by Ira Wagler
And we spoke awkwardly to her. “Good-bye, Mom. We will.” We never hugged, because the Amish don’t hug, mostly. At least not in any world I had seen up until that time.
As she slowly sank into the darkness, I wished there were a way to say good-bye to her one more time like that. Not as I was leaving her. But as she was leaving us on the final leg of her journey home.
I’d like to go back and say good-bye to her one more time like that. This time, I would hug her.
Stone Angel Redux
Maybe it was subconscious, the reason I bought that little stone angel back in late 2006, just before Ellen left. Maybe, too, it was a silent appeal to God for help. I don’t know. I do know that the angel was brought home and set up outside in the garden. Looking at our house. Lifting its tiny stone hands in prayer for me and my wife. The angel’s prayers didn’t help, apparently, at least not in any immediate way. Quite the opposite, I’d say. Instead of peace, there came turmoil.
Our world blew up in a spectacular fiery crash. Just blew into smithereens. I hunkered down, all alone, in the house we had bought together and lived in together for seven years. I was too shell-shocked, probably, to do much else. But I instinctively held on to what I knew I would not do. I would not leave my home. I would stay here. By myself, if that was what it took. I hunkered down, didn’t talk to a lot of people. Just a few close friends, mostly people at work. And then, for the first time in my life, I did what I had never done before in any serious manner. I began to write.
I never told the neighbors what had happened. They had eyes, I figured, to see something drastic had come down. And from what they saw, they must have wondered if anyone lived in the house anymore. I disappeared early every morning. Got back home every evening around seven or so. My truck parked out back, that and the lights burning late into the night as I wrote and wrote, those were pretty much the only signs that the place was even inhabited. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t have told them, couldn’t have faced them. I just didn’t feel like it. And so I didn’t.
And that spring, Ellen’s little garden lay fallow. It never got tilled or planted. The flower beds, too, all nicely mulched the year before, were simply ignored. Giant weeds sprouted everywhere and overwhelmed the flowers that had been planted. And again, it wasn’t that I couldn’t have taken care of things, made the place look good. It wasn’t that I wanted anything to look bad. It was just that it all didn’t matter that much to me. I existed. Went to work every morning. From there, to the gym. And from the gym to home. A routine, focused cycle. That was me at that time. And every night, I sat at my computer, and the words poured forth in great torrents.
And that summer, the weeds grew wild and free in the garden. The shrub where the angel stood grew out, too, extended its branches. And sometime during that summer, the angel just disappeared from sight. Under the embracing darkness of the branches of the shrub tree. And behind the weeds that grew wild. I looked now and then but thought little of it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see my little stone angel friend. It was just that I didn’t care enough to make it happen. And it languished there unseen all that year, into the fall and winter.
A year passed. Then two. I kept on writing and writing. My marriage exploding had been the catalyst, the event that pushed me out, that made me write my voice for the first time ever, in my life. The trigger.
It was a brutal and bitter place to find my writing voice. I guess you don’t get to choose when something happens organically on its own like that. It just is what it is, and gets here when it gets here. I hunkered down in those early years and spoke from deep pits of darkness and pain such as I had never seen before and have not seen since.
And just throwing my stuff out on my blog. Eventually, my voice calmed a great deal, and I settled in. Began to write about a whole lot of things. Stories from my childhood. This and that, from where I was. This was a new place in my life. And I walked it free. Spoke it as I saw it, whatever I wrote about. From where I was, and from my heart. And the angel remained standing there, completely obscured by branches and brambles and weeds, through all that time.
As you look back from where you are after you cross it, a valley often seems a little deeper and a little more intimidating than it actually was, I think. I mean, sure, it was tough, that road. No way I’d ever want to go back to that place. Not ever. And sure, it shook up a lot of things I thought I knew. But still, when you’re in a place like that, you do what you know in the moment. You plug along. You deal with all the crap, all the gripping pain. But mostly, you keep walking. And eventually you get through it. That’s what I can say from where I am today, looking back.
And the Lord looked down upon me and smiled. He really did. I kept on writing. And He blessed my efforts. First, with a large readership for my blog. And eventually, someone knew someone who knew an agent and notified him. That agent, Chip MacGregor, contacted me. I signed up. He took my stuff and shopped it around. And things moved right along, and one evening Chip emailed me with the news. He got me an offer from Tyndale House. For a book.
I took the offer, of course. Signed the contract they sent me. And soon enough, a nice little check arrived in the mail. A small down payment for the book. Half up front, half when it was done. I accepted the check gratefully. And I knew what needed to be done. The house. It needed new windows. Those had never been replaced. Every time a cold winter wind blew, you could feel the breeze inside from five feet away. But I wouldn’t do them all at once, I figured. That would take more money than the check was made out for. I’d do half the house first. The west and north sides. Upstairs and downstairs. I contacted an Amish contractor. And he came out and gave me a quote. Decent price. “Go ahead,” I told him.
And his crew came out that summer. And for the first time since living here alone, I made improvements to my home. The neighbors stared. Ira is getting his house worked on. What’s the world coming to? Oh well. His yard still looks pretty scraggly, though. And things didn’t change at all on the outside, on the grounds. The shrub tree by the shop still grew unchecked. And covered now with clogging vines. The weeds stood tall around the brush pile that had accumulated in what once was a rich and fertile little garden. And the stone angel stood with clasped and praying hands, completely out of sight.
Late that year, in 2010, I finished the manuscript. Well, I finished the raw mass of words that made up my manuscript. Pages and pages, with no chapter breaks, even, in much of it. The Tyndale people sorted it out from there. And the second check arrived. I had finished. And the next spring, I called the Amish contractor back. The windows on the south and east sides. I needed those replaced. The man smiled and wrote up a quote. I signed it and gave him a check. And his crew came right on in and worked its magic. The neighbors stared some more at the new windows in my house. Now, when is he gonna do something about that yard? And the stone angel remained where it had stood since the day I bought it. Still out of sight.
And the book took off and did what it did. Growing Up Amish. From a writer’s perspective, you have to believe you got what it takes, to even throw your stuff out there to start with. But still, when it really does take off like that, it’s a little freaky. And humbling. And that first year, some very nice checks came rolling in. I had to sit down when the first one arrived. And once again, I thought of my house.
The mortar between the bricks. That should be replaced. Around here, they call that repointing. It’s called tuck-pointing in other parts of the country. I knew it had to be done. And I knew it was an expensive process. From the labor involved, mostly. They have to grind out the old mortar so the new mortar can be applied. It’s a dirty, grimy, endless job.
A year after I’d gotten married, I’d left my attorney job. Gone to work at a building-supply business. And now, being in the trade, I had the contacts. I knew whom to talk to. And I did. Called the guy, earlier that year, which was 2013. “Hey, I’m heading out traveling in the first half of May. I need a quote to get my house repointed. And I’d
like it done when I’m gone.” It was an Amish guy, of course. I’ve known him for years, he’s an Eagles fan. I always rib him about that. “Thugs, the Eagles are,” I tell him. And he claims a Jets fan has nothing to say about all that. And he stopped by and measured up the place. They could do it for this price. And yes, they could do it while I was gone. I looked at the quote and recoiled a bit. Hard-earned money, just going out the window like that. It galled me.
In the meantime, things were shaking on other fronts that year. In March, I rented the upstairs apartment to a new tenant. It had stood empty for more than two years. And it was in sad disrepair. The new tenant was “new” in a lot of ways. An older guy, separated from his wife after a few dozen years of marriage. And it didn’t take long after he got here. The man was a restless fixer-upper. Something my place desperately needed. “Well,” he’d tell me. “I saw this needed painting. I saw where this screw was loose on the gutters on your house. I stopped by the hardware store and picked up a few things I needed. And I fixed it.”
I gaped at him and marveled. And I told him, “Bring me your receipts, and keep track of your time. I’ll pay you for what you do.”
He’s the best tenant I’ve ever had, hands down. He’s honest, and he treats me right. He works with his hands to make the things around him more beautiful. And he always pays the rent on time, pays it early, even. I don’t know if he even goes to church. I think not, but I never asked him. What am I going to say? He’s lived here in Lancaster County around “Christians” all his life. He knows them, he knows who they are, from how they live and how they treat him. And if he doesn’t go to church at his age, I figure he has his reasons. Maybe he’ll tell me about it someday.
And before I left on my travels that summer, I told him, “The crew will be here to repoint the house while I’m gone.” He seemed to think that was a very good plan indeed. And two weeks later, as my truck swept around the corner late that night, getting home, I saw it had been done. Even in the dark, the bright new mortar glinted in the headlights. The boys had done it. The next morning, I got up and walked out to look at my house in daylight. It was just beautiful, it looked new, almost. The boys had done it right.
One day that summer, we stood out on the back side of the house, where I park my truck, just talking. The tenant said something about how nice it would be to get those flower beds cleaned up around the house. And mulched. He knew people who would do it for a reasonable price, he claimed. “Sure,” I said. “And while they’re at it, I need to get the branches trimmed on this big old pine tree. They hang down so low, they scrape my truck every time I drive out. And this old brush pile,” I said, pointing to where the garden used to be. “It’s pretty ugly. I need someone to clean it all up.”
And the neighbors must have gaped some more as his friends converged on the place. The painters came and power-washed the old paint on the porch. Then they left and came back and started painting. By hand. The floor a light gray. White pillars and railings. And the classic sky blue on the ceiling. They puttered about when they could fit it in, a few hours here, a few hours there. Which I didn’t mind at all. And the next Saturday morning, as I left to run some errands, two more of my tenant’s buddies had parked their truck and trailer and were cleaning up the brush pile. I was in and out a few times. They plugged away. And I left that afternoon again, for a few hours. I returned later, around six or so. Pulled into my drive. And I looked out to the garage and just stared.
The brush pile had been removed completely. The weeds whacked down. The shrub tree trimmed back. All the crawly vines removed. And there in plain sight for the first time since Ellen had left, the little white angel stood, revealed to all the world. It stood, wings folded, hands clasped, frozen in prayer. And it took my breath away.
I stood there and absorbed the setting. And a few minutes later, the tenant came strolling by. We stood around and talked, and I told him the story of the angel. What was going on back in those dark days when I bought it. How I had set it there, right where it stood. And how it had remained there, hidden, since almost the day I’d brought it home. “Of all the things that you made happen here, this one is the most important,” I told him. “That angel symbolizes a lot of things. Believe me. A lot of things.”
And I told him something more. “Thank you. Thank you for stepping in and getting this stuff done. You have been nothing but a blessing to me from the day you walked through my door.” He smiled his quiet smile and beamed.
The stone angel stands now, looking to the south, lifting its tiny hands as if praying for a shield of protection over my home. It stands there, right where I placed it when I bought it. Right where it has always stood for years, covered by leaves and brambles and vines and weeds. For most of those years, you just couldn’t see it, because it was too much of a reminder of all that hard stuff from the past.
The thing is, I’m not sure when I ever would have dredged up the courage or the energy to uncover that angel, had the right person not showed up to nudge me through that door and get it done. And you see it, when it happens in real life, you see a path to freedom you could not find before on your own. It took a flawed man with a broken past, it took such a man to wander through and stop in for a while. And he didn’t even realize what all was going on, but he’s the one who made the little stone angel now stand as it was always meant to stand. In the open, and freely visible to all who pass by.
I’m just grateful that he showed up. And that he got here right on time.
Returning to
My Father
In the summer of 2013, I drove up to see my parents. It would be the last time I saw Mom alive. That Friday afternoon, I pulled into the town of Aylmer, Ontario. That’s where my parents had moved back to a few years before, after Mom started slipping mentally. To Aylmer, where they lived in a tiny little Daudy house at my oldest sister Rosemary’s home. Aylmer, the place where I had been born and raised. The town was just impossibly small, from the great metropolis I’d remembered as a child. A bare little town, with a little row of shops huddled forlornly around a stoplight at a crossroad. I passed through the light and headed on out west toward Saint Thomas.
Saint Thomas is a bigger place than Aylmer. I remember the name from my childhood, but I don’t remember the town. Because it was out there, just a bit outside the edges of my world. And I was going there now to find a motel room. I’d looked it up on the web, and I knew there was a good selection. And sure enough, right there on the east side of town as I approached was a brand-new Comfort Inn. I’ve seen some trashy Comfort Inns. This wasn’t one. I pulled in and chatted with the clerk, a nice lady. “I’m here from Pennsylvania, to see family,” I told her. And I booked a room for two nights. It was late afternoon, past five. I carried in my bag and settled in a bit, then headed out to my sister Rosemary’s farm to hang out for the evening.
I headed back east to Aylmer, then down the main road through the community. It was barely recognizable as the place I’d known as a child all those years ago. Way more built up, with a lot more Amish homes scattered along the way. No one knew me or knew I was there. I passed through the heart of the settlement, then took a left on the road to my sister Rosemary’s home farm. They’d be looking for me. I pulled in and walked into her home.
She smiled and welcomed me. “I’m so glad you came,” she said.
“Yeah, me too,” I said. And we just sat there and caught up. I hadn’t seen her since the previous summer, when I went up to see Mom.
“Joe will be home soon,” she said. “Just stay here for supper, then you can go over to see Dad for the evening.”
So that’s what I did. Mom was not feeling well, Rosemary told me. She had a fever now, for the second day. The nurse was stopping by that evening to check it out. Soon Rosemary’s husband, Joe, arrived home from Tillsonburg, where he had been peddling strawberries door to door. Some things never change. I used to do that as a child. And we sat down at their little table to eat. A simple meal. Soup and homemade saus
age. Homemade stuffed sausage, hickory smoked, just like we used to have way back. Rosemary has kept the tradition, and to me, there is no better sausage anywhere than the stuff I grew up with.
After supper, we walked over to the little house where my parents lived. It was a tiny place, a shack, really, probably twenty feet wide and maybe thirty feet long. A nice clean place with a tiny kitchen, a bedroom, and a little office in the corner where Dad wrote. And he was sitting there, at his typewriter. He heard us walking in and looked up.
“Hi, Dad,” I said. He was old, approaching ninety-two. But he was there. You could see his concentration when he listened to you talk. He smiled at me, and we shook hands.
“Well, you made it,” he said. His voice was cracked now. And we went through our normal little routine, our normal little dance. “How was the trip?” he asked.
“Oh, good,” I said. “I left Pennsylvania this morning. It’s a long old drag up here, but I made pretty good time.”
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
“I got a motel room in Saint Thomas,” I told him. As we talked, Rosemary slipped into the bedroom, where Mom was. I walked in behind her. And there she lay. Curled up. Unaware.
“She has a fever,” Rosemary told me again. And I bent down close to my mother’s wrinkled face.
“Mom. It’s me. Ira.” There was no response, of course.
Dad came stumping into the kitchen then, and I sat down with him to visit. We chatted about this and that. And he asked me then, “How many copies of your book have sold?”
“Oh, right at 140,000,” I said. I wasn’t sure. Last I’d heard from the Tyndale people, it was in the 130,000s and counting. But that was a while ago. So I figured it was safe to slip it up there to the next level.
He grappled a bit with that figure. “How many?”