Diary of Not a Wimpy Widow

Blog

  • Journal of the Plague Years, continued

    February 1, 2022

    We have entered the third year of the pandemic. Last winter the covid vaccines started rolling out for adults, and we thought we could see the light breaking out. But then Delta hit in the summer, and that variant made people much sicker than the original virus. Boosters were recommended, and in the fall people lined up and bared their arms again. 

    But not all people. A minority of Americans but still a sizable number were anti-vaccine for various reasons, and some of that number also were anti-masking. Wearing masks was mandated in some states, and in other states such as Florida governors banned mask mandates. 

    However, covid rates were dropping. By November 2021, the outlook was brighter. I attended a play at the Kennedy Center where everyone had to show proof of vaccination and wear masks while inside. There was a feeling of relief and excitement in the air at being inside a theater again, and at the end of the first musical number everyone in that packed house stood and applauded. The play was the musical Hadestown, based on the classic Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which Orpheus fails to lead Eurydice out of the Underworld. Perhaps a foreshadowing of what was to come….

    Because about that same time a new variant Omicron arose in South Africa and soon swept around the world like the tsunami of all viruses. It was not as deadly as Delta but it was highly contagious, and even those who were vaccinated and had received boosters contracted covid. And although most cases could be treated at home, the sheer numbers packed hospitals. In some places hospitals had to ration care. People went back to meetings and church services via Zoom. 

    Now covid numbers are dropping again, but unevenly by state. In the United States over 886,000 Americans have died since the pandemic began. The global number of deaths is over five million. 

    When we finally emerge, like Orpheus from the Underworld, we must not forget these years and all that has been lost. 

  • Winter Musings

    December 3, 2021

    During my early grade school years we lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and my memories of winters there were of snow and cold, mittens and mufflers, snow boots with buckles, and outerwear steaming on radiators. 

    We had skis and skates and visits to the local parks where we skied down short little hills and skated on the bumpy ice of frozen small ponds. We made snow balls and snow forts. When we came inside there was cocoa and music and books. 

    And there was Christmas and all its magic, which my mother worked so hard to create and which I think we all took for granted. Now I hang some of those fragile glass ornaments on my own fresh green tree and think of her. 

    Some winter I would like to fly away after Christmas, back to Minnesota, to the little cabin built by my parents on a ledge half way down the hill, overlooking the lake. From that perch I would be able to look out over the frozen ice to the pine trees on the other side. At night the moon would glitter on the snow and the ice, and the wind sigh through the trees. But that is a fantasy, because there is no running water in winter, the only heat comes from electric baseboards, and the steps down the hill are a toboggan run for local friends. But nevertheless I imagine sitting there with my mother’s ghost looking over the hill and lake she loved so much, listening to the winter wind.

  • Last Swim of the Season

    October 15, 2021

The grip of cold 
around the ankles
around the calves
around the thighs

and then the plunge into the water

which accepts you
without condition 
without question 

and cradles you 
as you turn onto your back
to see overhead

blue sky breaking

  • October Moon

    October 13, 2021

October Moon

The slim October moon
Is shining
Reflected in the pool below
A sliver of a glimmer

Above my head
The bats fly
Swooping for late insects

The year is waning 

And the globe turns

Heedless 
Of moon 
Or pool 
Or bats 
or insects

Or of me.

  • Home Again, Bass Lake 2021

    Wind soughing through birch boughs

    Sun lighting Norway trunks

    Blue sky breaking overhead

    On the far shore windows glint with setting sun

    A loon calls

    And those ghosts mounting the shore path to the cabin?

    I know

    And love

    




    




    

    


    


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    Sixtieth
    


    

    Sixtieth


 Gray, white, dyed, thinning…no hair
 Most of us on our own two feet
 Walker, cane, oxygen
 Married, widowed, divorced, single
 Those who traveled and
 Those who stayed home
 No one spared from sorrow

 Some hard to remember
 Others known by those blue eyes
 Or that smile

 Vietnam, heart attacks, cancer
 Ocean waves
 But yet we are here

 Together
 

 Kristin Crocker Moyer 
    

    


    


  • 


    


    The Music of the Cicadas
    


    

    June, 2004: the 17-year cicadas Brood X emerge from the ground in Virginia and fourteen other states and the District, as far south as Georgia and as far north as Michigan. 
    




    I was sitting on the garden bench under the maple tree early one morning last month, when I saw my first cicada. It was walking slowly but firmly along the ground toward the maple tree. It hit a piece of large bark mulch, turned upside down, briefly bicycled its legs in the air, then righted itself, and continued its march toward the tree. “March” was the word; it seemed to have a definite idea of its goal. It reached the trunk of the tree and marched up the trunk. 
    




    Since that morning, more and more cicadas have emerged in our yard. We seem to be in a high density area of the emergence of this brood: high density is defined as over a million cicadas per acre. We have over two and a half acres—perhaps over two million cicadas. In the back yard around the maple tree, every leaf of every shrub is covered with the shells of the cicadas, and shells litter the ground like brown confetti.
    




    For the past month the air has been filled with cicadas flying from tree to tree, sometimes bumbling into us. The air is filled, too, with the high-pitched unearthly music of the male cicadas, pleading to the females. During the heat of the day, the sound of the cicadas rises, and I have to retreat to the house to get any peace. 
    




    Now, at the peak of the cycle, the cicadas are busy mating; the females lay their eggs in the outer twigs of the branches, which then break off and fall to the ground. The exhausted bodies of the adult cicadas litter the paths, the patios, and the ground, like tiny revelers after Mardi Gras. The eggs will hatch, and the larvae crawl back into the ground, where they will live for the next 17 years, quietly sucking fluids from the tree roots. At least, that is how I understand their life cycle.
    




    Bill and I are 61 and here to witness this emergence of the cicadas. Our son and our daughter are married, and our daughter has a little girl, age two.
    




    May 31st 2021
    




    Brood X has emerged once more, and Bill is not here to listen to their music. He died of cancer in July of 2010. My granddaughter now is 19, and my son has two children ages 10 and 7. There have been other deaths in my extended family, and other births. The rhythm of our human lives is different from these cicadas; we move to different music, but the beat is the same. 
    




    I read in the paper that the cicadas sing up to the very moment of their death, and that the last note of their music sounds like a heart monitor fading. Now, listening to the music of the cicadas, I sing my own melody, moving forward on the great spool of time. 
    

    


    


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    Ten Years Later
    


    

    The hawk flies high
In the clear blue sky
Reflected in the pool below,
A messenger I know. 

The hawk knows me, 
My husband said
Adding seeds to the feeder,
I am the feeder of birds. 

Now at the poolside,
The wind lifting its wings
The hawk knows me, 
I am the writer of words. 

April 20, 2021

Kristin Moyer
    

    


    


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    First Blush
    


    

    White of pear
Pink of cherry 
Purple of plum
Tender green of leaves

On my window sill the wren sings
Delirious with spring

As though it were here 
For the first time.


April 13, 2019
    




    

    


    


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    What We Learned…post March 2020
    


    

    Handshakes are bad.
    




    Hugs are worse.
    




    Masks are good. (except by Mask-Deniers.)
    




    “Pretty mask!” is a compliment.
    




    PPE is essential..and there is not enough of it.
    




    Those marks on the floor mean to stand 6 feet apart.
    




    Hunkering down means stay at home. 
    




    Zoom is a verb, a noun, and a pronoun. 
    




    “You are muted” is said frequently, with a sigh.
    




    Covid brain fog, pandemic hair, Blursday enter the language. 
    




    High school graduations are drive by. 
    




    College freshmen launch in their bedrooms at home.
    




    Grocery packages are washed, and mail is quarantined.
    




    Large weddings and funerals are dangerous. So is choir.
    




    Dog rescue groups have empty shelters.
    




    King Arthur Flour almost doubles its sales.
    




    Plant seed sales hit record highs. 
    




    Vaccines are greeted with tears of joy.