Fearless Hope: A Novel (40 page)

One kind lady took pity on me and asked how my writing was coming along. I cut my answer short because I could tell that it was a sacrifice for her to pull away from the more fascinating
Amish topics floating around us. She kept losing concentration, which I found amusing—but I appreciated her effort.

The Amish women teased Joyanne by pretending to talk about her to me behind her back.

“Joyanne is our favorite driver.” A young matron named Tabitha shielded her mouth as though telling me a great secret. “We make sure she gets to go shopping a LOT!”

Joyanne’s eyes sparkled as she joined in the fun. “Do you know how many Amish women you can get into a van?” she asked.

“I have no idea.”

Joyanne held up a finger. “Just one more.”

This brought on peals of laughter, but I didn’t get the joke.

Joyanne explained it to me. “The van driver is paid by the mile, not by the number of passengers, so the Amish women, being the frugal people they are,” she said, grinning at them, “always make room for ‘just one more’ friend to help share the expense. They also pack a picnic lunch and make an event out of it.”

“But we always pack extra for Joyanne,” Deborah said.

“They have to. I’ve been driving these women for so long, I’ve started to think I’m half Amish. I used to have short hair, wear jewelry, and never go out of the house without makeup.” She patted her hair, which she wore in a bun. “Now look at me!” Her face was devoid of makeup and she wore no jewelry.

“We think Joyanne looks a lot better now,” Tabitha said.

I couldn’t tell if Tabitha was joking or serious, but as a harried writer with many deadlines, I immediately started calculating how many minutes of writing time per day I could salvage if I gave up curling my hair, digging through my drawers for matching earrings, and putting on makeup every time I went out the door. I decided that this idea would bear closer examination to save for a future time.

“So, what is your favorite store when Joyanne takes you shopping?” I asked.

This involved some serious discussion as they pondered some of the possibilities. I fully expected them to name one of the local stores that catered to the electricity-avoiding Amish, or possibly Walmart, where I’d noticed they frequently shopped.

Tabitha finally said, “I like Kohl’s the best.”

The others nodded in agreement. Yes, Kohl’s was most definitely a favorite among these Amish women.

“Um, Kohl’s?” I was surprised by their choice. All I could picture were the jewelry, makeup, and clothing departments that greeted me each time I walked into that particular store. What could they possibly find to purchase in Kohl’s?

“Shoes, bed linens, purses, towels, kitchenware . . . oh so many things,” Tabitha said. “Sometimes they carry nice black cardigans, too.”

Eventually, we began the cleanup and everyone assigned themselves a job. I grabbed a broom and dustpan. Unless one is sick or extremely pregnant, it is taken for granted that all will pitch in after a meal to make sure the hostess doesn’t have anything left to clean after the guests leave. I noticed that Deborah’s sisters and other relatives knew exactly where every item went—they didn’t have to ask. They were completely familiar and at ease in one another’s kitchens.

Afterward, Deborah took Joyanne and me to check out the mobile kitchen they had rented for this affair. From this extra kitchen, Deborah’s friends and family would provide around five hundred meals before the day was over.

These large mobile kitchens are a necessity during wedding season in Amish country. One end is devoted to an eighty-square-foot walk-in refrigerator lined with sturdy shelves. The rest of the space is filled with a well-designed commercial kitchen. There are five stoves, three sinks, and what looks like
acres and acres of cabinets and drawers. It is fully equipped with dishes, pans, utensils, dish towels, dishcloths, and potholders. Everything anyone could possibly need to feed large groups of people has been provided, down to the serving spoons. For a household that has no electricity, this mobile kitchen, arriving with its own generator and propane tank, is a welcome addition.

Deborah told us that it might be best for us to wait an hour or two before coming to the wedding the next morning. She explained that since the entire three hours would be conducted in German, we might enjoy the experience more if we came halfway through the service instead of trying to grit it out for the entire three hours. I protested that it would be rude to show up so late. She assured me that no one there would consider it so. Besides, she added in typical Amish no-nonsense bluntness, it would be better to come in late than to fall asleep halfway through the wedding service.

Suddenly, we discovered there was a crisis. Rebecca’s carefully tended flower garden had not yielded enough flowers for all the vases she intended to place on the tables. The flower supply would have to be supplemented. Joyanne and her van were pressed into service so that the bride and her friends could make an emergency trip to a nearby florist.

•  •  •

The next morning, we arrived at the Beachys’ large working farm and parked alongside dozens of black buggies in a field across the county road from the house. Dozens of horses were tethered there beneath a line of trees.

It was a gorgeous fall day. The preferred wedding month for the Amish is October, but this wedding took place in September. There are only so many Thursdays to go around in the month of October, and with so many young people having weddings, September has also become a frequently scheduled wedding month.
With a community as interconnected as the Holmes County Amish, there are many, many weddings to attend in the fall.

Weddings are not taken lightly by the Amish. It is my observation that most are total romantics at heart. From the oldest to the very young, they believe in an enduring love between one man and one woman for life. Old women and old men can, and often do, lovingly recount details of their own courtship—even if that courtship took place sixty years ago.

“Do you see that clock on that shelf on the wall?” The bride’s grandmother pointed out a wooden clock as we sat in the living room of her
Daadi Haus.

“It’s beautiful.”

“My husband made that for me before we got married.”

“There was a lot of love put into the making of that clock,” I remarked.

“
Ja
,” she said, smiling happily. “There was.”

All Amish believe that a marriage should be celebrated with gifts, food, laughter, great joy, plenty of people, and various silly wedding tricks played on the bride and groom by the
youngies
. Everyone who can come will come. One never knows when a groom’s courting buggy might just “accidentally” end up on the roof of some outbuilding. A wedding is not to be missed.

We climbed out of the van that morning and carried our gifts through the field, across the county road, and up the sharply inclined driveway. As we approached the house, we heard singing coming from the nearby barn. This was something I had longed to experience. I knew that the hymns the Amish sang had been, for the most part, written by their martyrs five hundred years ago. The Amish hymnbook, the
Ausbund
, is the oldest continually used book of hymns in the world. I also knew that they sang the songs extremely slow, in respect for those martyrs who, while singing hymns in their prison cells, were mocked by jailers who danced to them. Showing typical Amish pacifist ingenuity, those
early ancestors solved the problem by simply slowing their songs down until it was no longer feasible for the jailers to dance.

The beauty of the day and the rural scenery about me made it feel as though I’d walked straight into an Amish movie, complete with authentic background music. The timbre of the German words, sung in unison, resonated throughout the valley with a haunting quality unlike anything I had ever heard. Their music, to me, sounded so very holy.

I had given much thought to purchasing a practical gift for a new bride, finally settling on a large cast-iron Dutch oven with a yellow baked enamel surface. What I had not realized was that I would be carrying it quite so far. The thing was heavy, the package awkward, and the driveway steep.

Fortunately there was a handful of little boys waiting alongside the driveway to relieve the guests of gifts. This was their job and they seemed pleased to be doing it. They were dressed in the same traditional black hat, white shirt, and black coat of their fathers, and their eyes were sparkling with excitement over being part of the wedding. I was worried that the little guy who came for mine was too small to carry it.

“Be careful, it’s heavy,” I cautioned him.

The child didn’t even grunt when I handed it to him. Instead, he flashed me a grin as he trotted off. He knew that I was impressed.

We were met by Luke, the father of the bride. He was handsome in his new black coat, vest, and pants, and with so much responsibility, he was more serious than usual. He politely showed us to the seats that had been waiting for us.

The barn, where the actual wedding would be held, was built into the hill, close enough to the house to require only a short walk. It was a large, sturdy barn. There was a second story below that Joyanne told me had been cleaned within an inch of its life. Several horses were stabled there; others took their ease
in the shade across the road where they had been tethered. The main level of the barn was so clean it practically shone. Brothers and uncles and grandfather had cleaned it so well over the past week, there was not so much as a spiderweb in view. Square bales of hay were piled to the rafters along the sides of the barn as well as in the haymow to make room for guests. It smelled amazing—the scent of fresh hay permeated the air. I took a deep breath and for an instant, I was transported back to my own childhood on a farm in southern Ohio. A sudden great nostalgia for the hours I spent playing with my cousins in our own barn washed over me.

Hanging from one beam was a single, perfect hanging basket of blue petunias. It was the only floral decoration in the barn. The wooden floor had been swept clean, and was in its own way a work of art. The weathered flooring had been built from planks of wood wider than any I’d ever seen. My father was a sawyer. I knew just enough to recognize virgin timber, built so long ago that there were still forests of giant, ancient trees available.

•  •  •

As large as this working barn was, the family did not think it would be large enough to seat everyone. There was a white three-sided tent placed against the open double doors of the barn, in order to expand the seating. We were placed here, along with a handful of other
Englisch
guests. Luke expressed disappointment that Joyanne’s mother, a woman in her nineties, had not felt well enough to join us. He had made certain that there was an especially comfortable chair for her.

I wished I could take a picture of all of this, but I respected my friends’ beliefs against the making of graven images. Instead, I tried to imprint the scene before me on my mind, memorizing details, savoring every moment. Inside the barn, sitting sideways in front of us, were two groups. All the women sat to my right,
facing the men, who were on my left. They turned their heads and watched with friendly curiosity as we entered, but then their attention was caught again by the preacher, who stood between the two groups with his back to us as he spoke to the church.

There would be three ministers who, taking turns, would preach for nearly three hours by the time this wedding was finished. Several preachers were needed to get through the long wedding service. I recognized a few words—“Noah” and “Moses” and “Abraham”—but the rest of the service was incomprehensible. This was as it should be. The wedding service was not for us, and it was not for show, it was for the Amish. We
Englisch
were allowed to watch, but it would never occur to them to switch to English for our benefit. Nor would Joyanne and I have expected them to do so. This was their culture, their church, their beliefs, their traditions. I was honored and grateful simply to be allowed to observe.

When one preacher wore out, another one took his place. One of them used a sort of singsong cadence in his preaching; another, who was younger, was more impassioned and seemed to hold the crowd’s attention a little better. Later I heard comments about what a good speaker he was.

Interspersed with the preaching was the singing. I had recently purchased an
Ausbund
songbook at Eli’s bookstore. It had been printed locally, with the English translation right beside the German. In the
Ausbund
, there are no notes, only words. These songs were now sung with every note, timing, and nuance executed from memory. They are not simple melodies. I was amazed that the music to all these words could be passed down, one generation to another, through five centuries.

These songs are not easy to describe, but they were most definitely not happy, bouncy songs. I cannot imagine anyone ever clapping along with the rhythm, because there was no rhythm. The music, with its long, sustained notes, reminded
me a little of the mournful wail of a bagpipe. As I said before, the songs were composed by martyrs. They are songs about faith and God and perseverance, written by a people who were hunted down and persecuted for their faith. The church sings in unison, men and women together. Harmonies are considered prideful. A solo would be unthinkable. No instruments of any kind are ever used.

I noticed that the oldest women sat in the back, where, even though they were seated on backless benches, they could rest themselves against the wall of hay. On the men’s side, it was different. The old men sat toward the front, and the teenage boys sat in the back. I raised three sons. It amused me that Amish boys looked about as miserable and bored as most
Englisch
teenagers would look if expected to sit through an entire morning of preaching.

Children were sprinkled throughout the group. There is no babysitting service at an Amish church. A little boy who had been sitting with his mother decided that he wanted to sit with his grandpa, and with her permission, he scampered across the open space where the preacher was standing. No one seemed to care. At one point, a young mother, frustrated with a squirming toddler, carried the child over to the men’s side and plunked him down upon his father’s lap. Then she returned to her seat and crossed her arms. She had not spoken a word, but her actions spoke for themselves. “Here,” her body language said. “
You
take care of this kid for a while. He’s wearing me out.”