Diary of Not a Wimpy Widow

Blog

  • Singer of Birches

    The tree crew is here today. They came with a big truck and a chipper and had a difficult time lining up the truck to pull through the pasture gate and then turn around so the truck is heading down the drive. I stopped watching and went into the house. For the past two hours the team of three has been up the big maple tree in my back yard—well, two are up the tree, I think, and one on the ground. That tree is a glorious color in the fall, and then drops a thick load of leaves over my shade garden. For the past few years it has taken to dropping branches unexpectedly. Last month after a wind storm I discovered a very large branch had fallen next to the glider I had bought and put together in 2015 to honor what would have been my 50th wedding anniversary—-we made it to our 45th anniversary before Bill’s death. That heavy branch smashed a plastic side table and would have squashed me, had I been under it.

    But I love that maple tree nonetheless. Bill and I planted it in 1978, the year after we moved here. We also planted the two willow oaks and the pear tree….too close to the house…and then a long list of other trees, some we planted, others planted by landscapers. Not all the trees have survived, but I think we planted over thirty trees on this property, and the edges of the lot are ringed with wild native trees, including hickory, persimmon, wild cherry, eastern red cedar, and tulip poplar. 

    I grew up loving trees. I have early memories of the birch trees with their shimmering branches at our cabin northern Minnesota. My mother hung a hammock for me between two birches to the west of the cabin. I was three when I first rocked in that hammock, toes reaching for the blue sky and singing to myself. My father would come along and say, “What are you thinking about, CheeChee?”—-the name I called myself before I could pronounce Kristin. But I was thinking about everything and nothing. 

    There were tall straight Norway pines at the cabin, too, more stately than my sister birches. On the hill above the cabin there was a Norway that I climbed when I was nine or so, with the neighbor kids. A young sapling grew up next to it, and I could shinny up the sapling and then grasp the lowest branch of the Norway and swing up onto that first branch. And from there pull myself from one branch to the next until I was high enough to see over the other trees and across the lake. I remember hanging onto the branches high in the tree, feeling the wind on my face and hearing the cry of the loons, thinking myself invincible. 

    During that same time period we were living in Fort Knox Kentucky, in military rowhouses encircled by red clay, and there were few if any trees to climb there until we moved into a rambling house next to an old fenced cemetery  and surrounded by military barracks. But there was a big sassafras tree in the backyard, perfect for me to climb, with a low enough branch to start me upward and a very comfortable branch for me to sit on and sulk when I was mad at my mother…which seemed to be often during that time. I was in seventh grade. I liked to chew the young sassafras leaves and small twigs and smell the bark…it smelled like the South and summer. 

    By the time I was in high school I had stopped climbing trees but I never stopped loving them. Their dangerous beauty surrounds my house now, and in the late summers each year I return to the Minnesota cabin, and sitting in the hammock I sing to the birches my sweet songs. 

    February 16, 2024

  • Wanderlust

    And so we dream of adventuring

And store the travel brochures in shoeboxes on our closet shelves

And fall asleep singing to ourselves “on the shores of Mandalay where the flying fishes play”

And then find a man who has a compass in his heart too

Who hears the seagulls flying over Illinois corn fields

And in time

We take flight

So many places with strange sounding names…


Now in this octogenarian decade
The names still call to us, like sirens on the rocks

All those points not yet seen or touched

But the bed also sets up a steady hum

Home, it hums, home, stay here, be warm
Snuggle down in the sleek sheets
Never move again

Outside in the winter moonlight, the Lorelei sing

Kristin Moyer
January 2024

  • January 8th, 2024

    I am taking down my Christmas tree, two days after 12th Night, on the 8th day of January, and I am thinking of my mother, who was the creator of Christmas celebrations in my family when I was growing up. 

    She was the first generation American in her family, with both parents immigrating from Sweden, and she brought to her marriage all the Swedish traditions of Yuletide celebrations—- evergreens and a fir tree in the house, packages wrapped in white and tied with red ribbon, a Yulbord on Christmas Eve. 

    When my mother was growing up, there were journeys by a horse-drawn sleigh across the snow-covered fields to midnight services on Christmas Eve at the little Lutheran church in central Minnesota. Santa arrived at their home to the tune of sleigh bells. Family gathered on Christmas Eve, and extended family gathered for Second Day of Christmas. 

    My father came from an English/Scots-Irish family in Arkansas, and I don’t think his mother made much fuss over Christmas at all.  

    But my mother did, and she inculcated her four children with the rituals of a Swedish Christmas, though we never celebrated St. Lucia’s Day. We carried my mother’s  traditions forward into our own families when we married. 

    All the ornaments now are off my tree, including the very old glass ornaments stored in a box labeled in my mother’s hand-writing, For Bill and Kristin. Now I am struggling with untangling the six strands of white lights from the tree, which has dried out terribly. It stopped taking up water at some point. 

    My lower back is hurting. I have to sit down for a bit. I am 81 years old, three years younger than my mother who died on this day, January 8th, 1992, thirty-two years ago. I was at the hospital when she died. My sister and my two children were were there, too. It was a bright sunny January day. 

    The last strands of lights are off the tree, and I spread a sheet on the living room floor, press my foot on the lever of the German made tree stand, and gently lift and lower the dried out tree to the sheet.

    I haul the awkward tree bundle out of the living room, squeezing past furniture, and out the kitchen door, thinking of my mother on this anniversary of her death.

     Not long ago, I read that a person’s life span is not measured by the actual number of years lived, but by the ripples they created during their lives. 

    If I look at the ripples my mother created with her Christmas rituals alone, those ripples will go on for a very long time.

     My older brother had two children, and they have four children total. I have two children, and they have three children total. My sister has two children and one of those sons has four children. Even if only small pieces of my mother’s traditions are carried forward, there are eleven in the newest generation to be the bearers. 

    I drop the tree bundle on the kitchen patio. It now is almost dark. Tomorrow I will put the tree up in a corner of the yard, to be a winter shelter for the little birds.

    I look up at the dark sky, and turn back to the house. Lots of clean up still to do. 

    January 8, 2024

    Kristin Moyer

  • Winter Dreams

    For those of you who grew up with winter snows:
May your dreams be filled with the snows of childhood

 With snow angels and snow men

 With sledding on nearby hills and trying out new Christmas skis

With the taste of brittle snow candy made by pouring hot maple syrup on fresh snow

 With the smell of wet mittens drying out on radiators

And with the sound of snow falling softly all around you in the winter's night. 

Sleep well, sweet dreams.

    January 2, 2024

  • Live Slowly, Move Simply, Look Softly

    My house sitter Marcie knows how to relish and savor my home on the hill, perhaps better than I do, because I always have a long list of jobs I must do. I look around the garden and see all the weeds I must pull. Marcie who also is a gardener looks and sees the flowers.

    In the mornings when Marcie is at my house, she likes to take her mug of freshly brewed coffee outside to sit on the wooden bench under the maple tree. Kali my old dog is still inside, asleep and snoring. From the bench Marcie can see all the birds who flock to the feeders: the cardinals in the bright coats, the chickadees who bob through the air, and the tufted titmice who wait on the branches. Sometimes the bluebird darts inside its special feeder for its treat of dried mealworms, and the downy woodpecker taps at the suet feeder. On the rough bark of the maple the white breasted nuthatch hops headfirst down the trunk, seeking insects. 

    The world is filled with jubilant birdsong. Under the feeders the gray squirrels and chipmunks compete for fallen seeds. One morning Marcie was sitting so silently that the red fox who has a den by the fence came to the feeder for fallen seeds. It sensed Marcie’s presence, raised its head, and looked directly into her eyes before it turned and ran.

    I think I must take my own mug of coffee and sit on the bench under the maple tree and open myself to the quiet morning.

    Kristin Moyer

    Written September 2013–posting November 2023

  • Gratitude 2023

    November 8, 2023

she swabs my shoulder briskly
and I look away as the needle sinks in

recalling my gratitude for that first Covid shot 
and then the second one
that released me into daylight and hugs

today is my seventh Covid shot

pushing my shirtsleeve down
walking into the sunshine of my world
on this bright November day

now missing 1,136,920 of my people due to Covid-19 
less we forget

no taps will be played 
remember them

 Kristin Moyer

  • Ritual of Candle Lighting: Joys and Sorrows

    November 5, 2023

Lining up in silence while the music plays

Holding the taper to the small candle in the sand

Silent with joy or sorrow, intent on the job and the moment

All woven fine

And the tiny flame catches and glows

And the candle passes down the ranks of the waiting

To the old

To the young

To men

To women

To those of no gender at all

To white, to black, to colors in between

From hand to waiting hand

Sometimes with a smile

Sometimes somberly

But the flame passes

From hand to hand


Kristin Moyer

  • Sweden

    June, 2023

    I am sitting in the car which my cousin Kristina is driving along the highway, through the fields and woods of Vestergotland, near the shores of the great Lake Vanern.

    I am looking out the car window at the landscape where my grandmother was born, and my great-grandmother, and her mother.

    And then I am suffused with a sense of peace…I breathe in and out, not saying a word. 

    It is as though my eyes are absorbing the landscape and then transmitting the view to all the cells in my body, down to the mitochondria beating out energy, these cells inherited from my mother, and in turn inherited from her mother, and through all the women in my maternal line. 

    This great peace fills every part of my body. I feel my heart beat slowing. 

    It is a though my body has recognized this land, and every cell within me is saying

    “You are home.”

    It is like nothing I have ever felt before. And the moment passes, and we drive on. 

    Kristin Moyer

  • Vigil

    I have been here before

No more desire to eat
No more desire to drink
Comforted by the warmth of bed

My beloved husband was dying and
I did not spend every minute with him
Too busy trying to keep it all rolling
Calling friends to come see him
Doing laundry for gods sake

While children and friends sat with him

Though in the night I was there beside him
The hospital bed pushed next to ours
So I could touch him
And hear the change in his breathing…

There is that

So now I stay in this room 
On a bright May day
With my dying cat
My sweet boy during the pandemic

No more desire to eat
No more desire to drink
Comforted by the warmth of bed


Kristin Moyer
May 27, 2023

  • Mother’s Day 2023

    Sitting under the snowbell tree--
Around me the patio covered
 With blossoms the color of old bridal veils
The sweet scent rising 

I am remembering the birth of my first child 

Brought into the world after hours of labor
“Hello Tiny Tim!” said my doctor 
And then they bore him away
Not to be given to me until half a day later

And my second baby

Arriving like the whirlwind after induced labor
Laid on my belly as they rolled the gurney 
Down the hallway 
“Welcome to the world, my daughter”
My blood pressure dropping

And no men allowed those days
Relegated to the waiting rooms
20th Century births

The blossoms fall like gentle rain

I pick one up from my lap

It is as delicate 
As lovely 
As mysterious 
As those babies 
Born so many years ago


--Kristin Moyer