn’t planned or prepped has us all a little raw. We settle down, get inside the restaurant and wait for our table. It’s called quicker than they said. I text him. He is eating a Lunchable at the gas station before heading off.
We leave, stop for gas, stop at Starbucks. We don’t need to stop as much now. The first day of driving is the hardest. We had been communicating between the cars with walkie-talkies and I keep wanting to pick it up every time I see something interesting on the road. My youngest keeps trying to talk to her dad. I realize I forgot things in the camper.
We cross into Georgia and then into Tennessee. The road kill turns from armadillos to deer. We see a dead fawn, its spots bright white among the blood. Busted tires have been a constant sight from Arkansas on. And motorcycles. In trees, in pieces alongside the road, randomly parked, pulled over. My younger two are sitting right behind me. They don’t shut up the entire time. We cross into Eastern Time. The landscape becomes hillier, lush green. I start to feel nauseous. I have driven almost 1200 miles at this point.
My husband has arranged a night in a hotel on a golf course, wanting us to have a “fancy” night amid the misery. The restaurant is closed by the time we get into our room and settled. I end up with 4 kids in the bar area. No one bats an eye when I order my third IPA.
We have an airbed in the room for my youngest, and I think sleeping with my 3rd would be the easiest. I thought she didn’t move that much in bed. She does. I am up from 2-4am, stress filling my head instead of sleep. When I finally drift off, I roll into something wet. I can’t remember the last time, if ever, my almost 7 year old has wet the bed. I know it is related to all this.
We all wake up too late for the breakfast. We are still on Central time. I really wanted oatmeal and decent coffee, something healthy after what feels like eons of quick grab and go. Everyone is crying and hangry. I keep telling myself it is okay, you are just visiting your parents. It will be much cooler and less humid up there. You belong in the mountains. It’s your home.
A little over a hundred miles, another state, and two tunnels through the mountains later, we cross the border into West Virginia. I am beyond exhausted. Four days straight of driving with kids and no DVD player in the car because my 3rd broke it months ago and no one ever being quiet in the car and no time to have a good cry over leaving California, my friends, my life, my house, and now this has me on edge. I know if I could just make it to the border, just make it to I-77 it would be okay. I would be on roads and interstates that I learned how to drive on, ones that I could travel in my sleep.
I would be home.
I have always noticed when I cross the WV/VA border through those mountains, it’s like the West Virginia side knows it’s different. Instead of gentle rolling hills, gradual sloping farmland, everything covered in thick, bright greenery in Virginia, the WV side is rougher, more jagged, open, raw. The mountains with their exposed seams of coal, not bright shiny black, but dark, dirty and bitter match my soul in it’s current state. Less than 5 miles in, I pass my first coal truck. The dust is everywhere.
We have to get gas. I try to find a Sheetz, something with lots of other businesses around. The opioid pill addiction turned to meth/heroin/fentanyl has wrecked the southern part of the state and is making it’s way up to my hometown. Three kids in their 20s have died in the last week. Obviously alone with 4 young children, I need to be careful where I stop.
I wouldn’t have said this in WV 10 years ago.
We are 3.5 hours from my parents now. I hit a tollbooth. Cash only. I have to take tooth fairy money from my kids. I get on 19, a state highway where I have gotten pulled over multiple times. I have Florida tags on my car now; the bright oranges on the license plate acting like a lighthouse beacon, signaling my betrayal. I left. I fell in love and followed a Marine all over the country. Ten moves. Six of them cross-country. I set my cruise control for the first time in over 2500 miles to 62mph. The speed limit is 65.
I don’t get pulled over. But two cars with out of state plates passing me do.
We get to I-79. I decide even though it is around 5:30pm at this point, we will stop for ice cream at the Dairy Queen in Flatwoods where my mother would always take us as kids coming back from Charleston. My great aunt would give her $20 to get us a treat. I’m hoping the area is still okay, insulated from the meth. There is a Starbucks, so we stop. The Dairy Queen is gone, replaced by a custard shop, a local hangout. My glasses fog up as soon as I leave the car. It’s 86 degrees, and humid. We get the “You aren’t from around here” suspicious looks, despite me wearing a West Virginia shirt. I left. I’m an outsider now.
Forty-five minutes later, I catch my younger 2 mixing their ice creams with water. I finally snap. It’s ridiculous, really. We have been in and out of this car, cross the country, and I could probably survive the zombie apocalypse with what is currently in my van, ground into the seats.
Twenty minutes from my house, my youngest finally crashes. I pass by exits I took over 15 years ago, when my husband and I were dating, the memories of off roading and camping fresh in my mind as if they happened yesterday, not 10 moves, 4 kids, 2 dogs, 4 guinea pigs, multiple fish, 1 house turned rental property, 4 deployments, countless trainings away, multiple schools, including undergrad and graduate work, & 5 cars ago.
We arrive at my childhood home. My older three are excited. My youngest still wants to sleep. I am glad to be out of the car, but mad as hell that it wasn’t on my terms. I love my mother, but we are still at the point post deployment where we have seen her more than my own husband. It’s all the night flights he had been doing after he got back.
I want my husband. I realize that I am being selfish and immature and small and petty.
I realize this is a minor bump in the grand scheme of things, another eye rolling tale of #militarylife.
I realize there are many others in way worse situations than I am. Like my husband, stuck in a camper in Alabama with 2 dogs and 4 guinea pigs, no WiFi and only one pair of cammies.
But none of this changes the fact that we are separated with our goods shut up in temporary storage because the lowest bidder moving company can’t get it out for five weeks.
I am lying in my old bed in my brother’s old room. The last time I stayed here I was with my husband. I have driven 1500 some miles in 4 days. Over 2500 miles and 11 states total.
It is our 14th wedding anniversary.
It’s 79 degrees, too hot and humid to open a window.
And so it goes.
