Carole Moses

  My husband and I planted a scrawny lilac by the side of our front lawn, next to our driveway, about thirty years ago. It has grown so enthusiastically that we have to cut it back a bit so that we can walk on the sidewalk in front of our house, without being slapped in the face by its branches. When it blooms in June, I love to sit on my front porch and simply inhale its wonderful fragrance. I’m always a little melancholy when the flowers die off. But today, as I was getting out of our car, I noticed little green buds on the bush. Excited, I asked my husband what they were. He said they were seed pods, although lilacs usually propagate by putting out runners. I am thrilled. These seeds promise new life and it seems hopeful that as soon as the lilac stops blooming, it begins preparing to bloom next year. I find, as I get older, the signs of nature’s regeneration become more and more meaningful to me.

As I walk around the perimeter of the pool at the water aerobics class at the Y, I do not join in many of the exercises that the other women do (and the class is totally female). I’ve just had a knee replacement and--with my Parkinson’s Disease--I have all I can do keep my balance. The women in the class come in different sizes, and there is an unpretentiousness about them that  I find appealing. One woman is enormous and bears her extra weight proudly: She wears a flashy flowered swim suit and says that the suit is as bold and colorful as she us. Many of the women are overweight, and even those who are not are showing signs of aging. Cellulite abounds, and various moles and age spots litter their skin. And I also struggle with these same physical attributes. But the other day, our instructor told them to paddle backwards sitting on their buoyant boards while she worked with me on a different exercise at the other end of the pool. Then they were to return to us. And when I saw thes...

Several years ago we had a severe thunderstorm that damaged a lot of trees in town. I especially noted that a tree in the front yard of a home a block from my house had been hit by lightning. All that remained was a hollowed-out trunk and black burned wood on both sides of the hollow pit that used to be the trunk of the tree. By the end of that summer, however,  green leaves started to spill out of the abyss in the tree. And as I drove by this summer I was hard-pressed to distinguish the blasted tree from its healthy brothers and sisters around it, the greenery overflowing in such abundance. I wonder if the people who own that house are aware of the miracle that Nature has performed in their yard.

When the nursing home called me at 2:00 in the morning to tell me that my mother had unexpectedly died, I did not feel sorrow, just a sense of relief. There would be no more midnight trips to the emergency room to tend to her. These trips were exhausting, lasting several hours, and I had to be up and ready to teach the next day.   I told my colleagues of my mother’s death, because it seemed odd not to mention it since we were such a close-knit department. But I had to stop myself from saying “Oh, it’s OK” when they commiserated with me or offered heartfelt sympathy. That would not have been the response of a loving and dutiful daughter. And my family believed in the appearance of a happy family above all. When I returned from college the first year at Christmas, I told my mother I thought I would skip the midnight Christmas service because I wasn’t sure I believed in God anymore. She lashed out and asked me “What would Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt think?”  (an older, very nice couple ...

When I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, it was easy for me at first. Half a low dosage pill twice a day and I was fine. I remember teaching a class in American literature and, when the students had left, simply twirling around the room in joy that the pills eliminated all symptoms of the disease and allowed me to pursue a job that I dearly loved: teaching. Eleven years later, the pills are losing their effectiveness even though my doctor has increased the dose to the maximum. And I have had to retire from teaching since I can no longer write and grade papers and my speech was affected by the deep brain stimulation that I underwent for the Parkinson’s. There is compensation for this, however: I’ve discovered a  goodness in people that I didn’t know existed. I am very unsteady on my feet and fall a lot. There is always somebody nearby who rushes to my aid. I  have been picked up off the floor of our local supermarket, picked up  from a sidewalk outside a theater by a group o...

When I was a young child,  everyone said I looked like my maternal aunt. I adored this relative, who always had time to play with me and help me with schoolwork. Her name was “Bernice” but I always called her “Aunt Bunny.” We were more like friends than aunt and niece. When we were learning to tell time in school—in the days before digital clocks—I was totally lost.    There was a class game in which someone  took the moveable hands of a cardboard clock and set a time.  The first student  to tell the time correctly was then entrusted with resetting  it. If, by any miracle, I guessed the correct time another student had set, I  always reset the clock to the hour or half-hour since they were the only positions I knew. And my teacher would say, “Well, Carole has made this very easy for someone in the class,” not knowing how bewildered I was. I remember my aunt sitting down with me at my grandparents’ kitchen table and working with me until I understo...

A few nights ago, we had a tremendous windstorm. The house across the street from us had their front tree fall over right into the house. A similar incident happened down the block from us, and Almond St. was closed while people worked at removing the tree. For most of the day, you heard saws, as tree branches were broken up. Today, my husband and I went for a walk in Brandon Park. Fifteen trees were damaged in some way: some merely lost branches, but others were torn up by the roots and lying on their sides in strange positions. What struck me about these trees was how beautiful they were. A tree that had been partially blown  over looked as if  it was bowing from the waist to some unseen tree spirit, asking for a dance, perhaps a minuet. And one tree with an extensive  root system had been torn out of the ground and lay in its side.  As I watched, the roots formed a design in my mind’s eye, similar to a beautiful abstract mural. Then I looked again, and my mind, tr...

I sit down to begin my centering prayer. Calling upon God to enter me, I have chosen the phrase “trust God” to repeat over and over. Before many minutes have passed, my dog, who is lying on our couch sleeping, begins moving her legs and making whimpering sounds. Is she having a nightmare? Or is she joyously dreaming of chasing other dogs in a field? Reluctant to interrupt a pleasant dream, I say in a low,  calm voice, “It’s OK, Chloe.” This just about brings her to the brink of consciousness, but does not detract from her ability to fall asleep again. I again begin uttering my phrase “trust God” when again I hear Chloe running in her sleep and whimpering. I again reassure her and she drifts back to sleep. But when I return to repeat the holy phrase I have chosen, I find myself saying,  “trust Chloe” a few times before I catch and correct myself. I laugh internally at this slip of the tongue.   But, in retrospect, I wonder if “trust Chloe” is not honoring God as much as “t...

As we drive through the country during winter, I notice that the trees are barren and striking in their stark outlines. Everybody looks forward to the burgeoning leaves and their infinite shades of green in the spring and summer. And I admit that I, also, eagerly await the greening of the forest. But I am trying to discern God’s hands in everything, even the short, cold, winter days and the shapes of the trees, stark against the sky. The very pared-down forms of the trees in winter allow me to enjoy an infinity of shapes denied by the bushiness of foliage in spring that reduces one tree to looking very much like another. In winter, we can see the uniqueness of each tree. One could even see winter trees as an exercise in spiritual democracy. All the trees have different shapes, but there is a pleasing silhouette to them all. The trees accept their differences. If only people could accept their differences as easily as they do.

In Williamsport,  Pennsylvania, we had a snowstorm in March that shut down schools, but almost immediately after the first official day of spring,  it was warm and sunny, and our daffodils began to bloom. I am so eager for spring to arrive that I watch to see the first weeping willow begin to turn green, since that is an early sign of the departure of winter. But, alas, they have not started to turn yet. But as I sit in the passenger seat while my husband drives on the back roads, I watch the trees in the distance, ahead of our car. I notice what seems to be a very pale green color on their bark. But when we pass directly by them and I look out the window sideways at them, all I see is barren, wintry, leafless branches.  I ask myself why trees in the distance seem to be greening, while these same trees looked at up close seem to have retained their barren winter coloration. Is it wish fulfillment? I want to see green, so I do? I reject this thesis, however, because it see...

One day when my husband and I were taking a country walk,  he happened to say—I don’t remember what we were talking about—that one reason that native Americans were so easily beset by the colonists is because they had not seen their ships arrive and therefore did not  know of their  presence. He said that, since they did not expect to see boats on the ocean, they had not seen them. My scientific rationalist nature ridiculed this idea: if ships suddenly appeared on the horizon, surely the denizens of America would perceive them. How could they not? I  felt smug in what seemed to me my irrefutable logic. A few weeks later, the college that I taught at had a guest speaker for the Teacher Improvement Committee. I don’t even remember what his over-all thesis was, but he began by assuring us that when we were in front of a classroom and felt we knew the dynamics of the class—which students were listening and taking the course seriously and which were slacking off—we really...