Almost Eden (22 page)

Dear God
, I prayed.
Thank you.

I
crept out of the house early Sunday morning.

Lena was still snoring softly yet, her mouth open, her cheeks rosy with sleep. There wasn’t so much as a sound from Beth’s or Dad’s rooms. Everyone was making up for the sleep we’d lost the night before.

We’d all been too excited to sleep, even after Dad drove us home. We showered and changed into dry clothes while Mom and Beth made hot chocolate for everyone, with marshmallows and everything. The sun was starting to come up, before we finally crawled into our sleeping bags.

Then Mom had gone around and hugged every one of my friends. Me she saved for last.

“Thank you for the adventure,” she whispered in my ear. “And you mustn’t worry about me so much. I’m getting better every day. I’ll be home–”

“Soon Yeah, Morn. I know.” I did know. Mom would be home again soon. Maybe this time it would be for good even.

There was a little smile in the corners of Mom’s mouth. “
Nah yo.
Into your sleeping bag,
kindt.
Everything comes to an end.” The smile spread to her whole mouth and she winked at me as she put out the light. “Except a sausage. It comes to two ends.”

By the time we got up Saturday morning it was almost noon. Dad had taken Mom back to Eden already and smoothed things over with the doctors and nurses. He looked a little worn out from all the smoothing over, but he was helping Beth in the kitchen anyways, cooking up a whole pile of waffles with chokecherry syrup. Then Grandma came over yet, wanting to know what was happening because she’d heard a racket in the middle of the night.

“Just a little star-gazing,
Mutta
,” smiled Dad.

“
Ach!
Since when do you watch stars in the rain?” she tutted.

Dad just kept smiling. “Come. Sit you
doy
, O’Lloyd.” He pulled out a chair and gently pushed Grandma down into it. “You can eat breakfast with us.”

“Breakfast?” she said. “Half the day already is gone!” Shaking her head, she heaved herself out of the chair, tied on an apron and went to work making her special waffle sauce. Everyone stuffed themselves with at least two waffles each–one with chokecherry syrup and one with
waffle sauce. Then Dad drove us back to Eden to get our bikes, and my friends headed home.

Except Jillian and Sadie. They rode back to our place with me, to help clean out Dad’s car. It was pretty gross from eleven wet people and one wet cat yet riding in it.

“I don’t mind. It was worth it,” said Jillian. “That was the best pajama party ever.”

“At least we never got chased by the cops,” grinned Sadie.

Uy uy uy.
One more thing still to tell Dad about.

Probably I should’ve been tired out like everyone else this morning. Only I wasn’t. I woke up early, even though there was no chirping anymore because when I wasn’t paying attention the baby robins had grown up enough to fly away. All things come to an end, not?

For a while I lay awake thinking. I remembered what Auntie Nettie had said the day we picked berries. Maybe God could be found in lots of places. In church sure, but lots of other places, too. Like at that farmyard and in the stars and the rain and…all kinds of places.

I was starting to think that maybe God wasn’t what I thought He was before. I mean, it wasn’t like God was a person, someone you could touch and see and smell. Maybe God could even be more like a feeling inside a person.

Sometimes that feeling of God inside could be strong, like it was when we were all laughing in the rain. But sometimes a person maybe had to work hard at finding
the feeling inside. Like when Mom was so sad, she probably couldn’t feel God then.

My head was starting to spin again so I got out of bed. This would be a good time to practice riding with no hands.

I slipped outside, grabbed my bike and coasted down the back alley.

There wasn’t much point in riding to the pool this time of day, so instead I turned left and rode all the way to First Street on the east side of town. Then I turned right and pedaled as far south as I could go, all the way to the highway that went to the States. Letting go of the handlebars, I took the corner right again, past the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church onto Valley Avenue. I could follow Valley Avenue all the way west along the edge of the town, until it came to Eden. I pedaled easily, the sun warm on my back.

The first couple of blocks were no problem. Nobody was out on the road this early. There was no one to get in my way, no corners to go around. I had to dodge a pothole in the third block and another one in the fourth block.

I edged over toward the middle of the road where there were fewer potholes. For the next three blocks I tried to stay as close to the center line as I could.

Lena, I knew, believed in God sort of like she believed in Santa Claus. He was just always there, in heaven, watching over her. He knew even before Santa Claus did whether she was naughty or nice.

Beth believed in God in a loud sort of in-your-face kind of way. Look at me, see how good I am? Though I had to give her credit. She wasn’t nearly as obnoxious about it lately

A car pulled onto the road up ahead, coming toward me. No big deal. I just leaned over to the right a little until I was back on my side of the road.

Auntie Nettie’s God was a not-too-serious kind of God and Grandma Redekop believed in a no-nonsense God. Dad acted like he didn’t care much for God, but really he did. Reverend Funk’s God was the scariest. His God was a fire-breathing dragon one minute and a gentle father the next. You never knew who you were going to get.

Sometimes Mom’s God seemed a bit like a father who never thinks anything is good enough, who always wants you to do better, like get an A instead of an A minus.

And then there was me. I didn’t know what kind of God I believed in.

Up ahead was Eden already. I coasted to the corner and stopped. Fifteen blocks with no hands. I’d been too busy thinking to even make any wishes.

I couldn’t really think of anything to wish for. Except for the sun to shine today, which conditions favored, because the sun was already shining. And maybe for Reverend Funk to do a good job of his sermon this morning and not talk too long, because Mom had a day pass and was coming to church with us. Then we were all going to Auntie Nettie’s for dinner.

Anyways, maybe I was getting too old for wishing games. Everything comes to an end.
Nah yo.

Or maybe not just yet. I closed my eyes and made one last wish, something big that was worth using up a fifteen-block wish for. Then I gave Mom’s window a little wave and headed home. There was lots of summer left. Lots of bike rides and afternoons at the pool and pajama parties. Still one more coat of paint to put on the house. And at least one horseback ride this afternoon with Mark Giesbrecht. Who knew what all else? Anything was possible.

So I wasn’t that surprised even, when I turned into the alley and coasted up to our house, to see Tommy sitting there on the back porch, waiting.

I left my bike on the lawn and sat beside him, scratching behind his torn ear. He had a few more scars than before. And he was a little thinner maybe. But otherwise he didn’t look any worse for wear.

“
Voh scheent et
, Tom-cat?” I said.

He looked up at me and meowed. Loudly.

“All right already.” I went inside to get him a saucer of milk, and maybe a can of tuna yet, too.

Plautdietsch, or Mennonite Low German, is a wonderfully evocative language. But many of its vowel and consonant clusters would be unfamiliar to readers and therefore difficult to pronounce. For this reason, I’ve tried as much as possible to Anglicize the spellings phonetically, so young readers can hear the language at least close to the way it is spoken. Even so, pronunciations vary among Mennonites from different areas. People also play around with the language, combining Low German and English to make up words. And as kids growing up speaking English for the most part, we often totally ravaged the Low German language with our crude attempts at pronunciation, sometimes intentionally.

The correct spellings appear in parentheses in the glossary that follows. For these I’m indebted to Jack Thiessen’s
Mennonite Low German Dictionary
as well as the second edition of Herman Rempel’s
Kjenn Jie Noch Plautdietsch
? I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible. However, these sources are based on a different regional style than was spoken in the community in which I grew up, so I have made a few changes I felt appropriate. Any errors throughout the text or glossary are mine alone.

Selected phrases: