Until We Meet Once More...

"See you next year, shipmate."

"I swear this stuff fit in the
car when we drove here."

If we'd had an NMA reunion this year, right now we'd be turning in our hotel keys and rolling luggage carts to our cars. The words "See you next year" would echo throughout the hotel.

When we return home from a reunion, we quickly resume our regularly-scheduled lives. In my case, this often includes a visit from Navy Band Great Lakes for Navy Week in my western Illinois area. Later in July, I usually spend a week at the University of Iowa City Summer Writing Festival. In August, my wife and I take a weekend anniversary trip.

Like the reunion, these events are ingrained into my summer. And, like the reunion, they're not happening this year. If there's such a thing as a "return to normal," I haven't seen it on the calendar.

MUs like to know the schedule. Ashore, we congregate in the passageway around the gig board and pencil updates into notebooks. At sea, we ignore the chief's droning voice at morning quarters until he says, "Change thirteen," when our ears suddenly become finely-calibrated sonar receivers.

It's all different this year, as we face future packed with unknowns.

But although we're not milling around the hotel lobby this morning, jiggling our car keys and sharing last hugs, one thing is exactly the same as it always on our last Sunday together:

There's only a year to go until the NMA reunion!