MEN OF LANCASTER COUNTY 01: The Amish Groom

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “I want my mom,” I sputtered.

  “I know you do. I do too. But she’s not coming back.” Dad stood up and held out his hand. “Come on, son. Let’s go meet your grandparents.”

  Reluctantly, I climbed off of the swing, took his hand, and let him lead me over to the people who were going to take me home with them to live.

  After we were introduced, my grandfather shook my hand as he asked me to call him Daadi.

  “That sounds like ‘Daddy,’ I said softly.

  He smiled. “Ya, it does. But it’s spelled differently. And it’s our word for grandfather.”

  “Call me Mammi,” my grandmother said, kneeling down and opening her arms tentatively for a hug. I hesitated, but there was something so familiar about her kind face that I couldn’t help but move into her embrace.

  I couldn’t remember anything about the rest of that day, not packing up or saying goodbye to my father or getting on the train.

  I did remember waking up next to my grandmother a long time later, when the train blew its loud whistle. She helped me settle more comfortably across her lap, and she said something soft and gentle in another language. It sounded so familiar, like something my mother would say. Then I drifted back to sleep.

  Jake and I hadn’t had to share a bedroom for a number of years now, but we did back then, and I remembered my first night, lying in this bed and listening to his gentle snores from across the room. We were both six.

  Mammi had turned out the light, a funny little lantern that sounded like it was breathing when it glowed with flame. And I began to cry because I was afraid of the dark and there were no outlets for my Power Rangers night-light.

  Mammi returned quickly, and after I told her why I was crying, she pulled the curtain open above the bed. “Here is your night-light, Tyler. The same one your mamm had when this was her room.”

  Outside the window, near a diamond-bright star, sat the moon in a cushion of clouds, its light shining across my pillow in a broad streak of white.

  “Can you show me the pond?” I whispered.

  Mammi stroked my forehead. “Ya, dire kinder. Tomorrow.”

  In the morning, my grandparents walked me out to my mother’s pond, and it was just as beautiful as she’d told me it was. Even better, there really was another me—another world—reflecting back from the glassy water, just as she’d said there would be.

  Daadi and Mammi and the farm became my solid ground when my dad let me go. They gave me a home, a big family, a place to belong, and a faith in a heavenly Father on whom I could hang my every hope. Though my loss had been great, somehow over the years their steadfast love had helped to fill the empty, aching places inside. They hadn’t just given me somewhere to live but, ultimately, a new life.

  When I was eleven and my father asked me if I wanted to live with him and Liz and Brady—asked, not told—and I said no, my grandparents had been the ones to comfort my aching heart once they were gone.

  When I was sixteen and about to jump into my rumpsringa with abandon, Daadi had been the one to show me what godly manhood looked like through his own example, and then he guided me through the worst of it with lots of prayer and an enormous amount of patience.

  When I was twenty and learned that Rachel would be joining the church, Mammi had been the one to encourage me to join as well, saying that this was where I belonged. My visits to California had stopped by then, the dividing line between my world and my father’s more distinct than ever before.

  Now it was three years later, and though I knew I would always have a home here, a big part of me still couldn’t fully accept that fact. As I’d told Rachel earlier, something out there was calling to me. Something beyond myself. And that was what needled me as I lay unable to sleep. I wanted to believe God wanted me here, wanted me to be Amish. Yet it almost felt as though He was that something, that Someone, who was calling to me from outside.

  Could this restlessness be of God?

  If so, I couldn’t begin to fathom why.

  FIVE

  Somewhere deep in the night, I finally managed to fall asleep, only to be awakened again at five by the clomp of Jake’s heavy footsteps in the hallway moving past my door. As the house slowly came to life around me, I forced myself to yank the covers off. Sitting up, I placed my feet on the cool wood, hoping it would startle me fully awake.

  Morning chores needed to be done before breakfast and devotions, and then after just an hour or two of work, I would be giving Jake a ride to the bus. After that, I would join in with the massive, post-wedding cleanup effort at the Bowman farm, which would likely last until sundown. It was going to be a tiring day, made worse by my lack of sleep the night before.

  I came downstairs yawning. Jake, standing at the sink eating an apple, regarded me with comic concern. “You look terrible.”

  “Thanks. I’m going to miss hearing that.” I snagged a mug, hoping to down a quick swallow of coffee before heading out to help him with the family horses.

  “I mean it, Ty. You look terrible.”

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  Jake tossed his core in a bowl for the compost pile. “Aw, you miss me already.” He laughed and headed for the mudroom. “Either that or you ate too many dumplings at the wedding.”

  I swallowed the hot liquid and winced at the burn at the back of my throat. “I’ll be out shortly,” I rasped.

  “Okay. See you there.”

  I blew into the cup, listening as Jake paused in the mudroom to suit up and then headed outside into the last vestiges of night, the door slapping shut behind him. We usually went to the stable together each morning, laughing and joking all the way, but he was eager to wrap things up before it was time to go, and I was in no mood for socializing. Moving to the sink, I stood and watched through the window, spotting Daadi in the light of the henhouse just as Jake rounded the side of the barn.

  Outside the window, a slender line of light was sneaking onto the horizon. I’d hoped for a few quiet minutes alone, but Mammi came into the kitchen just then to start making breakfast, and she shooed me away. I took one final sip and then gave her cheek a quick kiss before moving into the mudroom. She began humming a quiet tune as I pulled on my boots and then grabbed my hat and coat off their pegs and slipped into them. I swung the door open to see Timber there waiting for me, eagerly wagging his tail.

  I greeted him warmly, and then the two of us walked side by side toward the stables. As we went, I couldn’t help but wonder how different my growing-up years would have been if Jake hadn’t been around. If I had gone to live with my dad and Liz when they asked me, the only brother figure in my life would have been little Brady, who was nine years younger than I, far too young to tease or knock around or share banter with.

  Even after Brady was older, our lives were just so different that it was often hard to relate. I loved him, of course, and it was easy to see he looked up to me, but sometimes it took the first day or two of my visits there just to relax and grow comfortable together again. I knew he enjoyed having his big brother around, and it hit me with new clarity that my life had been made much richer by the aunt and uncles I’d grown up with, all of whom had been like siblings to me.

  Since coming here to live, I’d always been surrounded by other kids, but what of Brady? Except when I visited, he was the only child living in their home, which had to be a lonely state indeed—especially given that our father was not one to show emotion unless it involved the acquisition of a new muscle car, the only thing Dad had a passion for outside his former military life. And Liz? She was polite and hospitable, but she always seemed to be on her guard, as if she were hesitant to be her true self. I didn’t know if she was that way all the time or just around me, but if it was the former, then it was no wonder Brady looked forward to having me in the house for a few weeks each summer. There was much he had that I didn’t, but I saw now that that was true in the reverse as well.

  When Timber and I reached the stables, I paused at the supply closet to
serve up some dog chow and then used the hose to rinse out his water bowl and refill it. After that, I moved the rest of the way inside and turned my attention to Jake, who had obviously been going through his duties at record speed. I was feeling a little more up to conversation by that point, but he was so antsy that we barely spoke. Instead, he finished picking each horse’s hooves while I drained the watering trough, scrubbed it out, and filled it back up again.

  Jake had already dumped the grain into the feeding trough before I got there, so as the horses had their fill of water, I opened the broad double doors to the pasture. The animals were usually eager to get outside, but this time several of them hung back, as if they knew Jake was leaving today. The stalls needed mucking out, however, so finally I insisted on taking over, telling Jake to go on back to the house, that he and his mopey animals were in my way.

  “Thanks, Tyler,” he said without a hint of his usual sarcasm. He tried to shoo the animals out, but as he patted down the one who lingered, he called out to me a laundry list of things I was not to forget about caring for his beloved horses while he was gone—from keeping an eye on the pasture for a particular invasive clover that was toxic to horses if ingested to checking them daily for bites and sores and rashes. None of it was news to me.

  Finally, he headed out, pausing at the doorway to turn back. “You’ll take good care of them for me?” he asked. He’d been a good farrier, and I knew he would become a great blacksmith as well.

  “They’ll never even know you’re gone,” I replied, though he and I were both well aware that wasn’t true. He had a way with horses I would never master, no matter how hard I tried.

  I managed to finish the rest of the chores by myself, and then I returned to the house for a delicious breakfast of fresh sausage and banana pancakes. That was followed by the reading of a psalm and prayers for the day, and then I headed to the shop.

  My morning was spent on finish work to a buggy that was nearly complete. When the detailing was done, I straightened up my work area and then went in search of Jake. I found him in the driveway, beside the family buggy, his backpack slung over one shoulder and a large duffel bag at his feet.

  I grabbed the duffel and threw it onto the rear seat of the vehicle as he stepped toward Mammi to give her a hug. Daadi tightened the harness on the horse as the animal lazily chewed on the bit in his mouth.

  “There are two sandwiches in the bag for when you get hungry and a slice of coconut cake leftover from the wedding,” Mammi said as she pulled Jake in and squeezed him tight.

  “Danke, Mamm.”

  Daadi came around to where Jake and Mammi stood, placed a hand on Jake’s shoulder, and bowed his head. “ ‘Be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you,’ ” he said, quoting from the book of Second Corinthians. Then he clasped Jake to his chest.

  “Danke, Daed.” Jake returned his father’s embrace.

  I climbed onto the driver’s seat as Jake said his final farewells.

  He stepped aboard, resting his backpack on the floor, and gave his parents a final wave as we moved down the driveway and set off at an easy canter along the main road. A few other buggies were also out and about, some no doubt headed over to the Bowman farm. Only a few cars passed us at first, but the closer to town we got, the more the automobile traffic increased.

  I was bringing Jake to a stop on the New Holland line, where he would catch the local to Lancaster then switch over to Greyhound for the day-and-a-half ride to Missouri.

  We talked about nothing in particular as we made our way, but when we were just a few blocks from the bus station, his voice took on a more serious tone. “Tyler, are you okay with my leaving the buggy business? I never asked you. And things will be different when I get back.”

  “Of course I am. I know how much you want to do this, Jake. We all do.”

  He regarded me for a moment. “You don’t have to stay with the buggies either, you know. Daed would understand if there was something else you wanted to do.”

  I had been trained on nearly every facet of the buggy-making process, from welding the axles to upholstering the seats to installing the hydraulics for the brakes. I had been working alongside Daadi every weekday, all day, since my schooling ended when I was fourteen. It was the most familiar thing in the world to me.

  “What else would I do?”

  Jake laughed, but gently. “What do you want to do?”

  I turned my head to look at him before swinging my attention back to the road in front of me. “Why are we talking about this?”

  He shrugged. “I know you’ve had a lot on your mind lately. I thought maybe it had something to do with my leaving the buggy shop.”

  “Oh. No.”

  “Okay. Good.” He was quiet for a moment. “Do you and Rachel have a problem?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “You want to tell me what it is, then?”

  I did and I didn’t. I wasn’t sure I could articulate what was on my mind, especially after yesterday’s mishandled conversation with Rachel. But I knew I couldn’t keep it in much longer, so finally I gave it a try.

  “I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ve been feeling restless lately. Like there’s something out here I am supposed to be doing or looking for.” He knew I meant out in the non-Amish world. The world outside.

  “And you don’t have any idea what that might be?” He didn’t seem shocked or surprised, and I was glad.

  “I don’t. But I can feel something tugging at me, Jake. And I think…this is going to sound crazy, but I think it might be God. Pulling me to the outside.”

  “That doesn’t sound crazy at all.”

  He couldn’t have understood what I meant. “I’m talking about feeling that God wants me out there!”

  He nodded. “I get it, Tyler. Like I said, not crazy.”

  I signaled for a turn and eased the buggy into the left lane. “Well, it feels crazy.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t go to the bishop and tell him I want to become a church member when I’m feeling this way.” I made the left turn and the car behind me zoomed past as soon as it could.

  “No. Of course you can’t.”

  “And that means I can’t ask Rachel to…I can’t…”

  “I know what it means. And you’re right. You need to settle this first.”

  I looked over at my uncle, envious for a moment that he had already made his membership vows and was now headed out to learn a trade he’d been longing to pursue for years.

  “But I don’t even know where to start.” I motioned to the busy streets, the cars, the people on the sidewalks with their cell phones in hand, the humming buzz of activity that was everything the Amish world was not. “I get out here and I sense no direction. And I just can’t see how God would be drawing me to look for something when I don’t know what it is or where I should begin. That’s not like Him at all.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  We were just half a block from the bus stop and Jake reached for his backpack. He slung it over his shoulder.

  “God calls people out of the familiar all the time when He wants to teach them something new.”

  “Okay, maybe He does. But the problem is that when I’m here, I feel a restlessness to be out there. But when I’m out there, all I want to do is get back here. It’s like I don’t belong in either place.”

  I pulled on the reins and my horse obeyed. We slowed to a stop.

  “You know you need to talk to Daed about this.” Jake stepped down and reached into the back to retrieve his duffel.

  I sighed heavily. “I know. I’ve been putting it off. I don’t want him to think I’m like…that I’m just like my mother. That I want to leave. I’m afraid I’ll hurt him the way she did.”

  He shook his head. “That was different, Tyler. She was raised Amish, but they have always known that the outside world was a part of…”
He gestured blindly, trying to state the obvious without putting it in a way that would sound mean. I knew what he was saying, that the outside world had been a part of my past—and a potential for my future—since the day I was born.

  Jake leaned forward across the passenger seat to clasp my hand, meeting my eyes with a firm gaze as we shook. “Talk to Daed. He’s a very wise man.”

  “I know. You’re right. Have a great time in Missouri.”

  Releasing his grip, he stood up straight, shifting the weight of his pack. “Tell Mamm I’ll call the shop phone when I get settled.”

  “Ya.”

  “See you in February?”

  I nodded. I very much hoped he would see me in February. He stepped out onto the street and then turned back to face me.

  “So you’ll talk to him?” His eyes were filled with brotherly concern.

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  Jake shut the buggy door, patted the horse goodbye, and turned to wave as he walked off. I watched until he joined the handful of people already at the bus stop, some chatting on cell phones, a few smoking, the rest simply staring off into the distance.

  Turning my eyes from the scene and swallowing hard, I waited for a lull in the traffic and in my racing thoughts before signaling and easing the buggy back on the road.

  I spent the rest of the day at the Bowmans’, silently beseeching God to help me find the right words to tell Daadi I was struggling with something I hardly knew how to describe. I was also praying He would show me the right time for that conversation to happen. God answered my second prayer first. Actually, He answered only that prayer.

  The next afternoon, back at the buggy shop, everyone was either done for the day or working outside in the covered bay, and Daadi and I ended up inside alone. It was obviously a great time to have a quiet conversation with him, but I had no ready words at my disposal.