Diary of Not a Wimpy Widow

Category: Uncategorized

  • Turning 80

    I celebrated my 80th birthday a month ago, and one of my friends asked me how it felt to be 80. Mostly I feel surprised and amazed.

    You would think I would know that 80 comes after 79, but I feel as though this 80th birthday came out of no where. It snuck up on me. I don’t feel 80, though when I see candid photographs I have to acknowledge that I am old. I don’t have as many wrinkles as some of my friends, but there is that jawline and the aging neck. 

    I also hear the clock ticking more loudly. Both my parents died in their early 80s. My mother had a heart condition, and I was recently diagnosed with a heart condition, too. I am trying to take care of that problem, with medications and a cardiac ablation, and I need to build my stamina back, too. 

    I have great plans for this new decade, but perhaps I will not get all ten years. The road behind me stretches back for many miles, and the road ahead cannot be as long…nor would I want it to be. But I hope to travel, to explore new places, to spend time in beloved places. I hope to self publish two books. I hope to spend time with family and friends. I hope to stay healthy and in my home.

    A dear friend told me that her rabbi gave a blessing to one of his congregants who was turning 80, and told the woman that according to Jewish tradition, she had now reached the age of strength—strength that comes from eight decades of life experiences and lessons.

    So I have reached the age of strength. May it be so. And may the road lead onward.

    Kristin Moyer

    February 3, 2023

  • Passages

    The tattered books are over fifty years old

Thick board books, with moving wheels 

Showing trucks and fire engines

Beloved by my son

And I hand them now to Kevin the store clerk

Kind and caring to me at the wild bird store

Whose little boy Henry was two yesterday

And who likes books…

That the adventure may go on.


Kristin Moyer
July 12, 2022

  • Summer, 1972, Washington DC

    Pre Roe v. Wade

    We lined up on the Mall

In the hot summer sun and waited

In our white dresses and slacks and shirts

With our signs Freedom of Choice

And finally the march began to move

Off the Mall onto the streets, all of us chanting,

Around a narrow corner where enraged faces

Screamed and shook jars of tiny bodies

Then onto Constitution Avenue

And the marble dome of the Capitol 

Floating like a mirage of Justice 


Kristin Moyer 
June 24, 2022

  • Deep Diving

    In the darkened room
Gel cold on my chest

“Hold your breath”

And like a diver
looking for treasure

I hold my breath
and turn my head 

to see for the first time

Beating for eighty years

The chambers 
of my heart



May 5, 2022
Kristin Moyer

  • Fall 1926

    The man walks down the lane
Between the rows of elms he planted
To the mailbox by the dusty road

Opens the door on the box
Empty
No letter from his girl

His first born child so little at birth 
Tears had come to his eyes
Fearing for her life

But she survived and grew
Smart as a whip
A good girl

Now off in the city
Gone to college
Too busy to write

The man turns 
Empty handed
Chores to do in the barn

No foreshadowing 
Of the stroke that will come
In the spring 



Kristin Moyer
For my grandfather

  • Web of Life

    March 5, 2022

With every wedding we attend

We are there again
Facing our loved one
Our hands clasped
Faces aglow

And with every deathbed we attend

The river smooth or storm tossed
We are there again
Holding a hand
Seeing the light fade

held in this cradle
Of memory and love



Kristin Moyer

  • Passages

    
March 3, 2022

I unzip the case, remove the dulcimer
Sleek and shining, walnut and redwood
Lay it on my lap, take up the pick

Strum the simple melodies from memory

The lone wild bird
Shenandoah
The ash grove
Amazing grace

And my dying friend in the bed 
Closes her eyes and smiles

“The lone wild bird in lofty flight”
I sing softly
“Is still with thee and in thy sight”

I never sang for you, dear mother, on your hospital bed
Or for you, dear father, dying alone in the nursing home

But I sing for my friend

“Great spirit come and rest in me.”

  • 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