by Sarah Price
“God is gut indeed, Grace,” he replied, guiding her through the doorway and toward their bedroom. “Now, if you can stop laughing at me, I’d like our baby born in a bed, all proper like. Let’s get you situated so I can fetch my maem. Just remember, Grace, that whatever amount of pain we suffer in this life, it will not compare to God’s glory and blessings which only He will reveal to us . . . ”
She started to smile at his attempt to offer her support for what was yet to come. Like any first-time mother, she was nervous about childbirth. His words were a soothing balm to her nerves and helped alleviate her fears.
The following day, twelve days before Christmas and after almost sixteen hours of labor, their daughter Linda was born, the greatest Christmas gift God could have bestowed upon the couple.
2015
When everyone was seated at the table, Grace saw James Esh look around at the faces before him. Normally a quiet man, certainly in comparison with his brother-in-law, the bishop, James cleared his throat and spoke to those gathered around his table.
“What a glorious sight to see so many of us gathered together to share our gratitude to God and to each other on this Thanksgiving,” he said, his voice surprisingly loud for a man who rarely spoke. “We have much to be thankful for: our family, our friends, our health, and, most importantly, our ability to worship God without fear of persecution, unlike our forefathers.”
His eloquence surprised her and she found herself leaning forward, eager to hear what James would say next.
“Over the past four hundred years, our ancestors have struggled and suffered so that we could be gathered here today in fellowship, to give thanks for the blessings of the Lord upon our lives.” He paused and looked around the room once again. His eyes rested on Grace’s when he continued. “Despite hardships in all of our lives, we must remember what the Bible says: ‘The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.’”
Had she heard him properly? Grace frowned, wondering if she had imagined what James just said. And had he been staring at her when he said it? By the time she realized that she had not misheard him, the rest of the people sat with bowed heads in silent prayer to thank the good Lord for the bountiful meal set before them.
But Grace was still in shock.
Romans 8:18 had been one of Menno’s favorite scriptures. He repeated it often, especially in times of crisis. When she had discussed her parents’ inability to move beyond Benny’s death, hadn’t that been the exact scripture he quoted to her? When she had given birth to Linda, hadn’t that been what he was telling her? In fact, whenever they faced hardships or tragedy, whether in their lives together or within the community, Menno was always the one who offered this scripture as a means to comfort her . . . and help her move on with life.
Her thoughts were so jumbled by that realization that she could barely taste any of the food on her plate. She needed to know why James had selected that scripture to recite over the Thanksgiving table. Was it because of Menno’s passing, or was it a random coincidence?
She knew she couldn’t wait until the end of the meal to ask James; so, pushing back her chair, she excused herself from the table. As she headed for the downstairs bathroom, she paused at the end of the table and leaned over James’s shoulder.
“That was a beautiful verse you recited,” she said in a soft voice. “What a right gut reminder for all of us on this Thanksgiving Day.”
He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and then reached into his back pocket. “Wouldn’t have thought of it but one of the kinner gave me this here note,” he replied. He glanced at her before handing it over. “Now that I think of it,” he went on, scratching his cheek by his graying beard, “mayhaps I misread that.” He chuckled and returned his attention to his plate of food.
Her hand shook as she held the piece of paper. It was folded in half with the words For Grace at Thanksgiving written on the outside. When she unfolded it, the very verse that James had recited was handwritten on the inside. Certainly, that could be interpreted in two different ways: Had the sender of the message meant that he should incorporate that verse over his blessing at Thanksgiving, or that he should give the paper to her instead?
Either way, the message was clear: move on.
Who was this secret sister who seemed so intent on piecing her life back together, as if sewing together fabric squares to make a complete, if not necessarily pretty, quilt top?
CHAPTER SEVEN
December 2015
FOR THE NEXT week, Grace kept herself tucked away in her home, alternating between reading the Bible and poring through her diaries. She read through the months following Linda’s birth, groaning out loud despite being alone, when she remembered those sleepless nights she went through during the first few months. She smiled when she read the entry about Linda’s first steps, a moment that had delighted her then but, in hindsight, had altered her life. Once Linda began to walk, Grace never had another moment of peace as she was constantly chasing after her.
She remembered her third miscarriage, just twelve months after Linda was born. In the diary, she had indicated the moment with a simple comment regarding feeling ill and taking to bed for a few days. But when Grace read the date, she remembered far too well how the familiar stomach cramps had come, and shortly after, she had recognized the signs of the loss of another life that had been growing inside of her. Once again, she had spared Menno the knowledge of what happened, not wanting to share the emotional pain she felt at the loss.
Setting aside the diaries, Grace leaned her head back against the recliner to rest her eyes. Those little books represented fifty years of life. Her life. It was like reading a familiar story, a story she didn’t want to keep reading because she knew the eventual outcome. Still, she could hardly put them down, even though she knew what came next at every turn of the page.
The year following her third miscarriage, Ivan was born. Soulful, quiet Ivan who even as a toddler spent his time observing nature and people. Grace often wondered at the differences between Linda and Ivan, the former quite headstrong and the latter more reflective. During that time, Anna Mae came to stay with her under the guise of helping with the young children, but Grace knew the truth. She remembered the conversation as if it had been just a few days ago.
“They just go through the motions,” Anna Mae had complained. “No matter how much the bishop counsels them, they cannot accept the fact that he’s gone.”
Grace worried that they’d be shunned, for she knew how strict and conservative their bishop was. However, before that happened, he passed away and a new bishop was chosen by lot from the existing preachers. Fortunately for her parents, the new bishop had focused more on acclimating himself to his role as church leader than on her parents’ continued mourning of Benny’s untimely death.
After four years and one more miscarriage, Susan arrived, and a month earlier than expected. Difficult, willful Susan, who cried with every bout of colic for months on end, rarely slept, walked too early, and screamed far too loud. She tried to emulate her older sister, Linda, but the age difference was too great for theirs to be a tight sisterly bond.
With three small children and only one at school, Grace had her hands full indeed. Yet she never complained. She doted on her children, teaching them verses from the Bible and visiting with Menno’s parents on a daily basis. They had moved into the smaller section of the house after Ivan was born and both Linda and Bethany had married. Barbara always had fresh-baked cookies or canned fruit waiting to serve Grace and the children.
While her children were young, Grace leaned strongly upon her faith in God and her love for Menno to help give her strength. She had needed it, for a series of hardships still lay in her future. In 1973, just after Susan was born, her father died. Her mother followed two years later after a bad bout of pneumonia. And before all that, Anna Mae married a young widower and moved to his farm in a western region of Pennsylvania, leaving
Grace to deal with the complicated decline of their parents’ health and, ultimately, their death.
Without Anna Mae to help her, both physically and emotionally, Grace found that the days were never-ending, and a feeling of being overwhelmed became her constant companion. With the children too young to help Menno with chores, Grace often awoke early to accompany him to the dairy barn. She’d help him with the morning milking, feeding, and turnout. Long days of hard work passed, and before she knew it, the seasons changed and she had yet one more miscarriage.
For a while, she blamed herself. She worked too hard, helping Menno and raising the children. With so many miscarriages in her past, she feared she wouldn’t bear any more children for her husband and took as much comfort as she could in the three whom they had conceived.
So when James was born almost four years after Susan, Grace rejoiced in her newborn infant. How could she not? Linda and Ivan were at school during the day and Susan occupied herself following Menno around the barn. Alone in the house, Grace sat in the recliner, holding that special baby and loving him with as much love as a mother could possibly give.
Her other children taught her the breadth of her love, but it was James who taught her the depth.
Where has time gone? she wondered, her heart feeling heavy. She craved, just once more, to hold an infant in her arms—not just any infant, but one who came from the love she shared during her lifetime with Menno. It wasn’t fair that time passed so quickly. It seemed as if Grace barely blinked her eyes before Linda took her kneeling vow, married, and moved to another town, almost thirty miles away. Four years later, Ivan followed suit and moved into the grossdawdihaus with his new bride, Jane. Susan didn’t hesitate to take her kneeling vow, either.
Then one day, with all the children grown up and gone, Grace looked around her as she stood in the main kitchen of what used to be Barbara Beiler’s house. The house was quiet, save for the ticking of the grandfather clock. And in that moment she realized that time stood still for no one.
The realization struck her to the core. She knew then that she was in the midst of the cycle of life. Each day was a gift that, if she chose not to make the most of it and enjoy it, she’d never get back again. She began to fret about how time passed so quickly and she had no way of stopping it. And indeed, it seemed to hurtle ahead, faster and faster, until Menno’s death. And now? She felt as if time stood still.
A sudden rapping at the glass pane of her front door startled Grace from her memories. She hadn’t been expecting anyone. With it now being December, the shorter days and longer nights meant fewer visitors, especially with the brutally cold arctic air that had descended upon them right after Thanksgiving.
Quickly, Grace swept the diaries back into the cardboard box in which she stored them. She tucked the box next to her recliner before hurrying to the front door to see who had come calling.
“My word!” Grace blinked as she opened the door to welcome the bishop and his wife. “Come in, come in!” She waved her hand eagerly as she stepped backward to make room for her unexpected visitors to enter her house.
The bishop stepped inside before his wife and stomped the thin layer of snow from his boots before he stepped off the welcome mat. He left his black hat upon his head and tugged at his white beard that grew past the first button of his black jacket, which he promptly unbuttoned. With his blue shirt and black vest, he fit the perfect image of an elderly Amish man, especially a bishop, who often worked during the day and visited members of the g’may at night.
“You staying warm in here, Grace? It sure is cold out there!” Without being invited to do so, the bishop hung his coat and hat from a peg in the wall near the door.
“So I can feel . . . just from having opened the door!” As if to emphasize the cold temperature, she rubbed her hands on her arms. The entry area was much colder than the small sitting room, for she had the kerosene heater running in order to ward off the cold. “What on earth brings you both out on such a frigid night, then?”
Lizzie quickly removed her shawl and hung it beside her husband’s coat. “A little something landed in our mailbox.” With a curious look in her eyes and a slight smile on her lips, she reached into her cloth handbag and extracted an envelope. She held it up for Grace to see, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “I reckon you must know that it isn’t from us.”
Grace gasped. Another letter? She could hardly guess what this one contained. “This is too much!”
Lizzie handed the envelope to Grace. “I’ve heard about this secret sister of yours! It’s flooding the Amish grapevine!”
David grunted and glanced away.
Ignoring her husband’s reaction, Lizzie continued, “I don’t care what people say! I think this is a lovely gesture, although I do wonder who the person is!”
Grace took the envelope in her hands and stared at the handwriting on the front. She thought it looked feminine, but certainly not from an older woman. It appeared to be written by a younger hand. And in no way did it resemble the handwriting from the previous packages.
“Why, I have no idea, of that I’m certain! I do hope that you weren’t inconvenienced by coming out here. This certainly could have waited until our next service.” Then, realizing they were still standing in the entryway, she gestured toward the sitting room. “Vell then, please sit down. I made some fresh sugar cookies earlier and I have some coffee. It’s instant, you know. Go make yourselves comfortable and I’ll bring it into the sitting room if you’d like.” She didn’t wait for their response as she hurried to put the cookies on a tray and heat up some water on the stove.
While she waited for the water to boil, she fingered the envelope that she had shoved into her apron pocket. Her curiosity was definitely piqued and she fought the urge to open it. But as she was beginning to learn, any item sent to her from this secret sister was best opened in private.
She made the coffee and carried the tray into the room, being extra careful as she crossed the threshold so she didn’t spill any. Setting the tray onto the small table by the sofa, she fussed over her company as she passed around the mugs and the plate of cookies. Only when they were served did Grace take a seat in the recliner next to the bishop in the old wooden rocking chair. Lizzie sat on the small sofa, the mug of warm coffee balanced carefully upon her knee.
“Now do tell,” Lizzie gushed. “Who do you think it is?”
“She said she didn’t know,” David Yoder snapped at his wife. While the bishop was a patient man with the rest of the church members, it was a well-known fact that Lizzie could try his patience. “If she knew, she’d have answered you before, don’t you think?”
Again Lizzie ignored him. “And what is she sending you now?”
How could Grace ever begin to explain? How could she possibly talk about all of the gifts, the reminders of her past that somehow gave her hope for the future? Besides, she wasn’t partial to sharing so much information, at least not with Lizzie, who tended to show no discretion when talking to other people.
“Oh, little things,” Grace said vaguely.
“I heard about the handkerchief,” Lizzie continued. “And the pumpkin bread.”
“Ja, there were those things, indeed.”
David frowned, his eyes crinkling into small half-moons on his deeply wrinkled face. “Lizzie, best to leave private matters to private people!”
The rebuke worked, and reluctantly, Lizzie left the subject alone.
“Have you been visiting much, Bishop?” Grace asked, happy to change the subject.
“Oh ja, mostly with the older folks.” He leaned forward. “You should come sometime with us to the retirement home. Eli King is always in want of good company.”
Grace wasn’t certain if she could stand going to the retirement home. Back in her day it was the children and grandchildren who took care of aging parents. Now it was becoming more common for the elderly, especially the infirm, to be put in a special retirement home that catered to the Amish and more conservative M
ennonites. Perhaps even she would end up there, Grace worried.
“Eli King? Why, I recall that I was baptized at their farm,” Grace heard herself say.
“Oh?” Lizzie reached for one of the cookies, obviously more interested in the previous conversation—or at least her attempts to pry information from Grace. Since she had been raised in a different church district, she wouldn’t know about Grace’s baptism and most likely wouldn’t care where any member of the g’may was baptized.
Despite being older than both Grace and Lizzie, David, however, still had a keen memory. “That’s right. I remember it well,” he said thoughtfully. “It was a few years after my schwester Martha was baptized.” He hesitated, the emotion draining from his face as he mentioned his younger sister. Grace lowered her eyes, remembering all too well the pain the Yoders felt when Martha passed away as a young mother, shortly after her second child was born. She hadn’t recovered from a difficult childbirth, and shortly after she died, the infant passed away too.
Grace had been pregnant with Linda at the time. Martha’s passing and the infant’s death had a profound impact on her. It had taken all of Menno’s patient coaxing to convince her that she simply must trust in God. Only with his support had she been able to attend the funerals.
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh,” David said somberly, referring to the death of his sister Martha. “It is by the Lord’s plan we live, not our own.”
“His plan,” Grace repeated.
David sipped at his coffee.
“It’s a lot different today,” Grace said softly, “with all that new Englische medicine and vaccinations. Helps the bopplis and kinner, that’s for sure and certain. And our midwives are much better educated.”
“True, true,” David said, his broad chest rising and falling as he took a deep breath. “But regardless of that progress, the ultimate results still depend upon His will,” he added.
Lizzie shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Our biggest problem today is the accidents on the roads!”