Understanding seemed to bloom in her eyes. “Ty, this is where you belong,” she said emphatically. “With me. Everyone here loves you. I love you. This is your home.”
“I’m not like Tobias.” I looked at the happy new groom across the barn from us. He seemed a perfect fit in every way.
Rachel squeezed my hand. “Only Tobias is Tobias. You’re you. And whatever it is you think is out there calling to you, don’t you think you would have found it already? You’ve been outside, Tyler, more than most. You’ve seen the Englisch world every single time you’ve visited your dad.”
“I know, but—”
“And every time you have visited your dad, you’ve always been ready to come home after just a few days. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”
Her last comment took me by surprise. The world outside Lancaster County was a lot bigger than just California, where my father now lived. “This isn’t about him,” I muttered, releasing her hand.
Rachel’s gaze wouldn’t let me go. “How do you know it’s not?”
I thought again of our schoolyard friendship so many years ago and how, not long after we’d made our peace on the swings, Rachel had responded when she learned my father was in the military. She’d been shocked, but not because of what my dad did for a living and how it conflicted with the Amish stance of nonresistance. She was upset because he’d handed me off to be raised by others once my mother was gone.
“What difference does it make what his job is? He’s your dad. And he just gave you away.”
Now, as she sat here next to me in a crisp, newly sewn dress, one strand of hair falling loose from the bun under her kapp, it was clear to me what her long-standing opinion of my father had led her to conclude, given my restless state. And she couldn’t have been more wrong.
She glanced around and then leaned close as she whispered, “You know what I think, Tyler?”
I swallowed hard, wishing we’d never started this conversation in the first place.
“I think this has nothing to do with you and God or you and me. This is about you and your dad and the fact that you think he doesn’t want you and never has.”
She didn’t mean her words to be unkind, just honest, as she and I had always been with each other. But they struck in a place so deep that I was shocked to find my eyes instantly rimmed with tears. I blinked them away, trying to decide whether to walk out of there right then or just stay and pretend she hadn’t said that to me. To my dismay, however, she persisted, trying to be supportive but delivering a message that couldn’t have been crueler.
“I think you still feel as rejected by him as you did the day you first came here,” she said in an even softer whisper. “In a way, you’re still that same six-year-old little boy who, more than anything, just wants his father to want him.”
FOUR
When I look back now, it is no wonder that the part of me that held my earliest memories didn’t know what to make of the first year I came to live in Lancaster County. My entire universe shifted when I was six years old.
First, my mother died of a medical condition that meant nothing to me. It wasn’t as though she got sick or was hit by a car or fell off a high cliff. The word “aneurysm” had no context in my young world. She was simply alive one moment and gone the next.
Second, my father, who already had orders for a year-long remote assignment to Turkey, hadn’t sought a hardship reassignment after she died—though he could have. Military members could always ask to be reassigned if a death in the family or a terminal illness or some other serious circumstance meant the member needed to be somewhere other than where he or she was scheduled to go. Instead, Dad asked my grieving grandparents to take me to Pennsylvania to live with them while he was gone and simply kept his orders as they were.
Thus, in the span of just a few days, I essentially lost both my parents and was thrust into an Amish life, where I had to learn a new language, a new way of living, a new way of thinking. It was like going through a doorway to another world where everything I knew and loved was gone and I had no choice but to start over.
At least my grandparents were kind, and they had a son my age, who didn’t seem to mind at all that he would now have to share everything he had, including his bedroom, with the nephew he’d never even met before. For that matter, he hadn’t met my mother, either—his own sister—because she’d left home before he was born.
Once I was settled, I’d made do the best I could, secretly marking off the days till my father’s return on a calendar I kept hidden under my mattress, a free one that had come in the mail from a tractor company and my grandmother had thrown away.
When my dad’s year in Turkey was up, he came back to see me, bringing along presents for everyone from overseas as well as some of my favorite toys from home and the cigar box containing my most treasured possessions that I’d always kept tucked away under my bed. I had already outgrown most of the toys by then, but I had been thrilled to get back the cigar box, which I’d missed at first but nearly forgotten about by then.
I’d been so happy to see him, and to have him there—until it was time to go and I learned to my astonishment that he wasn’t taking me with him. Again. He told me he had accepted a follow-on assignment in Spain and would need me to stay right where I was until that was over too. I’d been devastated and spent many an hour once he was gone wondering what I’d done wrong to send him away.
Looking back now, of course, I realized that my father probably just couldn’t handle being a single parent of a seven-year-old boy, especially while living overseas and being in the military. I tried to be patient, but it was while he was in Spain that he met an army nurse named Liz Brinkman. By the end of that tour, he married her and then they moved to Japan. I didn’t even meet Liz—or see my dad again, for that matter—until a year after that, when she was pregnant with their son, Brady. That time, it was a quick visit, as they had only brief leave to come back to the States for her own mother’s funeral.
After that they returned to Japan, and I didn’t see my dad again for two more years.
All in all, I was eleven years old before my father was reassigned stateside, Liz got out of the military, and they came to Lancaster County to get me at last. Finally, he sat me down and asked me if I wanted to come live with him and his wife and their toddler in California.
It was the moment for which I’d been waiting for five years, yet all I could think about in that moment was that he was asking me. Not telling me. Asking me.
My father didn’t say, “I want you to come, Tyler.” He said, “Do you want to come?”
Even at eleven I could sense the difference. He and Liz and Brady and I had spent the afternoon with my grandparents at the farm. Then that night my dad took me to stay with the three of them at their hotel in Philadelphia, where he finally said those words.
Brady was almost two, and he was tired and cranky from the long day. Liz was busy entertaining him and didn’t say much, though I knew she was listening to every word. She kept glancing at me, her eyes filled with an anxiousness that angered me. After Dad asked his question, he sat there, looking from me to her, and then he did something that sealed my decision. He reached for Liz and patted her shoulder. Brady let out a little wail and they both gently hushed him before lifting their gaze back to me and the question that hung in the air between us.
I told them I would stay with my grandparents.
Now I sat with Rachel, all these years later, telling myself I’d never regretted that decision, even as her words pounded inside my head like a drum. You’re still that same six-year-old little boy who, more than anything, just wants his father to want him.
How on earth was I to respond to that? I couldn’t. Instead, I excused myself and then simply rose and left, moving outside and around the corner of the barn to where it was quiet and empty and I could breathe. From there I could see the horses out in the field, lazily munching grass until they would be rounded up and reattached to the buggies they h
ad brought here in the first place. My own horse seemed to sense my presence, and he sauntered in my direction. When he reached the fence, I walked over to greet him, absently patting his broad, muscular neck.
“I always miss your mother so much on special days like this one,” a woman’s voice said.
Startled, I turned to see my aunt Sarah, the mother of the bride, standing just a few feet behind me. I instantly thought she’d overheard what Rachel and I had been talking about and had come out here to see if I was okay. But when she stepped to the fence beside me and began cooing to my horse as well, I saw the sadness in her eyes, and I realized that she’d come out here for herself. Sarah didn’t often mention my mother, her only sister. Those rare times she did, it was only with me.
“I can’t imagine how hard it must be.” I returned my gaze to the animal in front of us.
“Ya. It still hurts, even after all these years. I don’t think most people know how much.”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t need to. We’d always had this bond, this loss, even though Sarah wasn’t one to bring it up often.
“She ran off the night before my birthday, did I ever tell you that?”
My eyes widened. “No.”
“It was my twentieth birthday. We were supposed to have a family party, of course. But she and I also had plans for a fun time later that night, off on our own with Jonah and some of our other friends. We were all still on our rumspringa, and she and I were sort of known as the two sisters who were always raising a ruckus.”
I smiled. “Somehow, I can’t picture you as the ruckus-raising type.”
Now it was her turn to smile. “Ya, well, you’re probably right about that. Sadie was far more outgoing than I, far more energetic and alive. After she left, I refused to celebrate my birthday that year—at home or with my friends. I just stayed in my room and cried all night. At the time, I wondered if I would ever be happy again. She was my best friend. And she left me without even telling me why.”
There was nothing I could say to that, so finally I just reached out, took her hand in mine, and gave it a squeeze. She squeezed back, her grip firm.
“Of course, time and forgiveness heal all wounds. And marrying Jonah two years later brought joy back to my life, but I have never been able to get over the fact that your mother isn’t here, sharing special days like this with me. I had always imagined she would.”
She released my hand to dab at her eyes, which had filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Tyler. Here you are enjoying Anna and Tobias’s special day, and I come along and start blubbering like an old fool.”
I shook my head, wishing I had more comfort to offer her. All I could do was give her a hug and tell her what I always told myself, that at least we had our memories.
When I returned to the barn and my place at the table, Rachel seemed to sense she had crossed a line. Except for reaching over to give my hand a loving squeeze, she let me alone for a while, remaining silent and simply watching the others around the table. When she finally spoke, it was to point out the various treats, saying who made what, and how. The earlier topic was dropped and all serious conversation avoided, though I sensed we would both spend the rest of the time at the wedding pondering our exchange.
Later that night, when Anna and Tobias’s long wedding day was over, the evening chores done, and I was alone in my bed, Rachel’s words kept replaying in my mind. Truth be told, I didn’t want to believe my current restlessness had anything to do with my dad’s long-ago decision to leave me behind. But once she brought it up, I couldn’t stop wondering if that was part of it, a leftover yearning from childhood.
I hadn’t regretted the decision I’d made in my father’s hotel room. I’d known where I stood with my Englisch family—as a distant fourth to their little group of three. There was no room for me in their world.
And I’d always been okay with the trajectory my life had taken after that—or at least I’d told myself I was. Certainly, I could see God’s hand in it. Here on the farm, I had learned what it meant to be Christlike, to be part of a community, to live among people who put their beliefs into practice, day after hardworking day.
On the other hand, I admitted to myself now, I had also sacrificed much by staying here: the presence of my father in my life on a daily basis, any sort of a real relationship with my stepmother, quality time with my little brother, Brady. Once they moved to California when I was eleven, I started going to stay with them for several weeks each summer. But those visits had always been difficult for me. So many elements came into play. My deep affection for Brady. My jealousy over the life he’d been given, one that should have been mine too. My relationship with Liz, who always seemed so uncomfortable when I was around. My resentment toward my father, who acted oblivious to the fact that he’d basically abandoned me after my mother’s death.
Worst of all, I would spend those times feeling like the odd man out, not just because I wasn’t a true part of their family, but because I wasn’t even a true part of the Englisch world. I was an Amish boy, and being at my dad’s house only accentuated that.
Yet once I came home, it always took a little while for me to reenter my Amish life. Both worlds were mine, yet in truth neither was. I didn’t really belong there. I didn’t really belong here. I was caught somewhere in the middle, a man without any place at all.
I turned over in my bed and pushed the curtains away from the window above the headboard. Moonshine bathed me in pearly radiance. A patch of clouds hung low, and a single star glimmered in the open space between the heavens and the earth. The sky had looked just like this on my first night in this house. I didn’t remember arriving or much of the long ride that had brought us here, but I did remember some of the events leading up to that. I remembered the afternoon my first life ended and my second one began.
Closing my eyes now, I could see myself in my Englisch funeral clothes—gray slacks, a new clip-on tie, a blue button-down shirt that was still wrinkled from its packaging. Just prior to the service, my father pointed out a couple I’d never met, saying they were my mom’s mother and father, my grandparents. They were so oddly dressed, I wouldn’t have believed it except that the woman looked like an older version of my mother. She had the same beautiful eyes, the same, though far more wrinkled, heart-shaped face.
After the service, I sat in the tire swing of the chapel playground while funeral-goers sipped punch and munched on tiny chicken salad sandwiches and talked softly among themselves. My dad, in his dress uniform, stood talking to the man he’d said was my grandfather. But this was not the grandfather I already knew, my dad’s father, the one who walked with a cane and smelled like cigarettes. This other grandfather had a beard like Abraham Lincoln—whiskers with no moustache—and a broad-brimmed black hat.
The other grandmother was with them as well, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention to their conversation. Instead, she just stood there in her dark dress and black bonnet, looking back at me, her face a strange mix of happy and sad.
I couldn’t hear everything my father was saying to them, but I picked up snatches, such as “only for a year” and “just until I can figure out how to do this on my own,” and “Sadie was the one who did everything.”
Sadie.
Mommy.
And then my dad walked over to the swing and knelt down. He looked tired, and the rims of his eyes were red. He told me my grandparents had a farm in the country and they wanted me to come to see it. He said there were cows and horses and a big house and other kids my age.
“And a pond,” I replied, remembering the night of the storm when we still lived in Germany and my mother was still alive.
“What?”
“There’s a pond at the farm. Mommy told me.”
“Uh, well, okay. A pond. You’ll have a great time there. And you get to ride a train.”
I asked when we were leaving, and his face took on an odd expression as he said, “No, Tyler, you don’t understand. I’m not coming. It’s just you
and your grandparents.”
My eyes widened.
He looked down at his hands. “I have to go far away to supervise all the people who take care of the helicopters.”
“Are you going where Mommy is?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“When are you coming back?” In my head I was attempting to keep the details straight. Mommy is far away, not coming back. Daddy will be far away, so…
“I’ll be gone a while. It may seem like a long time, but I will come back.”
“How will you know where to find me if you don’t take me there yourself?”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “I know where your grandparents live, Ty. I’ve been there before.”
“You have?”
He nodded. “When your mother and I were first married, right before we left for Germany. We drove out to the farm and I met her family and she got to tell them goodbye.”
“Did I come too?”
“No. You weren’t born yet. That was back when it was just your mom and me.” His voice cracked at the word “mom” and then he looked away.
I was not as close to my dad as I had been to my mother. He was away from home more often than he was at it. But at that moment, he was all I had that felt safe. I didn’t want to go on a train with people I didn’t know.
“I want to stay with you.”
He shook his head. “Families can’t come to the place I’m going to, Tyler. It’s not like Germany. I can’t bring you with me.”
“Then stay here.” Tears, hot and wet, pooled in my six-year-old eyes.
“I can’t, Tyler. I have to go. It’s my job.”
I wiped at my wet cheeks as he added, “You’ll be happy there. Trust me. You really will.”
“I don’t want to go,” I wailed. And across the playground, my grandmother wiped her eyes with a tissue. My grandfather was talking to her and stroking her back. She looked at me and tried to smile.
“Sometimes you have to go somewhere even when you don’t want to. I’m sorry, Tyler, but I’m only doing what’s best for you. I can’t…I don’t…you need someone like your grandma and your grandpa. They already love you. They always have, even though you’ve never met. And they have other kids. One is almost your exact age. You’ll be happy there. You have to trust me on this.”
MEN OF LANCASTER COUNTY 01: The Amish Groom Page 4