Big Decisions

by Linda Byler

  So she walked into the living room, picked up her unfinished dress, folded it neatly on the sewing machine, and cleared her throat. She picked up the corner of the rug, pulled it into place, and cleared her throat again. Stephen stirred, then opened his eyes, raising his eyebrows as he straightened his chair.

  “You know why I’m grouchy?” he asked, in his straightforward manner.

  Glory Hallelujah! He wasn’t angry!

  “Why?” Lizzie responded, eagerly.

  “Because I’m tired of working with your Dat and Jason.”

  “But … but …” Lizzie floundered, her heart sinking. Dat was their paycheck, their security, their house payment and groceries and … and … everything.

  “I want to start my own business with my brothers.”

  This was too much. Lizzie’s thoughts filled with a hundred unnamed fears, which whirled around inside her head like a whole flock of frightened blackbirds. She was unable to comprehend much of what he was saying.

  “What do you mean?” she finally managed, a bit weakly.

  “Just that. I don’t have anything against Dat and Jason. I just feel as if we’ll always live here and never get ahead as long as I’m only being paid by the hour.”

  “But … I mean …” Lizzie simply didn’t know what to say, so she stopped and sank into a rocking chair.

  “But, Stephen,” she finally said, in a very small voice. “It’s so scary.”

  “Not really.”

  “But … what about Dat? What does he say?”

  “I haven’t said anything. And don’t you say a word to anyone, either. I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do. I like to make furniture, too, so maybe I could build a small shop, attach it to the barn, and work there in the evening.”

  Oh, that sounded like the perfect solution to Lizzie and she told him so instantly, adding that it seemed so very much safer to stay with Dat and build furniture in the evening.

  They sat for quite a while, discussing both ideas. Stephen became more enthused about building a small furniture shop as additional income. After Lizzie realized he was now in a much better state of mind, she asked a bit timidly if he really meant what he had just said about putting a doorway between the two rooms.

  “Are you still chewing on that?” he asked, amazed that she had not forgotten one bit.

  “Well, yes, Stephen. I want a nursery for Laura. The only thing in that room is your desk and gun cabinet, and the desk will fit nicely in the dining room. How often do you use your guns? Huh?”

  “A lot,” Stephen said, scowling.

  Determined to have her own way, Lizzie pushed on, fueled by her single-minded desire to have that nursery.

  “You don’t. Only in the fall. Deer season, and that’s it.”

  “Turkey, squirrel, pheasant, dove, rabbit,” Stephen said, loudly.

  “So? That’s in November and December.”

  “October!”

  “Well, whatever. But that gun cabinet could go upstairs. I’ll fix up a room for it and everything. The only difference is you’ll need to climb the stairs.”

  Stephen said nothing, only picked up his fishing magazine again.

  “Stephen, if you’re going to sit there and read that thing without answering me, I’m going to go get a saw and cut a hole in that wall! Put it away!”

  Stephen put the magazine away and looked straight at her, giving her his undivided attention.

  “Okay, and how do you plan on sawing through that wall?” he asked.

  “With a saw,” she said archly.

  “Once you set your mind to something, you just don’t give up, do you?”

  “Sometimes I do.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t either. I’ll tell you what. If you help me in my new shop in the evening, I’ll put my gun cabinet upstairs. I’ll cut that much-needed hole in the wall if that’s what it’s going to take to keep my very determined wife happy.”

  Lizzie could not believe her ears! She was so happy, she shrieked like a little girl, hugging Stephen and waking the baby. She talked nonstop as she ran into the bedroom to pick up a bewildered little Laura. She told her she would soon be sleeping in a big crib in her very own room, and wouldn’t that be the most delightful thing ever?

  The days that followed were busy, happy ones for Lizzie. Stephen helped her move the furniture, and then, true to his word, he brought his tools in one Saturday morning and cut a door in the bedroom wall. There was a lot of noise and dust everywhere, but she did not complain about anything, not ever. She was far too happy to have the nursery she had dreamed about.

  She even stood beside Stephen, telling him he was very handsome in that gray shirt. It made his eyes look almost silver. He grinned, then told her she was just saying that because she was getting her own way. Would she stand beside him right now and tell him he looked handsome if he lay on the recliner and refused to cut this door?

  Lizzie said of course not. Husbands who refused to do anything nice for their wives never looked handsome. Stephen said they looked exactly the same, just not in their wife’s eyes. “You always look the same, no matter what you did,” he said. Lizzie laughed and laughed, and then Stephen grinned, and they sat on the floor and talked a while about other things.

  Those were the times Lizzie was glad she was married and lived with Stephen in the little brown house on top of the hill. If your husband was kind and did a nice favor for you like cutting this door, life was so happy and rosy, and your husband looked very nice when he worked.

  But if you sat in a buggy beside him and the rein was too tight on the horse, and he didn’t think so and refused to loosen it, your husband didn’t look nearly as handsome. Actually, on Sunday on the way to church, Lizzie thought Stephen’s nose was really growing and that his hair was cut too square in front of his ears. It was amazing how his looks changed when he was kind.

  The nursery turned out just as pretty as Lizzie had imagined a few weeks later. She painted the walls a pale pink color. Stephen read directions from a small white manual and assembled the crib without once losing his temper. Lizzie sewed the pink gingham curtains and covered a bumper pad she had bought at a garage sale with the same fabric.

  They went to town and bought a nice dry sink at the used-furniture place, which they probably should not have bought, since it was over a hundred dollars. But Stephen said it wasn’t too bad, so Lizzie thought he was surely the best husband anyone had ever had.

  The closet in the nursery was one of the things she was most thrilled about. She arranged all the little dresses on little pink plastic hangers, then hung them on a silver rod in a colorful row. On the shelf above it, she placed Laura’s little black shawl with her navy blue bonnet on top, and then the diaper bag which she used to go everywhere, except to church when she used the little woven basket kaevly.

  On the floor of the closet, Lizzie put the blue stroller that folded up neatly.

  Now all she needed were some rugs. She still wanted soft, fuzzy, pink rugs, one to put in front of the crib and another to put in front of the dry sink, mostly because the floor was a stone-patterned linoleum. When they built the house, they planned this room for Stephen’s things, not a baby’s, which, if you really thought about it, wasn’t too smart. They should have thought of having babies, but, then, some people never had any. You just never knew about that kind of thing, which, Lizzie supposed, was completely up to God.

  Sometimes she wondered why God was the way he was. Why he let some people have a whole pile of babies. Others, who desperately wanted children, he left childless, and they had to adopt someone else’s babies if they wanted any. It was hard to figure God out sometimes, never knowing what he would do next. But then, Mam helped Lizzie to understand that nothing was stressful as long as it was the way God wanted it to be. Most likely everything was the way he chose anyway. Good or bad, it was God working in people’s lives, which was a calming, very restful thing for Mam, but just as scary as co
uld be for Lizzie.

  The real issue here was the idea of having more babies. As Lizzie finished placing all the cute baby things where she wanted them, she wondered if Laura would be their only child for a long, long time. She certainly did not want another one, not now, not ever. But she could not tell Mam that. Or Stephen. Or anyone, really. For one thing, Mam would start in about God’s will. He meant for women to complete a family with children, she would say. But Mam loved all babies—homely ones, fat ones, even noisy, slobbering babies that weren’t a bit cute. She loved them all.

  Of course, Lizzie loved Laura, but she wanted only her for now. Maybe when Laura went to school, she could think about having another one. Lizzie really wondered what the Bible said about having babies. How many was a good number, how many was an excellent number, and how would only one look to God?

  English people didn’t have 10 children. They had only two or three, and sometimes, only one. But Amish people had a whole pile. Some families had 14 children, or 12 or 10 or whatever. So did that mean the Amish woman would have it nicer in heaven? Or find more grace in God’s eyes?

  She would have to get her Bible and figure this out. So she did. Stephen eyed her warily as she searched her Bible each evening before she went to bed. He thought that if she wanted to talk about whatever was on her mind, she would. And sure enough, one evening she started in with dozens of complicated questions and reasonings about having a large family versus a small one, and did it make a difference to God in the end?

  Stephen shrugged his shoulders and said he didn’t know, but the truth was, her endless questions about life made him tired. Why did she need to make a relatively simple existence so complicated by having to understand every tiny little thing? But that was Lizzie, and she was his wife, so he guessed he’d better learn to live with it.

  Chapter 22

  LIZZIE COULD NOT LET the matter of having more babies rest. She thought about it constantly, always resisting the idea. She searched her Bible until she became quite frustrated with the lack of direction it gave about the proper number of children God wanted in each family.

  Stephen never said much about the subject. He rolled his eyes and sighed loudly whenever she approached him yet again with her endless wondering about having a large family, especially if you didn’t want one.

  Lizzie finally decided he was no help at all and marched down the hill with Laura in her arms to visit Mam. Mam was puttering around in her flower beds, carefully clipping the brown leaves off her picturesque “cheraniums.”

  KatieAnn and Susan came running for Laura, who started waving her arms and wriggling all over the minute she saw them approaching. KatieAnn held her while Susan looked over her sister’s shoulder, both talking to her at once while Laura squealed with excitement. Lizzie watched and decided that it was amazing how much the twins loved Laura. She wasn’t even their own baby. Maybe KatieAnn and Susan were like Mam, truly loving all babies, constantly wanting to hold them when they were around her. Mam straightened her back and wiped the sweat from her brow, her face red with exertion.

  “Come on in, Lizzie, and I’ll fix us a cold drink,” she said.

  “You go on working in your flower beds, Mam. You don’t need to stop because I’m here.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not that busy. I always have time for you girls,” she said, smiling.

  Lizzie thought things really changed after you got married and moved away. Mam treated you more like company, becoming more smiley and polite when you came home. That was because you were no longer a real daughter, but now partly Stephen’s wife, so Mam was much kinder and didn’t boss you around anymore. That was nice.

  Mam opened the door for Lizzie and got out two glasses from the cupboard, filling them with ice cubes and grape Kool-Aid, which tasted like Lizzie remembered home to taste. Suddenly she had a sharp pang of homesickness, and she wanted to sit around the kitchen table with Emma and Mandy and drink grape Kool-Aid while Mam bossed them around.

  “What’s on your mind, Lizzie?” Mam asked, noticing the worried arch of her brows, accompanied by a most troubled expression.

  “Oh, not much. Well, yes, a little.”

  Mam waited.

  “Why do Amish people have so many children?” Lizzie finally asked.

  Mam raised her eyebrows, then took a long drink.

  “That’s a good question, Lizzie,” she said.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. And you know, I don’t really know how to answer it. I wanted all my babies, every one of them, even if they were born almost every year.”

  “But you’re not normal, Mam. Not where babies are concerned,” Lizzie said.

  Mam laughed and laughed, her round stomach shaking as she did so, until she looked quizzically at Lizzie and shook her head. She took off her glasses to wipe them with the corner of her apron, the same way she always did.

  “Oh, now, Lizzie, I think I’m quite normal.”

  “Then I’m not. Mam, I don’t want another baby. Not ever, and it’s so hard to find anything in the Bible about that subject. It doesn’t say anything about the number of babies you’re supposed to have,” Lizzie said.

  “Lizzie, now listen. The Bible doesn’t say one thing specifically about the way we dress. It doesn’t say we’re supposed to wear capes or make our dresses a certain way or any of that. Someone hundreds of years ago decided this is the way we should dress so we remain modest, and the tradition has been maintained all these years. Having babies is very likely much the same. Did you find the passage in the Bible where it says about women reaching their salvation through childbearing? I forget exactly where it is, but it’s there.”

  “Mam, the preachers say grace is free. A gift. Isn’t grace our salvation? Then how come we have to have a whole pile of babies to get to heaven? That’s trying to earn our way in—you know that.”

  Mam was quiet, turning her empty glass around and around.

  “Lizzie, you think too much,” she said. “Why don’t you just stop trying to figure everything out and learn to accept whatever God sends? No matter what, and it’s hard to explain this, but having babies is a very good method of learning to give up our own will.”

  “So, when you say that, you’re saying you had to give up every time a baby was born? Right? Huh?”

  “Well, not really. I looked forward to each one, wondering if it would be a boy or girl, what it would look like, how much it would weigh. I was always happy with my babies.”

  “Not Jason.”

  “Yes, I was, Lizzie,” Mam said, becoming slightly perturbed, Lizzie could tell.

  “He was homely-looking, you know that. And you cried in the bedroom, all by yourself, because he cried so much. I saw you.”

  “Lizzie, with each baby you have, your motherly instincts become better. You become more relaxed, more focused on the baby’s needs and less and less on your own. That’s why it’s a good thing to just let God direct in your life, bearing children, learning through that to become more and more unselfish as time goes on. It is good for a woman to have children.”

  Lizzie thought of the hospital and the grouchy nurses, her inability to nurse Laura, her overwhelming feelings of inadequacy. She had cried constantly, feeling as if she was washed overboard in stormy seas and would surely perish, all because of having had a baby. It was definitely not something she wanted to do ever again if she could help it.

  “But then, what if I don’t have more children? What if I would be one of the first Amish women in the world to have only one? Does that mean God would be mad at me?”

  “Ach, Lizzie, you make me tired. Sometimes I don’t know how to answer your questions.”

  “So, you don’t know, right?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Look at Aunt Vera, in Ohio. She had two chidren, Leroy and Mary Ann. And I’m pretty sure she’ll go to heaven, Mam, as kindhearted as she is.”

  Mam laughed. “Ach, yes, Lizzie. Vera is one person who had only two children. She had Leroy and Mary An
n and decided that’s enough of that. Bless her dear heart, I miss her. It’s time we go for a visit again. Did you know Homer bought a coal business now?”

  “He did?” Lizzie said absent-mindedly, still worrying with the baby subject.

  “Well, if I do have more babies, I’m not going to the hospital. I didn’t like it there. That one nurse was so mean, and I still think that’s what got me started crying,” she said.

  “Lizzie, I’ve been to the hospital many, many times, and I’ve never had a nasty or mean nurse. Are you sure it was as bad as you say it was? Maybe you were overly sensitive.”

  Lizzie shook her head.

  “Huh-uh, Mam. She scolded me terribly for laying Laura crossways on the bed. I’ll never forget how that only added to my feeling of being overwhelmed with the responsibility of a new baby. She made me feel as if I wasn’t fit to have a baby, which, I suppose, I wasn’t, because she wouldn’t nurse right.”

  “Your next one might be so different, Lizzie. You know and have learned a lot with Laura. Stephen wants a little boy, and after that, you’ll want more. You’ll see.”

  On her way back up the hill, Lizzie was glad Mam didn’t have better answers She couldn’t prove that having a large family instead of a smaller one was a rule enforced by God. Big families were just an Amish tradition, the same as her clothes.

  But, if she was quite honest with herself, the traditions of the Amish—of the forefathers, as the ministers said—was not something she took lightly. She supposed a church was the same as a school. You had to have rules or else everybody would just go out and do their own thing. What sense of structure and order would there be otherwise?

  Yes, she would continue to wear a black shawl and bonnet to church, to wear black shoes and stockings, to comb her hair sleek and flat, to light her propane gas lamp and trim the wicks. She would wash with a wringer washer propelled by a gas motor, keeping up the old traditions and way of life because she wanted to. She never really wanted to change. Never. She loved her way of life, and she wanted to do these Amish things. She loved belonging to a group of people who believed in the same order.