Kimber's Five

Lately I have been telling my husband that I feel like a new person. I don't feel like I've grown or that some things are different... I feel like a brand new person. My thought process feels different, I feel differently about nearly everything, and my goals and priorities are different. When I trace back how I ended up here, the last 3 years in Washington state (our previous duty station) keep popping up in my brain. Those years changed me. For a long time, I thought those years defeated me. I didn't feel like I was enough. I felt like all of the goals that I had set for my life were pushed off for another 3 years (which they were). I felt like I couldn't make friends. I felt like people didn't understand me. I felt like my family was too big/too crazy or that maybe they didn't like my kids. I felt like life kept throwing us challenges, some bigger than I ever expected to face. I felt like my depression was going to swallow me and that I wouldn't make it ...

Chivalry, as it is seen today, doesn't have anything to do with knights, courts, courtly love, or "favors" (tokens of unrequited love). Chivalry today has to do with a code on how men should treat women. These include: opening doors for women, giving a woman your jacket if she's cold, opening her door, pulling her chair out for her... on and on. What's wrong with how women were treated? Why should chivalry be dead? I mean, if you start looking back on women's rights , it's deplorable. Women were not seen as equals. Even Elizabeth I said, "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too." Jane Austen dedicated her energy highlighting the struggles of women living under the laws where they couldn't inherit property, they couldn't work, and they couldn't vote. Without a white male family member taking care of them, women were destitute. Around 1900, women were s...

There is one aspect of military spouse life that I do not think that I can ever get used to: isolation. I feel like I make my own memories. That sounds like such a small thing, but as our family has grown and we have moved time after time, I've realized I really hate it. What do I mean make my own memories? Well, my husband is rarely home or with me. Sea duty doesn't mean he's working a 9-5 job when he isn't deployed. Even when he is "home" or "in port" he has schools he has to attend, training to go to, a boat to work on, on and on. He often leaves before the kids and I get up and gets home after they are in bed (sometimes after I am in bed). For awhile, he had literally 2 days off a month and they weren't even on the same weekend. So I'm not making memories with my husband, living day to day life with him. Sharing time with him and sharing the kids with him. I'm usually informing him of our day and showing him pictures and videos. T...

There have been so many positive changes in my surrounding the past couple weeks and months. We've had new families move in on our street. My kids have so many people their age to play with outside. I made good friends with my neighbors and they are real and genuine people that I can feel a deep connection with-- the type of people that you can see being friends with for a long, long time. I love their whole family and they welcome my entire family with open arms. It's amazing. I love the feel of our street right now. It's the type of place you want to lean back and enjoy, let some roots grow. I have spent the past couple weeks and months saying, "What if it had been like this the whole time we lived here?" For just about the first time since we got here, my physical health hasn't been a problem. I started this duty station with an incredibly bad case of mastitis, swooped into a horrible pregnancy that almost killed me and my daughter, and post-partum co...

We are getting ready to move away from our current duty station. We sold our house and we've bought our next house. We have packers coming here, contractors scheduled there, hotels booked. All of the months and weeks of planning are all finally coming together to now: Go Time. It is always weird to me when I get ready to leave a place. I start looking at things that I took for granted-- and possibly even disliked-- differently. The other morning I was walking up to our house after getting the newspaper and my bare foot stepped on a pebble on our driveway. I bent down to brush it off and heard the birds chirping, the sound of a car starting up the street. I heard my kids screaming at each other inside the house-- probably over who's turn it was to pick a show. I was struck with nostalgia. Our house felt so alive in that moment. Our street radiated familiarity. I could almost smell home, the entire state of Washington, and spring itself. Standing there, I took a mental snapshot...

One problem us moms have is running on empty. It happens to all of us. It's really hard to put into words when this happens and it isn't always clear why it happens. But it does happen. It comes around and when we hit empty, we can get stuck there for an hour, an afternoon, a couple days, a week, a month, a season... And just as mysteriously as it came upon us, it ebbs and flows away until it slowly dawns on us that it isn't so hard anymore. What does it mean to be running on empty? When I find myself running on empty, it feels like the little tasks become much harder. I find myself easily frustrated with the kids. The same routines day in and day out start feeling like heavy weights on my shoulders and I feel trapped by the monotony and the needs and the drudgery. It feels like, the baby gets sick, I get her down to nap, the toddler wakes her up, my older 3 boys start fighting, there is a stinky diaper to change, it is time to start dinner, it is time to clean the kitc...