Hello all -Today’s post is a bit different than my normal updates. It’s something that I wrote in 2022/2023 when taking part in a months-long writing program. I originally planned to use the piece in a book, but then decided publishing wasn’t my jam (too much boring editing). Instead, I’m sharing it today, on the 15th anniversary of this day. I hope you enjoy this 3-part series!
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February 20th, 2009 – Arlington, VA
I jolted awake, taking in the empty bed and unfamiliar room around me. The clock read 8:30 A.M. Where the hell was I? When my brain did finally kick in, the realization carried with it a wave of nausea so strong, that I thought I might just throw up right then and there.
I was in D.C.
With my new husband.
In our temporary housing.
Which meant it must be Flag Day, that life-changing day for new Officers when the Foreign Service powers-that-be doled out assignments and set your life on a new course. I was terrified, as one should be when others are playing God with their life.
I’d arrived on Saturday morning from Minnesota, where I’d been hastily wrapping up the life I’d built there. I hadn’t seen my husband in five weeks, since our shotgun courthouse nuptials. Ever since that day in late October when he’d gotten the offer to join the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer—a dream he’d been pursuing for three years—it felt like I’d handed over the reins of my life to someone else. I mean, sure, we had talked about the possibility he could get called up to serve. But did I really think it actually would happen after so many years of him sitting on a list waiting for an offer that never seemed to materialize? Heck no!
You can imagine my surprise when I answered my cell phone that afternoon and heard, “It finally happened. I got the offer and accepted! Will you marry me and move overseas?” His words hit me with a mix of excitement and terror; making it abundantly clear that the train was leaving the station and I either needed to jump on board or be left behind. So intertwined had our lives become though, that I could no longer imagine a life that didn’t include him. Without giving it too much thought, I replied “Yes!”, hitching my wagon to his for better or worse.
The weeks that followed were a blur. Jobs were terminated. Parents were informed. Weddings were planned.
There would be two weddings. One at a courthouse January 2nd and one at a church in Minnesota on May 2nd. Why two? Because I needed to be his legal wife so that my medical issues would be factored in to where they sent us on our first assignment. The last thing I needed was for him to be posted to a third world country with poor medical care and me not medically cleared to join him. That’s no way to kick off a marriage.
Which brings us back to Flag Day. Six weeks prior we’d been given a list of 91 posts. 91 job/city combinations to be assigned to the 91 new officers in his training class. The list read like something straight out of Nat Geo—Ouagadougou. Monrovia. Hyderabad. Guangzhou. Khartoum. Ashgabat. Port Au Prince. Conakry. I was shocked at how few places were familiar to me. These were real places?
We were given three weeks to research jobs, medical care, schools and quality of life in the 58 different cities (some cities had more than one job) and rank every job/city combination with a High, Medium or Low. While not stated outright, we knew it wouldn’t be well-received by our assignments officer if we only put ‘highs’ on the seven European jobs and ranked everything else as low. Better to have some ‘mediums’ identified too in the event that all the ‘highs’ went to officers who already knew the required language or had family members with special needs that necessitated they be in a highly-developed nation.
Despite the undeniable excitement of being handed a list of countries and told, “All these are possible! Where do Y-O-U want to go?”, I was still somewhat leery about this whole process, especially given how few places I recognized on the list. The list I had imagined getting was eons different than the actual one I had in my hand. Given this list, odds were very good that we’d be assigned to a third-world country with inadequate infrastructure, sub-par medical care, and extreme poverty. Perhaps my family and friends were right. Maybe I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Would I be able to live in a place with extreme hardship? What would I do there for work, especially if I couldn’t speak the language or the internet was spotty? What if it was dangerous??
Despite the myriad of questions swirling in my head, the reality was that decisions needed to be made, even if that meant working with imperfect information. My husband deferred to me heavily in the selection process since he’d grown up overseas and felt comfortable living most anywhere. I, on the other hand, was still getting used to the idea that I was leaving my beloved Minnesota and the thought of living in some of these places made me downright anxious.
And so, with my husband’s blessing, I systematically axed entire countries, regions and continents in one foul swoop—specifically, Arabic and Russian-speaking countries, High-Danger posts, and Africa—simply because they felt beyond what I could handle for my first tour. I also eliminated all Mexican border posts (13 of the 91 jobs), not because they would have been too big of a stretch, but because of all the drug cartel violence playing out on the streets of those cities. I had done my research and more than 5,000 people had died in the Mexican drug war in 2008. And it was only projected to grow from there. No thank you. That’s not for me.
To be continued . . .
