Written by
KP Palmer
All the signs are there.
Coffee makers are not percolating, resting until they are needed on the other end.
Rummy cards quietly layered in a box.
No late-night games with friends for a while.
No drinks mixed with tonic, laughter, and the occasional curse words when given a bad hand.
Also, there are boxes everywhere.
Flanking the interior of every room, Cardboard Soldiers stand tall, box upon box, waiting for the next assignment. The next mission. Protecting the Polish pottery that survived 11 other moves now anxiously settles into its new home, padded by extra wrapping and prayers that it arrives in one piece, just one more time. The remote controls lie in a box labeled “PARTS”, taking a leave of absence from the late-night Netflix scrolling. They are cozied up to the nuts and bolts that have held our lives together at this duty station.
The peace that settles over this house as the items that make a home “hum” with
energy and memories are finally Still. Silent. Settled.
They are now protected by the Cardboard Soldiers whose name tags say things like “Bedroom # 1″ and “This End UP”. The noise of the impending move subsides as they wait in perfect formation for the mechanized vehicles to transport them up the ramp to their new home.
I can’t help feeling a little envious.
All the things in our world, forced into submission by paper and tape. I wish the movers had bubble wrapped my brain with its 5,000 moving parts and open tabs and packed it away too, encased me in padded paper, and forced me to be still. I wish those Cardboard Soldiers would surround me and let me take a breather until someone opens me again in the next duty station.
Not a breather from my job, or the stress of moving, but from myself.
From the anxiety that is almost crippling me right now, because unlike all my
possessions guarded by these Cardboard Soldiers, no one is guarding my fears.
No one is shushing me with gray paper and brown sticky tape. No one is telling
me to just chill until I am unsealed in a few weeks (or God forbid, a few
months). No one is telling the Crew Chief, “Make sure you pack up the neurotic wife who
keeps writing things on the boxes”, but man, I wish they would.
I wish one of them would really see that I am NOT okay.
This is it. This is the last time that I will do this. Even though I bitch and moan about the inconvenience (and the trauma) of what packing things up for the 18th time does to a person, it is weirdly comforting knowing that we left it all on the field and that there will be another field to take charge of very soon.
The last one. The final move. No more stickers and inventory sheets.
After this, it is all on us.
I am going to miss my Cardboard Soldiers and the way they protect what makes our house a Home. As I watch them march to the hull of the truck, I silently plead one last time to join
them in a box of my own, a box that will allow me to Be Still until I figure out what this next step is supposed to look like.
Please, just give me a Cardboard Soldier to let me rest for a little.
Just make sure you write “FRAGILE” on his name tag, because that’s how I feel at this very moment.
FRAGILE. Handle with care.
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Kathleen is an educator and project seeker from Texas. In her 29 years as an Army wife, Kathleen has taught and coached high school
in seven different states and two countries. Her favorite part of Army life is her acquired community of battle buddies! Kathleen loves words (both speaking and writing them) and has contributed to Mission:Milspouse, NMFA, The Fort Hood Sentinel, The Army Spouse Handbook, Inside Abu Ghraib, Memoirs of Two US Military Intelligence Officers, and Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors (Vol.3).
Her favorite writing pieces were created at VSP’s Heart To Script Workshops because she believes that connecting and mentoring through stories is how we love and support each other. She is currently on her LAST duty station before her soldier retires (after 39 years) and takes her to the tropical paradise of Otisfield, Maine.
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