A complaint

I’ve been full of woe lately about moving. The reality of our transition is setting in. I've been putting off thinking about it, but the packers come in 2 weeks, and I need to clean closets. I know, I wasn’t all that excited about coming to Guam. I was reluctant to move so far from the mainland, I was afraid I'd feel trapped on a small island. And now here I am, with my fingers grasping the dirt trying to hold on to this place while being pulled away.

Driving home from our last soccer games Saturday, I was feeling tearful.  Our last games here. I’ve been impressed with how good the soccer program has been. These kids here are talented. They play on turf. Goodbye, soccer teams! Goodbye, fun flea market in the parking lot next to soccer! Thanks, coaches, for all the instruction! The kids will have to earn their place on a new team next fall.

It didn’t help that I had pulled out our old tapes to play in the car because we have to sell this car with the last remaining tape deck in our family.  I’ve always complained about our GMC. It’s a big, banged up gas guzzler. Duct tape holds a piece of trim to the door. Another piece of duct tape covers the button to open the top half of the back tail lift because it’s broken. Another piece of duct tape is taking the place of the piece of plastic that broke off the bottom part of the tail lift. It has 187,000 miles on it. But now I don’t want to get rid of it! For 10 years, it has been our faithful chariot. Even though it blends in here with all the other Guam bombs, while it probably would not pass inspection in California, and it probably is going to need something fixed soon, I don’t want to buy a new car. I looked briefly into our options. They are expensive, expensive and expensive, unless we want to buy the extended home school van, as my dad recommends. But my husband’s friend from high school was just killed in one that rolled over. Not a great safety record.

So we are going to have to buy a new car. And we are going to have to find a new house. We’re looking for a rental, along with everyone else moving to or within California, it seems. Not a lot of choices listed on the internet for four bedroom houses.  Conveniently, my husband had to attend some meetings and a class in the area where we are moving this week. In his limited free time, he is on reconnaissance for a house and schools. He has looked at a couple of places, one of which seemed like it would work, until the landlord decided to raise the rent $600 a month when he found out a family of 8 wanted to live in his precious house.  Is this discrimination? Or is it within his rights to charge more for more people? More wear and tear? Why not raise the security deposit? At any rate, I don’t want to have anything to do with this kind of landlord.

While el esposo is there, I’ve been cooking my brain looking at websites for available houses in our price range around the schools we’re interested in. If I just keep searching, perhaps in some dark corner of the internet I’ll find something. The six houses available all seem a little dated and have giant garages but tiny yards. Yet, despite the tiny yards, they come with gardeners to trim the manicured shrubbery, I guess. I don’t want a gardener. I have teenaged boys to mow the lawn, and I like planting and trimming things. Maybe I need to shift my priorities regarding schools and look further out beyond the suburbs, but then my husband’s commute time will extend. We’ve already been looking at places 30 mins from where he’ll be working. The base does have housing available that might fit our family, but the word is that the schools around the base are to be avoided.

And schools! What to do, what to do. Of course, the best schools are the ones that are in the area where the houses are too expensive. The county does have a school choice option that allows you to apply to attend a school out of your district, but do we want to spend hours commuting to school and school events?  There is a Catholic school that is potentially affordable, but is it worth the money? It’s hard to tell much about the personality of the schools from websites.  Academically, the public schools seem to be strong – and most anything is going to be a stronger school than the boys’ current school – but they are huge: 2500 kids. Do I throw the boys into the zoo and hope they find their way or pay through the nose for a smaller school?

Even though the DODEA schools here have not lived up to the rumor that DOD schools are good schools, the boys still like their school. They get to be big fish in a little pond. My oldest is excelling at track and in the classroom, and the second one got invited to do the model UN program in Korea as a freshman. Neither wants to leave, and I have the perception they are pretty safe, despite reports of kids coming to school stoned.  Since this is such a small community, I have eyes everywhere keeping track of things for me. Goodbye, extra eyes.

What else can I complain about? I’ll miss our Mayberry neighborhood, and the friends we’ve made here.  I’ll miss not having traffic jams. I’ll miss the warm water. I guess we’ll still have nice sunsets in California, but the water will be freezing, and there won’t be coral reefs everywhere. I’ll miss the running community here – where you can run 5k’s for $5, you recognize most of the faces at the starting line, and they start at 6 am so you still have all day Saturday to spend as you will. I can’t say I’ll miss red rice, but I will miss fresh mangoes. They are falling from the trees by the hundreds right now. I don’t really love the wild bananas, but I do love the soursop, which supposedly kills cancer cells. And even though I’m sure we’ll be able to find good sushi in California, it won’t be $10 for a container of sashimi that is big enough for a small party and you know it just came off the boat because the fisherman is right there.  I’ll miss my classes at the community college, I’ll miss the boonie stomps, I’ll miss the fiestas.  Goodbye, goodbye, all of this! Farewell, happy island dream life!

Back to consumerville. I don’t want to be neighbors with Barbie and Ken. I don’t want to drive everywhere, I don’t want to deal with Target and Walmart. I don’t want to go through all our stuff again. (Although I do like getting rid of things once the clutter is gone.)  Sigh.

My mom went to a grief workshop the other day.  She called to tell me that moving is also a source of grief and requires a process. So I guess I’m in the anger and denial process. I know this will pass, too.

After all our moves, I can honestly say that we have been happy everywhere we have lived. Each place we seem to love more than the last. I doubt this pattern will keep recurring, but. . . I hope that what is good about each duty station stays with me, forms me in such a way that I acquire the virtues of the place. From Guam let me take lessons about generosity from the people who share this beautiful island and their overflowing fiesta plates. Let me remember how we much we enjoyed the slower pace of life, the lack of planning ahead, the satisfaction with having what we have and not worrying about having the perfect thing.

Let me also remember how long it took us to feel at home here, how comparing this place to that place doesn’t increase overall contentment. I may love the illustrations of spring flowers in Tasha Tudor’s books, but I also love the silhouettes of palm trees and the brilliance of hibiscus outside my door.

Even before reading The Geography of Bliss, I knew that there is no one place that has cornered the market on happiness. When I think about the places I have loved, where I was happy, or thought I could be happy, they really don't have that much in common: the midwestern community of my childhood; the Michigan beaches of our family vacations - where we always wanted to live, but only knew as a summer vacation spot; New England; the Midatlantic region; the deep South; the Southwest; the metropolis of the midwest, Chicago; this tropical island, ...  suburbs, city, country. Now we'll be heading west again. I dread living on the left coast, but I trust that the pattern of happiness will continue. The day will come when I'll be crying about leaving California as the moving van comes ‘round again.