On February 28th, Dustin had been home from work for several hours when he  said quite casually, “Oh, did I tell you that they (they always means the “military” in sentences that begin like this) added Bangor, Maine to our list of ‘options’ for the next duty station?” (I put “options” in quotations because the word wrongly implies that we have any perceivable control over the situation, which I’m about to prove.)

For months we had been waiting to find out about Dustin’s next set of orders. We have been in Pensacola, Fla. for going on five years now. Many of our friends and family (perhaps even you) had begun to forget that Dustin is in the Navy. It just didn’t make sense that we could stay in one place for so long, even if the actual reason was that Dustin had served as an instructor pilot for fixed-wing aircraft before switching to instruct in the helicopters.

I’ve lived the last two years waiting for the other shoe -- er, flight boot -- to drop, either with Dustin being sent on an IA (officially “Individual Augmentation,” but might also be described as an inside sort of “draft”) to Iraq, or orders to Guam. I was always careful to write about our exact location lest the powers that be finally realize we had become so comfortable here in Florida, we were actually seeing trees grow and bloom. I worried that they (meaning “the military” again) might say, “What’s Smiley still doing in Pensacola? Let’s send that guy to Diego Garcia.”

We’ve had it good for so long, we knew our time was about to come. The military likes to keep its people in a constant state of alternating between “this stinks” and “aren’t we lucky?” I think it’s part of their retention plan, but feels more like playing the slot machines in Vegas.

It was a long, stressful period waiting for the list of places Dustin might be sent next. Especially because we knew it could literally be anywhere there is a Reserve Center. (Dustin’s next job will be commanding officer of a Reserve Center.) When the list of “options” (there’s that word again) finally came out, it was like Uncle Sam had chucked a handful of darts at the map. Our “options” were in three of the four corners of the country, and many places in between. But none of the options were extreme or unusual. There was Everett, Wa.; Columbus, Ga.; Allentown, Pa.; and places in Texas. We ranked our options, as suggested by the detailer, in order of preference from one to six.

As of February 28th, however, I thought our list was still in the rough stages and had not been given to the detailer. So when Dustin mentioned Bangor, Maine being added as an option at the last minute, I said, “Before you turn in the list, let’s look at it one more time together and make sure we are still in agreement.”
Dustin said, “Um, yeah, well....I kind of already turned in the list today.”

“You WHAT? Before or after you heard about Bangor?” (At this point, Bangor was, in my mind, a city buried under snow and ice, and as foreign to me as anyplace overseas.)

“Don’t worry, I put Bangor number seven of seven, so there’s very little chance we’ll be sent there,” he said.

Right then, Dustin had sealed his fate as the cause of all my problems should the official orders not be to our liking. I would always be able to say, “If you had only let me see the list one more time before you turned it in....”

On April Fool’s Day (of course!), Dustin came home, pulled out a chair and said, “I think you should sit down for this.”

“We’re going to the west coast again, aren’t we?”

Dustin twisted up his face and smiled apologetically. “The boys have always wanted to see snow, right?” he said.

Yep, we’re going to Bangor, Maine, the city we fought over that day when I found out Dustin had turned in the “final” list without showing it to me first. The city Dustin threw onto the list before I even knew it existed as an “option.” The city I have been using during the weeks since then to antagonize Dustin: “You’re going to be awfully cold in Maine, Dustin.” “When you’re shoveling 20-feet of snow, will you think about us here in Florida?”

However, after alot of crying and wondering if this could be reasonable grounds for divorce, I have come to a place of acceptance, and yes, even uncontainable excitement about the adventures that await us in Bangor. Mainly: (1) Stephen King lives there, and (2) I won’t have to wear a bathing suit. But also: skiing, Portland, Brunswick, LL Bean, Moosehead Lake, Acadia National Park, trips to Canada, trips to Boston, and, of course, throwing snowballs at Dustin. I think Uncle Sam is having a very good laugh at this. Or maybe Dustin’s detailer. Either one.