Editor’s Note: Sarah Smiley and her husband, LCDR Dustin Smiley, are new to Bangor this month. They are a military family who have come to Maine from Pensacola, Fla. Dustin is the prospective commanding officer of the Navy Operational Support Center in Bangor. The Smileys have three boys: Ford, 7; Owen, 5; and Lindell, 18 months.

For more than five years, Sarah has written a weekly, nationally syndicated newspaper column. What started as a column specifically about military life has grown to be a unique, sometimes quirky, sometimes sentimental piece about life as a young mother and wife, as told through the peculiar lens military life provides.

While readers with a military background will relate to Sarah’s tales of moving, dealing with deployments, and explaining to children why they should never tell any of their father’s superiors that he often leaves things (coffee cups, grocery bags, his shoes) on top of his car, civilian readers will enjoy Sarah’s witty take on raising a family in the 21st century and appreciate the perspective and poignant reminders her military life brings to all of us about our men and women in the armed services.

Sarah’s second book, “I’m Just Saying …,” a collection of her columns from 2003 to 2008, is available at Amazon.com. You can read more about Sarah at www.sarahsmiley.com. Look for her column in the Bangor Daily News in this spot each Monday.

People often refer to Pensacola, Fla., as the “the mother-in-law of the military.” This is because Pensacola is all but swarming with young military officers with job security and money to spare who are looking for a bride. There are a lot of mothers and fathers in the Florida Panhandle who have waved goodbye to their daughters driving away with a military man.

I drove away from Pensacola last week after having lived there for five years, a relatively long period of time for a military family. There were no in-laws in my rearview mirror wiping away tears. Instead, it was my husband, Dustin, whom I have left behind to finish out his tour there and then meet us at his new duty station in Bangor in November. As far as I could tell, Dustin wasn’t wiping away tears.

All of which means Dustin and I have entered a new phase – much like a marriage – of our military career. We are now to the point where we will voluntarily live apart for several months just to get the kids settled into their new school at the new duty station Uncle Sam has chosen for us.

You see, Uncle Sam doesn’t pay attention to things like school years, the housing market, and whether or not your son was in the middle of potty training when he issues new orders. If Uncle Sam wanted these men to have wives and families, he would have manufactured some with fewer issues and inconveniences like opinions, wishes and desires.

Shortly after leaving Dustin, I drove with our three boys and my mother up to Bangor to look for a home. Previously, I had never been north of New York City. In fact, not many people in my family have been north of New York. Doris, my grandmother who lives in Alabama, explained it like this: When Dustin and I were newly married, I grew concerned that his family seemingly had more heritage than mine. They are part German and part Irish. I didn’t know from where my family had come. So I asked Doris, and she said, “Well, we’re Southern, honey.”

“But where did we come from first?” I asked.

“Why does it matter?” she said. “We’re Southern.”

The only things I know about the North come from listening to Doris and watching “Northern Exposure,” which I think took place on the opposite side of the continent.

When I told our Realtor in Bangor all of this, he said, “Well, welcome to Maine, the cul-de-sac of the United States.”

We shared a laugh, although I suspect that he was laughing harder than I was. I didn’t really understand what our Realtor meant until I was zipping down a dark highway at the top of our country, and my mom spotted a “Moose warning.”

“Keep your eyes out for moose,” Mom said.

The road in front of us was completely dark. The stars were as bright and as clear as I have ever seen them. And even though it was summer, the air was considerably chillier than Florida.

“Do you think the moose would come right out onto the street?” I asked Mom.

“I don’t know. Maybe they are like deer,” she said.

You see a lot of deer in Alabama.

“But that sure is a big warning sign,” Mom said farther down the road.

We talked to my Realtor just to be sure we understood everything we needed to know about moose warnings. Turns out, moose aren’t like deer. They don’t leap out of the way of oncoming cars. And if your car hits a moose, the moose probably will walk away.

Next we started seeing signs that read, “Next exit 30 miles,” and warnings in French. I was beginning to feel a long way from home.

When we arrived in Bangor, there wasn’t much left of I-95 before entering Canada. I wondered whether this is what my Realtor meant when he called it a “cul-de-sac.”

Then I began meeting the local people – or Mainers, as they call themselves – and a new definition of “cul-de-sac” took form. Turns out, the “Yankees” aren’t exactly the way Doris and the television sometimes had made them seem.

Tune in next week when I discuss the difference between the North and the South.

Maine author and columnist Sarah Smiley’s writing is syndicated weekly to publications across the country. She and her husband, Dustin, live with their three sons in Bangor. Read more about Sarah at www.sarahsmiley.com.