November 22, 2020
Not quite six o’clock.
I lie in bed, eyes closed:
Grateful for the rain falling on the roof
And for the song of the sparrow outside my window,
Grateful for the cool air I breathe in and breathe out,
For the comfort of warm flannel sheets,
For the cat curled into the comma of my body
Grateful for the blood pulsing through my veins
For my brain, stomach, heart, liver
For all the cells and within them
The tiny mitochondria beating out energy
Grateful for this life.
Kristin Moyer
October 31st, 2020
Zinnias
In the neglected garden
Amidst the tangled weeds
The zinnias
Late-planted and despaired of
Lift their bright heads
Gold and red and lemon
Saying
We are here! we are here!
See! we are beautiful
Blue Moon
In the dark
I look for the moon
Clouds thick in the night
No blue moon for me
But clouds part
The lustrous moon shines
Bright and full
Saying
Do not give up
I am here
October 12, 2020
JuJuBee and her brother Yangtze came to live with me in June of 2015. They were Siamese rescue cats, found in a field in North Carolina, living with a colony of feral cats under the roots of an old tree. I adopted them sight unseen, having lost my two old Siamese sister cats a few months earlier. These two siblings were young, and I wanted a bonded pair.
The two cats had a rough introduction to my home, my fault entirely, but Yangtze as I named him soon settled into his new life. He is a very affectionate cat, one who seeks out my lap, cuddles next to my side in the mornings when I am in bed and reaches out his paw to tap my chin in greeting. His purring soothes me, especially in the isolation of this pandemic.
JuJuBee is suspicious of the world. She is partially blind in both eyes. After five years with me, she now trusts me so that she no longer runs out of a room when I enter, but she is not a cat who wants petting, and I don’t think I have ever heard her purr. Perhaps once. She now will jump on my bed in the morning when Yangtze is there, and she lets me stroke her fur a few times.
Stroking her fur is how I knew that it was extremely matted, and so this morning I launched the campaign to catch JuJu Bee and brush her. I have done this several times before, and although the catching part is very difficult, she never resists the brushing and combing…perhaps the brushing feels good.
This morning’s campaign was almost a failure from a start. I have to shut all the doors in my small ranch house to narrow the catch area to the central part of the house, and the door shutting has to be done in a certain sequence or JuJuBee is forewarned. But I got all the doors shut and JuJuBee contained in the main living area, where she howled as though the world was ending, piddled on the floor, and fled for the corner windows of the dining area.
In trying to pick up this almost fifteen pound cat from the corner windows, I pulled a muscle in my lower back, and I howled in pain, too. One sharp claw punctured my wrist. But I was able to ease her onto a nearby flat space, and sitting on a dining room chair, I brushed and combed her until all the mats were out. She did not struggle or resist, and jumped down only after I stopped stroking her and I myself stood up.
And later I thought…this is what it is like to give with no expectation of receiving anything in return. JuJuBee probably will never be a cat who purrs or licks my hand. She has lived with me for five years and now is trusting me more, but I do not expect her to change very much.
And I had a glimmer—a faint glimmer—of understanding of what it must be like for those parents of children with severe disabilities of one kind or another, for those caretakers of adults who cannot say thank you for the simplest act of kindness.
And so my question for you is this:
If we can give without expectation of any return
does that expand our hearts and
take us further along the road
to our best selves?
Or do we need to be innocent of reflection also?
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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