Diary of Not a Wimpy Widow

Author: kcmoyer65

  • In the Time of the Pandemic: Hygiene

    Closing the lid on my U-V sterilizer box, I turn to the counter and pluck a wipe from the Chlorox container. I wipe down the buttons on my security wall box, wipe down the inside door handle and the outside door handle, and the handles on the inside and outside of the storm door. I try to remember what else I have touched.

    Did I wash my hands as soon as I entered the house and before I put my mask, car keys, and sunglasses in the sterilizer box? I think so, but just in case, I go into my hall bathroom and give my hands a good squirt of the foaming soap. I ordered this soap from Amazon even before my other liquid hand soap ran out, because I wanted something less drying, something that smelled good. This soap foams and has shea butter, and it smells like almonds. Plus the bottle is pretty. I don’t really care that it cost more. What am I spending money on anyway?

    I give my hands a good scrub, singing “happy birthday to me” twice over. I really need to figure out a new song for this routine. 

    I dry my hands and go back to the kitchen. I think my U-V box is done with the first round. I open the lid. It is a solid wooden box with a lid that closes with a latch. I don’t know where I got it, but I put it away as a Useful Box. Back in March when the Pandemic arrived, I tried out a cardboard box with a lid, but I like this wooden box better. It looks nicer, sitting on the kitchen stool. 

    Now I open the lid and remove my car keys and hang them on the hook inside the coat closet. I hang my mask on the hook next to the car keys. I take out my sunglasses and put them in the tray on the table. Then I lay my blue purse in the box, stretching it out and winding the shoulder strap around so it all fits. I have stopped carrying my favorite red purse. It is too big to fit in this box, and I don’t really need all the contents for the short and rare errands I now make. 

    The u-v sterilizer light is attached with velcro to the inside of the lid. I can carefully remove it and and take it to the bathroom to insert the charger cord for re-charging, just as I do with my iPhone and iPad. But for now I just press the button to start the u-v light. The button shines blue and I quickly close the lid. There is a time delay before the light itself will turn on, so I have time to close the lid and protect my eyes. I have to trust that the light itself turns on and the u-v does its job for 15 minutes. I never peek. 

    While my purse is being cleaned, I pick up the paper bag of mail that I have collected and take it to the study. It will sit there for a day, decontaminating, before I open it. And then I will wash my hands again with that almond-scented soap. 

  • In the Time of the Pandemic: Gratitude

    August 26, 2020

    Gratitude

    For the shopper who picked out these potatoes and this head of lettuce

    For the bagger who sorted all the freezer foods in one bag, the refrigerator foods in other bags, the produce together, the pantry items in others

    For the driver who found my house without getting lost….which happens…and delivered the bags to my patio table

    And stretching behind them, the truck drivers and farmers and harvesters, all of those who brought this food to my table

    This blueberry

    This tomato

    This mushroom

    This potato

    This leaf of lettuce 

    For which I feel gratitude

  • The Year of the Pandemic: And Despite These Losses

    And Despite These Losses

    August 24, 2020

    Still I have—-

    sunlight on water

    a cat purring on my lap

    a text of “love you!” from a friend

    a hummingbird hovering by my window

    an unexpected flower where I had given up hope

    the songs I strum on my mountain dulcimer

    my daughter’s laughter on the phone 

    the full moon at night

  • The Year of the Pandemic: Little Losses

    July 31, 2020

    Lunch with a friend

    Talking in the locker room

    Singing at church

    Laughing in the movie theatre

    Company in my home

    Browsing in a store

    Booking a trip

    Potluck parties

    Hugging my daughter

  • Fireflies and Lightning Bugs

    July 17, 2020

    The other evening I was sitting on my couch, feet on the ottoman, reading a book. It was just too darned hot to enjoy sitting outside as I usually do on a  summer evening, but from my living room window, I had a view of my quiet hilltop edged with trees and centered by tall grasses around my swimming pool.

    At one point I looked up from my book to see flashes of fireflies on the hillside, not just the one or two I had seen previously this summer, but a ballet of fireflies moving on my hilltop. 

    I watched them, remembering how my two children used to run across this hillside in hot Virginia summer evenings, with an open mason jar in one hand and the lid with holes punched in it in the other hand, to catch and trap fireflies. Bill and I would stand and watch, swatting away the occasional mosquito, the night warm around us. When enough fireflies were caught, the two children would sit on the ground, watching their firefly lanterns glow for a little while, until it was time to release the little insects back to the night.

    And thinking of my son and daughter, I remember how I as a child caught fireflies on the hillside in Fayetteville, Arkansas where my grandparents lived. The summers were even hotter then, it seemed, with no air conditioning to cool us off, only big palm fans to wave while rocking in the cane-seated rocking chairs on the big open porch of their home. And when it was dark enough, my brothers and my sister and I would take the  mason jars from our grandmother, and dance across the hillside, catching fireflies to make our lanterns glow.  

    And stepping further back in time, I remember as a little girl of maybe three years old, sleeping in the stone cottage, my grandparents’ first home on the hilltop, before my younger brother and sister were born. I was staying over on the mountain, sharing a room with my grandmother. She already was gently snoring. The windows were open to the summer breeze, and on the ceiling a firefly was dancing, lost for a time before it found its way back outside. And watching the firefly and listening to the soft sounds of my grandmother breathing, I fell asleep.

  • …in the time of the Pandemic

    July 5, 2020

    It has been four months— 

    No touch from a human
    Given or received
    In this time of COVID-19 pandemic

    But in the early mornings
    My blue-eyed rescue boy
    Leaps on the bed
    Settles on my chest
    And with one paw hooks my wrist in his
    And with the other velvet paw 
    Gently taps my cheek
    And begins his warm purr
    Which signals to me 

    That I am not alone
    And that a new day has begun.

  • “Same Storm, Different Boats”

    Here I am, in this raging storm which shows no sign of stopping. But my little boat is snug and strong, and despite the massive waves we are riding out the storm, although sometimes we slide so far into the hollows of the waves that I think we never will emerge. But we do.

    At the helm is my fourth great- grandfather Thomas Turner, a linen weaver, who sailed from Belfast Ireland on December 24th, 1766 when he was twenty-three. The promise of 100 acres in South Carolina took him across the Atlantic in winter storms. Ten years later, he would be fighting with the Revolutionary forces. 

    By his side looking at the compass is my grandmother’s aunt and stepmother Carolina Margareta Brandt. She packed up her little son, my grandmother, and my great-uncle Henry and in 1886 left the croft in Skaraborg, Sweden. They sailed from Gothenburg to Denmark, then took another ship to Bremen, and then across the Atlantic to Baltimore and by train to the Twin Cities to join my great-grandfather. 

    Below decks is my great-great grandfather James H. Crocker known for his carpentry; he has his tool box ready to make repairs. He was with the Georgia Infantry at Missionary Ridge, Reseca, Kenneshaw Mountain, and Atlanta, among other battles. 

     In the galley is my grandmother Milda Christina preparing supper. She came home to her Minnesota farm house one day to find her almost- ripe strawberries smashed into the ground by a sudden hailstorm. She was thirty-one when her first husband died of stomach cancer, one year and two months after their marriage, leaving her with a five month old baby.

    And across the cabin is my great-great-grandfather James Porter Stockton, tuning up his fiddle because we need music in this storm. He survived the Battle of Vicksburg and spent the last years of his life playing the fiddle on his Arkansas porch. 

    His wife my great-great-grandmother Rebecca Hendricks has her bag of herbs ready in case of sickness, though she could not save her two young sons from dying of pneumonia in the winter of 1876, nine days apart. 

    My great-grandfather Dr. Jacob Thomas Crocker is there with his medical bag, too. He was a horse-and-buggy country doctor during the influenza epidemic of 1918, when over 7,000 people died in Arkansas.

    The boat pitches and slides down another trough, then slowly climbs upward again. 

    “This, too, shall pass,” they say to me, and I hear the fiddle music begin. 

     “We are our grandmothers’ prayers
    We are our grandfathers’ dreaming
    We are the breath of our ancestors…”

    “We Are,” Sweet Honey in the Rocks

  • White Peonies

    May 25, 2020

    The petals pool around the blue vase
    Set between the candle sticks that we lit every night
    For dinner
    All those years

    And my fingers brush the softness
    Reminded of Swan Lake and the
    Light I saw reflected in your eyes
    That first night at the ballet

    So much a part of my childhood
    So much not a part of yours

    And reminded too of standing with you
    In Sissinghurst Gardens in early spring
    its White Room empty and quiet
    No white roses climbing, no flowers blooming
    And saying, “It is too bad we won’t see this”

    And you saying “We will come back”

    And we did.

  • The Great Blue Heron

    May 10, 2020

    She walked across my hill 

    As stately

    As the Queen had done across her Palace gardens—

    Pausing among the rising grasses

    Her head lit by the western sun

    And I wondered if she were a messenger

    from my husband or even 

    on this Mother’s Day night 

    from my mother…

    But entirely grateful

    For this emissary from 

    Our blue-green world 

    For this moment of wonder

  • Mothers’ Day

    May 8, 2020

    This morning ShutterFly—the photo site where I have many of my photographs stored—delivered to my computer screen a reminder of photographs taken ten years ago, on Mother’s Day weekend May 2010. It is like stepping back in time, and it brings a smile to my face.

    There is a photo of my daughter Melinda and me in this living room, looking into the camera, with slight smiles. I smile back at them. I am wearing a favorite necklace that Bill bought for me on our trip to Peru; it is a blue spiral set into a silver background, the symbol of infinity. I think Bill probably took this photo. He is still alive that May, but frail and pale from the cancer that will take him in July. 

    But the next photo I am sure I took. It is of Melinda and her daughter Emma Rose—my granddaughter. They are sitting on the black leather couch, and Emma is draped on her mother’s shoulder. She is smiling at the camera warmly and so is Melinda. Emma is eight years old, untouched by time and not too much by grief, though she already has lost a grandparent, her grandmother Nancy. But the warm comfortable love between the two is evident. 

    I am very happy that my daughter has a daughter. I love my son, my first-born, but there is something special about the love between a mother and a daughter. I know that is not true for everyone. I have heard the sad stories. But I am fortunate, and so is my daughter. Even now at 18 Emma has a close relationship with her mother. 

    I think of that sunlit Mother’s Day weekend ten years ago, captured forever in these photographs, and I smile again. I will not be with my children and grandchildren this Mother’s Day weekend, sequestered as I am by this pandemic, but I can take comfort in these memories and know that I am loved, as is my daughter. The spiral continues. Happy Mother’s Day, my darling daughter.