A Major (Or)deal

This is the long story long of how a little something I never really planned on turned into a great big sigh of relief by the time all was said and done. [With maybe a tear or two in the process].

{The Background}
When I got off active duty as a Captain 2012, I never planned on wearing a uniform again. Ever. I was DONE. I did everything I could to ensure I would slide out of the service seamlessly and make it as easy as possible on our family: I avoided taking command of a company and made sure I didn't get scheduled for a mandatory school called the Captain's Career Course (which is about five months long and a requirement to move on to the next rank of Major). I certainly had no reason to think I'd ever wear the rank of Major, so I avoided the inconvenience of that course with all my might until I safely landed in happy civilian land.

It was all good until a little birdie convinced me two years later that I wasn't finished wearing a uniform after all. So I signed up for the Reserves.

But I went through quite the headache to do so, because [as I learned in the process], I hadn't been processed out of my last duty station correctly; I was "coded wrong" in the system.

After spending two weeks calling what seemed like everyone in the entire active and reserve Army, it was finally fixed (or so I thought), and I was in! FORESHADOWING.

I quickly found out that my promotion from Captain to Major was coming up - my two year "break" in the inactive Army still counted toward my total service time, and the promotion board for my year group in the Reserves was already scheduled--ahead of all of my peers on active duty. [It still seems like a pretty cheapskate way of skipping to the head of the line to me, but I'm not going to complain, especially knowing now what was to come]. So I hurried and scheduled my school course, that one I'd worked so hard to avoid, so I would be qualified for Major before my promotion board was held.

In the mean time, I took company command--another thing I said I'd never do, ha--and got myself nice and busy with other daily work in addition to school.

{Fast Forward to the Present}
Ultimately I completed the school, I got my qualifications updated, and the promotion board was held in February of 2016, and "the list" came out in June - which is pretty much just that, a list of all the names of those who were selected for promotion to the next rank. And there I was! Phew.

[As an aside: Peter also officially came out on the promotion list, but his board occurred a bit after mine because he's in a special branch called the Medical Corps. They like to do things their own way. So we're waiting on his orders as we speak.]

Now in the reserves, once you come out on the list you have to be placed into what's called a "slot," or a specific spot in your unit with your appropriate level rank in order to be promoted. Then you send a form up a few levels to the Reserve Promotions department to confirm that you've been moved to a proper slot. The promotions department then cuts your orders, the official document that allows you to wear your new rank.

Now, my unit immediately moved me from a Captain's spot (as the company commander) to a Major's spot (the brigade Human Resources officer) and sent the form to the promotions department so I could get my orders. Easy enough.

• July came and went - no orders.
• August came and went - no orders.
• (My unit started checking to see what the holdup was, but had to go through several levels to do so. More waiting).
• September came and went - no orders.
• My brigade commander began calling around the Army. (For those of you who have tried getting the proper person on the phone at the highest level, you know how maddening it usually is). 
• He told me sometime in October that he finally managed to get a number to the right person, and that some paperwork from my active duty days was amiss; I just had to call and get whatever it was corrected and my promotion orders could be cut. Simple, right?

Well.

That number led me to a lovely lady who essentially told me that the little snaffoo I'd run into when I was trying to get back in the reserves meant that I didn't have an official commission in the Reserves. (Huh?) And that meant I might be dropped completely from the Reserves and have to pay back everything I'd earned that past two years. I didn't understand the half of what she said, but I was a nervous wreck for a good week thinking that this might actually be a possibility.

Finally, after I'd gathered all my paperwork and previous orders and called her again, we figured out what had happened.

• For those of you who want the convoluted details: in 2012 Fort Drum didn't send a certain discharge paper (71R, which I had) to the Reserves, so it was as if I'd disappeared instead of being listed in the inactive reserves during my two-year break. So when I signed back up, administratively it was as if I was appearing out of thin air. Whoever corrected my code at that time only fixed half the problem; my code was updated, but because I didn't have orders from my inactive time, I didn't have a Reserve Officer Commission, which means I couldn't get promotion orders. 
• In layman's terms, it was pretty much a big fat headache for a big fat long month.

I ultimately got backdated orders for my 2 years of inactive status, and had to make sure those didn't trigger then any of the systems to mess up all of my documentation or the status of my service. After I kept calling, finally, finally, around December 1st, I confirmed that it was all good in the Big Army Information System in the Sky.

Five days later, the day before our unit's December drill, I got my promotion orders to Major.

I couldn't stop laughing.

It was such a relief. I wasn't even concerned at that point about wearing the rank and all that came with it, I was just so happy to be done with the whole exhausting mess! I let my unit and my family know that it had happened - an actual Christmas Miracle - and that I'd be officially promoted the next day during my drill, since that was my boss's one condition: I had to have my promotion in front of a formation. I told Peter and the kids that I wanted him to promote me since my Dad, my role model for everything Army and more, was across the country.

I was completely prepared to be all snarky about the whole thing and just get it over with already. But unbeknownst to me, my family had far more sentimental plans. Month after month during this whole ordeal, Peter and my dad had been conspiring to fly my dad out so he could be the one to promote me. They had the flights figured out and everything - they were just waiting on official word to buy the ticket. But month after month, still no orders. So finally my dad mailed his Major's rank (which looks like a gold oak leaf) to my in-laws' house so I wouldn't inadvertently intercept the package. When I sent my poor dad the message that I'd finally gotten my orders, my parents were busy moving because they'd literally just sold my childhood home that week, where they'd lived for nearly 25 years. So no flight for him.

But I knew none of that. All I knew was that when my promotion ceremony was underway and the kids and Peter were lining up in front of me, Peter suddenly went off script and announced to everyone that he was going to be doing things a little unconventionally. He pulled out my dad's shiny oak leaves and gave me a run for my money trying to keep my eyes dry as he explained how my dad had planned month after month to be the one standing there to pin it on me. Gah.

I also normally don't wear my Airborne insignia ("jump wings") on my uniform unless they've been sewn on. But I figured that day since it was an official ceremony, I'd bring a little piece of my dad with me. I dug out the wings my dad had pinned on me 11 years ago when I graduated from Airborne school--which were the very first pair of wings pinned on him 26 years before when he graduated from Airborne school on the very same airfield.

After my last (middle of the night) jump...

After he pinned his first pair of wings on me.

So even though he wasn't there in person like he wanted to be and I would've loved him to be, I felt every bit of the special bond we share connecting some of the most important moments in both of our lives. My in-laws showed up to support me too, which was so wonderful, and Peter taught the kids how to punch me good and hard after the new rank was pinned on. Some things never change...

I forgot to mention that Peter and the kids raced after from two hours
of him entertaining the boys during Marie's hockey practice. High fives. 

"O4 swag" ...because it wouldn't be Peter to resist even the slightest opportunity for a gag gift.

Overall, this promotion was a much bigger deal than I intended it to be, both in the process to get there and ceremony itself. But on the back end, I'm not sad about it. Clearly, I know better than to say "never" after telling you about all the other things that I said I'd never do...but there's always a possibility that this could be the highest rank in which I serve. And it was my dad's final rank before he took an early retirement to care for our family when my mom was extremely ill. So I'll take the unexpected sentimentality and fanfare over the eye-rolling that I had ready, and I'm sure I'll appreciate the significance even more in future years than I do now.

Thanks, Dad (and all involved) - for everything!!!