MEN OF LANCASTER COUNTY 01: The Amish Groom
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She said it casually, but I could tell there was a purpose to her question, and that it had to do with why she hadn’t really answered mine.
“Sure. If you’re up for it.”
“I’ll be due for another pain pill when they’re done with the new cast. If I’m not hallucinating or near comatose, I’d like to take you to lunch.”
“Sounds great.”
It was tough waiting for Liz to be seen and then tougher still waiting for her to emerge with a new cast. I was eager to continue our conversation.
Lark texted me as I sat in the outpatient waiting room to see if we could meet the next day instead of Saturday. The reception in the hospital was terrible, so I stepped outside to text her I was fairly certain I could make the switch, but that Liz had returned early from Central America with an injured ankle and shoulder and everything was now a little different.
That text prompted her to ask me what had happened.
I texted back: Can I just call you?
Her answer back to me: No. I’m in class. Just tell me.
She was in a house that collapsed while she was inside it.
No way! Really? Is she okay?
Like I said, she has some injuries. But overall she was lucky. Could’ve been worse.
Is it weird having her home?
You could say that. She’s seeing the doctor now and then we’re going to lunch. I have a feeling there’s something she needs to tell me.
You want to call me later?
I really didn’t know what I wanted—except for the hundredth time I wished I could call Rachel.
I’m sure it’s not that bad.
Okay, but holler if you want to talk about it.
Will do. See you tomorrow.
I went back inside the hospital. Fifteen minutes later Liz emerged from the casting room with her injured leg bent at the knee and resting on a scooter-type contraption that she operated with her other foot. She was surrounded by colleagues who were wishing her well and offering sympathetic goodbyes until she returned to work. At least the sling was now gone from her arm.
As we headed back out to the car she told me the fracture wasn’t as bad as she thought but it was still going to keep her off of her leg for at least six weeks.
“I have a few bruised ribs too, and a few contusions on my back that are blossoming into a hideous, purple road map. But I’ll live. And it’s nice to lose the stupid sling, which they said wasn’t really needed anyway.”
“Are you feeling okay?”
“I just took another pain pill, so by the time we get to a restaurant, I’ll be able to be pleasant to people.”
I helped her into her car and then we headed for a Mexican place she liked. Once we were seated, I noted with a quiet laugh that the Baja fish tacos were a house favorite. I opted for cheese enchiladas. Liz ordered flautas. When the waitress walked away with our menus, I could see that Liz was still in pain.
“Would you like me to change our order to go?”
She shook her head. “I’ll be okay.” She took a long sip of her water.
The feeling that she’d brought me here to tell me something was even stronger now, so I waited for her to begin the conversation. After a second or two, she did.
“I’ve been thinking about what you told me last night. You know, about your wanting to know if your mother was happy.”
“Ya?”
“It’s not like we were best friends. She was just my neighbor for a few months.”
I waited.
“But I do know she wanted something she couldn’t have.”
“What? What did she want?”
Liz swirled a finger on the condensation sparkling on her glass. “She wanted both.”
“Both what?”
“Both lives.” Liz met my eyes. “She wanted to have the life she had and an Amish life. She wanted to return to Lancaster County, but she wanted to stay with your father. But she couldn’t have both. Having one meant not having the other.”
I sat, stunned, speechless, wondering how Liz could know this.
“I was working the night shift, so I was home during the day. One afternoon your mother was sitting on the steps of our duplex watching you play in your wading pool, and I had come out to wash my car. It was a blistering hot day. She asked me over for some lemonade, and we got to talking. I already knew she had been raised Amish because we had spoken before. But for some reason, on that particular day, she was feeling especially talkative—or maybe just homesick. She talked about the farm where she grew up and her family and how sad it was that her own son would never know the joy of an Amish life. She said she wished there was some cosmic way she could have both worlds.”
I still could not speak.
“I didn’t know much about the Amish, and I asked her why she couldn’t just have both, like a cousin of mine who had a Korean husband. They lived in Korea, but she managed to be a Westerner while still embracing his culture.”
Liz looked to me as if I would agree that these were valid suggestions. I just stared back at her, waiting for her to continue.
“Anyway, your mother told me it was different with the Amish. That that was impossible. That the two cultures were mutually exclusive. She said that living an Amish life meant giving up all other ways, not merging them.” Liz took another long sip of her water. “Your mom told me your dad was on one side and the Amish life was on the other. And that those two sides would never meet. Ever. It was one or the other, but not both.”
I looked away, out the window next to our table, where the busyness of life rushed past, trying to absorb what she was telling me.
“It wasn’t that she was unhappy, Tyler. She didn’t want to go back there if that meant leaving your father behind. But she wished there was a way she could go back and keep him too. And she knew that wish would never come true.”
I slowly turned my head to look at her as she added, “I’m telling you now because I think she would want you to know.”
We were both quiet for a minute, each lost in our thoughts.
“I honestly didn’t think I would ever run into your father again,” Liz said, breaking the silence. “I hardly ever saw him in those eight months they—you and your parents—were at the base in Texas. Then, five years later, when I was stationed in Spain, he came into the hospital one day with a burn from some equipment he’d been working on. I was his nurse. He barely remembered me, but I remembered him. I asked him how his wife was. And when he told me what had happened, I started crying, right there in the exam room. I don’t know why. For some reason, I had hoped Sadie had finally come to peace with the choices she’d made. With her passing so young, though, I figured she probably hadn’t. And that thought was just heartbreaking to me.”
Our food arrived and we began to eat. I suppose it was cooked perfectly and I might have enjoyed it had my head not been brimming with new thoughts.
“Why did you say you thought my situation was unfixable?” I asked a few minutes later. “Earlier, in the car. That was the word you used, unfixable.”
“Because it was. Duke waited too long to come back for you. And then we waited too long to come back for you. I should have insisted the minute we were married to come to Pennsylvania and get you. You had just turned eight. It had only been two years since you’d been there. But I got pregnant pretty soon after we were married and we just kept putting it off. By the time we got our act together, it had been five years since your grandparents had taken you. And we had Brady. And you…well, it was too late.”
Too late.
She was right. For all intents and purposes, by that time, I was fully ensconced in the Amish world, fully a part of my grandparents’ household. But had that been a good thing or a bad thing? I wondered. Then I realized that it didn’t matter either way.
All that mattered was that it had been a God thing. Growing up Amish had been His will for me.
“I’ve had a good life, Liz. I’m not bitter about the way things turned out.”
“Are you telling me you think I shouldn’t go back?”
“I’m telling you that right now, you have what your mother didn’t have. The ability to choose.”
I processed this for a long moment. Then another thought occurred to me.
“Can I ask you something?”
She nodded, waiting.
“When you were stationed in Spain and my father came into your hospital that day and you asked him about my mother…” My voice trailed off, unsure of how to say it.
“Yes?”
“Did he mention me at all? Did he say where I was or what had happened to me?”
Her eyes narrowed, and I knew she was wondering why I wanted to know.
Why did I want to know? To find out how he’d said it, if he’d been embarrassed or remorseful about leaving me behind? To find out if the situation really had been “crazy”?
“He told me you were living with your Amish grandparents until his next tour was over.”
“How did you respond to that?”
She thought for a long moment. “I suppose I should have thought to ask why he hadn’t brought you with him. But at the time the only thing that came to mind was, well, at least Sadie’s son made it back, even if she never did.”
TWENTY-SIX
I awoke Friday morning before dawn, wondering if snow was falling on Lancaster County as predicted. I wanted to be able to picture where Rachel was, what she was doing. I crept downstairs to my dad’s study, turned on his computer, and opened an Internet browser so that I could check the Weather Channel’s website.
Indeed, it said they had already received several inches and more was to come. A travel advisory had been issued for practically all of Eastern Pennsylvania. It was difficult to imagine that I wasn’t on another planet. The forecast for Orange County was sunny skies and a high of seventy-three degrees.
I turned the computer off and closed my eyes, picturing Rachel in her wool cape and heavier bonnet, walking from her house to the dairy barns in the blue-white of morning snow. The cows would raise their big heads when she walked inside the milking parlor and slowly blink their long-lashed eyes. The breath coming out of their nostrils would look like wisps of gauze. They would be anxious to be milked, ready for breakfast, waiting for the human contact that would bring both. But Rachel would walk past the milking stanchions into the nursery to feed the new calves, change their bedding, and rub the little nubs of growing horns before they were removed. She might be humming a song as she did these chores. Was she thinking of me? Was she missing me?
This was the hardest part of my ponderings. Imagining the flip side of those musings: a morning without Rachel in it.
It was wrong to join the church solely for the love of a girl. I wouldn’t do it. But Rachel was a part of the equation, just as my dad had been a part of my mother’s equation when she was seeking peace for her situation.
“Rachel deserves to be happy,” I said aloud to God. “I want her to be happy.”
When she and I talked tomorrow, I would assure her I wanted this more than anything else, even more than my own happiness.
After lunch, I borrowed Liz’s car and headed to my next photography lesson. Before I was halfway there, however, Lark called to see if we could postpone for an hour. One of her professors had offered a special study session after class and it was running a little long.
I assured her that was no problem, though after I hung up, I pulled over into the nearest gas station while I tried to figure out what to do with myself between now and then. I could always turn around and go back to the house, but I didn’t want to. An hour to kill, the car at my disposal, nobody else aware of where I was or what I was doing…
What I really wanted was to go to my father’s storage unit and dig around inside until I found the box of my mother’s photographs, the ones I hadn’t stopped thinking about since the moment he’d first mentioned them.
I had the key on my key ring. I had the security code on a piece of paper in my wallet. I could easily find my way there, get inside, and more than likely dig up those photos. Of course, that would mean rooting around through my father’s private things without his permission, but was that really such a big deal?
For that matter, would he even have to know about it? After all, they weren’t really his pictures to give. They were hers. And she was my mother. Maybe that really did give me the right to seek them out on my own.
A sensation of unease swept over me.
More than unease. Guilt. Shame.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go over there and rifle through my dad’s possessions, much less do so and then keep it a secret afterward. Before he left, he said I could have the pictures; they were practically mine already. But they weren’t mine yet. Not until he handed them to me himself.
Outside the car, movement at a nearby dumpster caught my eye, and I turned to see a trio of seagulls fighting over a discarded sandwich. Their presence reminded me of the ocean not too far away and of God’s magnificent handiwork on display there.
The moment my thoughts turned to Him, I could hear His words to me from earlier in the week. Like notes on a breeze, they came floating back now.
Honor others before yourself.
This would not be honoring my dad, jumping into his privacy to find something he had already said he would give me when he returned. This was just me jumping ahead and doing what pleased me without concern for how he would feel.
I made my decision. I would honor my father and wait to be given the pictures in his time, not mine.
Feeling frustrated but resolute, I knew what I needed most in that moment was a place to think and pray, somewhere quiet that I could disengage from everything that pulled at my affections and concentrate solely on God. I put the car in gear and pulled back onto the road to go in search of just that. The beach would have been a good choice, but traffic was so heavy that I knew an hour wasn’t enough time.
Needing somewhere closer, I continued down the road, eyes open for other possibilities. When I was nearly to Lark’s house and still hadn’t found any place to retreat, I turned into a shopping center I’d noticed before, one that had a coffee shop with a large outdoor patio landscaped with trees, flowers, and a bubbling fountain. It wasn’t secluded, but at least it looked peacefully busy. People were scattered about the tables, most talking quietly or tapping away at laptops.
I bought a large cup of black coffee and settled into a chair by the fountain, hoping that the sound of water rushing over stone would help me be still. Sprinklings of conversations and the songs of the birds that never had to fly south for the winter filled the air. Across from me, a woman and her two young children sat next to a playpen of puppies they were hoping to give away. On the other side of the fountain was a frozen yogurt shop, and every time someone opened the door, a few bars of reggae music floated onto the patio.
I found it difficult to pray there, so finally I turned my intentions to thinking instead. Sitting there among the busyness, I thought about my father first. Then Liz. Brady. Rachel. My mother. I thought about this thing, whatever it was, that pulled at me from the outside when I was home—yet pulled me home when I was out. I wondered, yet again, which man I was and in which place I truly belonged. If only God would show me soon!
I sipped my coffee and watched people stop to pat, hold, and cuddle the frolicking puppies. When I was done, I tossed out my empty cup and walked over to see them for myself, nodding at the older of the two children.
“Want to hold one?” he asked.
I held out my hands and the boy gave me a wriggling, spotted dog.
The pup smelled of wood shavings, energy, and confident trust. It had been a while since Timber had been a puppy, and longer still since we’d had much livestock. These days our attention was almost solely on the buggy shop. But holding that little dog reminded me
of younger years when I was given a piglet to raise, or chickens to care for, or when one of our horses foaled. New life always reminded me of God’s purposes being renewed in the most basic of ways.
I held the dog close to my face and he licked my cheek with his tiny pick tongue.
“You want him?” the boy asked.
“I’m just visiting,” I said, shaking my head as I handed the puppy back. It wasn’t until I turned to go that I realized what I’d just said.
It was true. I felt like a visitor. No matter where I was, I felt like a visitor.
It was as if when I turned six, that’s what I became. A visitor.
I made it to Lark’s house at two o’clock sharp. She thanked me again for being flexible with the time and then led me to the dining room, where she had spread out on the table prints of the pictures I’d taken with both the digital and the film camera. We looked over the digitals first, reviewing my composition, and then she made me go through the film shots one by one, comparing each against the notes I’d taken while shooting them.
Overall, I decided, a few were rather nice, most were okay, and a number were just plain terrible. We studied them together for a while, but finally I sat back in my chair, defeated.
“Well, I think one thing has been made very clear,” I said, taking in the pictures in their entirety. “I do not have an eye for photography.”
“Why would you say that?”
“These are just ho-hum. They’re nowhere near as good as anything you’ve taken. Even your early stuff.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. They’re not that bad.”
“Don’t be so easy on me. They’re not that good.”
Lark picked up a photo I had taken of a Corvette that had been parked at the beach lot. I’d thought my dad might like it. “This one’s pretty good.” She handed it to me.
“It’s okay.”
She picked up another, of a gull walking the fine line between wet sand and dry. “I like this one.”
“It’s not bad. I just don’t see a story in any of these the way I saw in yours.”
“Well, it’s only your second try at it, Ty. You’ll get better. It’s like anything that requires practice. The more you do it, the easier it will become and the better your results will be. I’m sure the first buggy you made had its problems.”