I shall think of a sharp retort…

The time is passing me by far too quickly. I don’t even want to think about the end of June. I’d rather just stick my head in the sand and pretend it’s not coming.

The War College graduates somewhere around the 20th of June, and the graduates are sent off to their next duty station within the week.  Three of the women that I became close friends with, most particularly my good friend BG, are all moving in mid-June.  It’s going to be so quiet around here with them; most of my social life revolves around BG, and Grace loves to play with her sons and the children of another lady moving in June too.

I just found out too that Ms Cheez-It is moving in August to South Carolina.  Her husband is an RP (Religious Personnel; they’re the folks that assist the chaplains in the military), and the school for chaplains and RPs is transferring from here in Newport to South Carolina.  I don’t see her much anymore, but she’s one of those people that you’re glad to have in your neighborhood because you know you can always count on her.  She’s been Grace’s emergency contact at school for the last two years.  Now I’ll have to find someone else.

My immediate next-door neighbors are leaving at the end of the summer too.  Kurt’s looking forward to that because it means that he’ll be able to park the little car in our common driveway instead of on the street.  But the neighbors across the street are another family that’s moving in mid-June, so he’ll have that parking spot for most of the summer.  I can’t see that the housing company will fill these houses that quickly.  When we first moved in, more than half of the units on my street were empty, and they stayed that way for a good eight or nine months.

Not everyone is moving, though.  My one friend’s husband was stationed here before being accepted into the War College, so they won’t be moving away till next summer, around the same time that we’ll be re-locating.  And my other friend, her husband is being sent to Iraq in a few weeks.  He finagled his situation to allow his wife and his son to stay here while he’s in Iraq so that his son can finish his last year of high school here.  That took some doing.  The War College wasn’t keen on having him attached to them while he was in Iraq, mainly because he’s in the Army and we’re a Navy base.  His wife jokes that it’s because the naval station doesn’t want to have to figure out an Army funeral with all the trappings if anything bad were to happen.  But we keep telling one another that nothing bad will happen to him.  So he’s having to report to his next duty station and head to Iraq from there, but leaving his wife at this base in housing when he’s attached to another base is a difficult thing to accomplish.  He managed it, though, so she’ll be here for another year.  It’s best for both her and his son.  Not only will his son not have to worry about making new friends at a new school his senior year, but his wife will have all her friends around as a support system while he’s in Iraq, instead of having to form a new support system at his next duty station.  It’s a win-win situation, for sure.

It’s just so sad to think of how quiet it’s going to be without all my friends here.  Usually it’s me moving away from my friends, not my friends moving away from me.  It’s going to take some getting used to.