Author Archives: kcmoyer65

Bending the Arc toward Justice

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September 29, 2018

I could have been a contender. I have been telling myself in that gravelly Rocky voice, even though I have never seen any of the Rocky films.

I could have been a contender to run for public office: I have the speaking voice, the brains, the charm and magnetism (I tell myself). My late husband always said I could talk to a post, and I can. I never thought of the idea before, and I was busy with my life. But now I am too old to run for public office. Certainly my country needs my help, ever since the office of President was taken by a reality TV star. Not that I have been thinking about the office of President, maybe a seat in the House of Delegates of my state? Or the US Senate, especially now they have entered the debacle of approving the President’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court? Watching the proceedings this week and all the old men in the Senate, I think the Senate could use my help. But I am too old.

But I do get around! I was in the Dirksen Senate Building on Thursday, on the first day of the hearings when Dr. Ford was speaking about her sexual assault by Judge Kavanaugh when they were in high school. That day I was in the offices of Senator Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, where his office floor was filled with young women wearing “Kavanaugh” t-shirts and watching the hearing on the office television. I stepped carefully around the young women, avoiding stepping on their hair, as I delivered my letters to vote against the approval of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In the hall way I passed other women wearing t-shirts saying “I Believe Survivors of Sexual Assault.”

Later Thursday afternoon I was in the atrium of the Hart Building for the silent vigil which included demonstrators with their mouths taped shut to symbolize how survivors of sexual assault have been silenced. The group moved outside, circling Capitol Hill to the sound of drums and chanting: “No No to Kavanaugh” and down the hill to the Mall.

But I was not there the next day, when one of the women in the halls, a survivor of sexual assault, confronted Senator Flake, Republican of Arizona, and told him she was a survivor. “Look at me,” she insisted.

He was getting on an elevator but she held him with her courage and her honest emotion. And Senator Flake then maneuvered the hearing to hold an FBI investigation before a final vote by the full Senate to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. A glimmer of hope.

My daughter age 47 is feeling some regret that she was not part of that march. I am feeling regret that I am too old to run for public office. But as I told her this evening, we were both there at the Women’s March of 2017. We and her husband and her daughter were all in the mighty number that gave that weight and courage and hope to all the women who decided to run for public office for the first time in this election of November 2018. These women who are running have brains and back ground and speaking ability and empathy, and they can talk to posts with charm…and they are not too old.

Dear sisters, we do not have to be that single voice of persuasion at the elevator, we just have to be the weight that jumps onto the Arc…and bends it toward Justice in the all the ways that we can.

Lying Awake

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June 28, 2018

Lying awake
The clock hands moving
1:30 am
2:00 am

And the usual meditation chant is not working:
Breathe in peace
Breathe out love
Breathe in
Breathe out
In
Out
2:30 am

And the tidal pool of dreams
With its clear waters
And tiny shells and fish
Does not pull me under
Into sleep
3:00 am

Because my monkey mind
Keeps slipping away
On the look out for
The monster with the face of a turtle

Who is smiling

Or my monkey mind is busy writing notes
To those even more terrified and worried and angry
Than I

And those notes say:
You are loved
You are not alone
I stand with you

 

The Doe

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The Doe

When I see you in the late afternoon sun,
Folding your legs under you to lie beside my pasture fence,
Your ears pricked for the slightest sound,
Your large eyes staring to the south

I forget for a moment
Your depredations against my garden
Your devouring of my tulips, lilies, roses—
All those now abandoned as a fool’s dream–
Your nibbling of my acuba, hostas, and Solomon’s seal,
The tender buds of the white azaleas—

And now for this moment
See only your gentle beauty
In the shadows of this spring day.

April 30, 2018

Red Kite in a Blue Sky

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March 19, 2018

I am lying in the Lafuma recliner that my older brother gave us years ago, my head pointed toward the floor and my feet pointed toward the ceiling.  I have put this outdoor recliner into service in my living room, because a week ago today I had total knee replacement of my left knee and this recliner does the best job of elevating my leg and minimizing the swelling. I have an ice pack wrapped around the knee and am covered from toes to neck by a soft red blanket that my friend Tanya gave me. The first time I used this chair for surgical recuperation was in 2004 when I was recovering from foot surgery. Then I had Bill to help me, and a little bell on the side table to ring when I needed him. I need him now.

Total knee replacement is not really an accurate term; it is more an enhancement of what is already there, plus a plastic disc in place of the missing cartilage. I prefer not to think of what the surgeon and his helpers did to my knee, but I know from the operation on my right knee three years ago that ultimately this knee with its titanium parts will be an improvement. Right now the knee hurts. The whole left leg hurts and has turned shades of blue and yellow, with bruises from thigh to ankle bone.

I miss Bill. He was there when I became violently ill with food poisoning at my mother’s apartment. He commandeered a wheelchair from the lobby of the senior high-rise, loaded my helpless self into it, put me into the car, and once home, drove the car onto the lawn and right up to the back door, where he unloaded me and got me into the house and into bed. He probably should have taken me to the hospital, but he got me home.

He was there when our family doctor stitched up the deep triangular cut made by the recalcitrant overloaded wheelbarrow I was trying to get through the pasture gate ahead of the thunderstorm. He was there, letting me hold his hand in a death grip while the foot surgeon removed the stitches that had stayed in a bit too long. He was there for me, all the many times of sickness and hurt.

And I was there for him, as the cancer laid waste to his body.

Now I am alone in our house, and I miss Bill. He was my rock, my anchor. After his death, one of his friends wrote a thoughtful note, making the point of Bill as my rock, though he did not know us well as a couple. I guess he read between the lines of the long letter I wrote every Christmas. He said I was like a kite, and that Bill held the string that kept me on the earth. I did not like that image very much at the time, but I have grown to appreciate it.

I turn my head to look out the large picture window. It is an overcast day but I can see a red kite in a blue sky, with the string held by a brown-haired boy with warm brown eyes. A red kite in a blue sky, tethered by love.

Clogged Toilets and Other Domestic Disasters

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February 18, 2018

Yesterday the toilet in my principal bathroom got clogged, and there was no one to blame but me. And there was no one to fix it but me. When Bill was alive, I would find him and deliver the dreaded news—“the toilet is clogged!”—and he would fetch the red rubber plunger from the tool room and go to work. And eventfully he would have the problem solved. Like removing dead mice from snap traps, clogged toilets were on the list of Bill’s household duties.

In the seven years since Bill’s death, there have been perhaps a dozen times that the toilet has clogged. Early on I went out and bought a bell plunger for the toilet, having read that the our old plunger was for sinks and tubs, and in fact I bought a short-handled plunger for sinks. It took a little muscle power with the plunger, but I normally could fix the problem.

Yesterday, however, plunging did not help. And flushing the toilet brought the water level dangerously high. I shut the lid and let the water seep down the trap, while I consulted YouTube. If you have not turned to YouTube to find instructions, you are not living in the 21st century. You can find help for anything on YouTube. I have used it to learn how to remove lightbulbs that have broken off at the base (needle-nosed pliers or a raw potato) or how to snake out a sink pipe in the wall (a good quality auger and patience) or how to replace a pull-out kitchen faucet. A woman friend used YouTube to learn how to replace a garbage disposal.

So yesterday I watched a number of YouTube videos, some by professional plumbers, some by amateurs. There were directions for using liquid soap and hot water, for plungers, for toilet augers—and I feared that a toilet auger would be my next Amazon purchase. But one YouTube video by a professional plumber gave me hope; he explained the need to let the bell plunger slowly fill with water before beginning to plunge—and he had the toilet in the video cleared in 11 seconds. And with that guidance, I did the same.

I don’t need my Superwoman cape, just access to the Internet and YouTube.

Praise Be for Small Things

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February 2, 2018

Bill and I put our bird-feeders at the back of the house, outside the kitchen door. There Bill mounted the large pole feeder for the sunflower seeds and hung the tube feeder for the thistle, and I hung the bluebird feeder which Bill at first laughed at, and then conceded that yes, it did attract bluebirds. We also suspended a large suet feeder from a branch; it has a long wooden tail and even the pileated woodpecker is attracted to it. Two years ago my cousin Carla gave me for Christmas two wire spheres to hold suet pellets, and I hung one outside the kitchen window.

In January I hung the extra wire sphere filled with suet pellets outside the living room picture window, from the hook where in the rest of the year a hummingbird feeder hangs. And now this late afternoon, with the sun light slanting low through the willow oak, the small birds are busy, clinging one at a time to the sphere, or scrambling on the ground in the flower bed searching for suet bits — Carolina wrens, tufted titmice, hairy and downy woodpeckers. The cats are mesmerized and so I am.

Praise be for small things.

“Single Girl Oh Single Girl*”

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January 31, 2018

“So, how do you like life as a single?” Sue my water aerobics instructor cheerfully asked me, as I sat in the hot tub, my arthritic left knee bent to receive the warm jets. She was standing above me, ready to take the next class, my 8:00 am class having finished.

I was so gobsmacked by the question that I do not know what I answered. I babbled some reply, and Sue went back to the pool to teach her class. She had commented to me once or twice that I seemed strong and independent. Perhaps she admired that. She is ten years younger than I, and married.

Bill died over seven years ago, and I never have thought of myself as single. I am a widow. I am on my own, but I did not choose to be this way. Maybe those who are single do not choose to be so, either, but I think they have more say in their situation. Bill and I were married for 45 years, and his death from cancer ripped the fabric of our married life in two.

On most forms that ask for marital status there is a box for widowed. Except on the income tax returns; there I have to check off Single, and I resent that.

So how do I like life as a single? I get to do what I want, when I want, without consulting my husband. I get to hold a holiday open house by myself, without consulting the resident introvert.  I get to stay up late and watch a movie, without Bill saying, “Are you still up?” I get to plan overseas travel to suit myself. And I get to worry about the woodpeckers drilling holes in the siding alone, and worry about my upcoming surgery alone. I get to pay all the bills, and worry if there will be enough money. I get to celebrate my birthday alone.

And I miss Bill every day.

*Title of American Folk Song

Sweet Betsy from Pike

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Sweet Betsy from Pike

November 29, 2017

Happy to say that Old Betsy my 17 year old Toyota Tundra is running again, after a jump start last Saturday from my USAA road service. I came home from a trip to find that Betsy’s battery was dead and that her trickle-charger had been unplugged by unknown agents. I was very annoyed. My son had rigged up the trickle-charger because I drove the truck so seldom that the battery frequently was dead. This time before calling for road service I bought a new battery for Betsy, but it was not needed on Saturday, so I have it on stand-by for this winter.

Bill bought Old Betsy in the fall of 2000 on our return from England, pretty much on his own with no input from me. He drove her to his part-time job, and used her for hauling fence posts and other supplies for our little country home.  He was not always careful about dents and scratches to Betsy, and when I complained, he would answer, “She’s a truck!”

I remember Bill’s driving Old Betsy to Richmond to the VA Center for the clinical cancer trials that last winter 2009 of his life. In fact, that is the memory I have every time I put my foot on the running board and swing into the driver’s seat, remembering Bill behind the wheel, me in the passenger seat, going down I-95 to Richmond. A lost cause for him, but he was hoping it might help someone else with cancer. So he put up with drinking that awful chalky stuff and all the blood draws and those drives down 95 to Richmond and back.

Tomorrow I will drive Betsy to the car wash and get her scrubbed clean of the leaf droppings of the summer. Then I will drive her, fresh and shining, to the Lions Club stand and pick out a Christmas tree, the way Bill and I used to do.  And Betsy and I will bring the tree home.

They Were Just There for the Music

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October 3, 2017

They were just there for the music.

On Sunday morning, the first day of October, I went to church. And we sang. We sang “There’s a river flowin’ in my soul” and later “Blue Boat Home.” The children’s choir, lined up on the edge of the platform, sang “It’s Possible” from Seussical the musical.

And the congregation sang “This little light of mine” as the children and teachers left for their classes. I went, too. In my third grade class, we sang “Swimming to the Other Side,” with its wonderful chorus, “we’re all living neath the Great Big Dipper, we’re all washed by the very same rain.” Music unites us, music binds us in community.

And much later on that first day of October, that night after the children were home and in their beds, and I was home asleep in my bed, far across the country in a city that glittered and sparkled with lights at nights, while guitars played and the crowd applauded, a gunman high in a hotel that shimmered like gold in the night aimed his weapons from a broken window and fired at the crowd. Over and over. And the music stopped.

Now I look in my newspaper at the faces of the dead, who were just there for the music and who now are gone, and my heart aches. But I think we must start singing again, and marching, and making changes in this country. 

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMCyYgVDERY