Fearless Hope: A Novel (39 page)

I figured it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition to ask if I could attend. I mean, what’s one more person at a big church potluck. Right?

“I apologize for asking,” I said, “but would it be rude if I came to the wedding? I’ve been thinking about putting an Amish wedding scene in my next book.”

There was a hesitation as they pondered my request. I attributed that hesitation to what my husband and I call “the Amish pause.” These people take time to think before they speak, so it came as no surprise that my abrupt question required a few beats of quiet contemplation before answering. I have read that this is a matter of humility with the Amish. They do not want to be like
Englisch
people, who answer off the cuff as though they already know everything.

To me, whose talking style has frequently been described by my family as “shooting from the hip,” this pause is fascinating. Try as I might, I can’t seem to achieve it.

It is a full two months later before I realize that this particular hesitation had more to do with the fact that the father and mother of the bride were mentally shifting seats around in their heads while wondering where on earth they would put me. They had not expected an
Englisch
woman to suddenly pop up and invite herself, but they politely agreed that it would be fine if I wanted to come, and I eagerly wrote down the date.

Sometimes it seems as though I have a great talent for making a dummkopf of myself around my gracious Amish friends. I never mean any harm, and so they have made a habit of forgiving my ignorance. At the time, I had no idea how carefully
planned out this wedding already was. To this day, I wonder who gave up their seat for me.

•  •  •

The largest settlement of Amish in the world resides in the Holmes County, Ohio, area. In the heart of Holmes County is the small town of Berlin. In the middle of Berlin is German Village, which is a lovely group of shops that sell local products. Anchoring this small shopping area is the German Market, a local grocery store.

This store is a busy place, and it caters to both
Englisch
and Amish clientele. There are usually at least a dozen horse buggies tied up at the hitching posts. As you go into this building, you see the grocery store on one side and a large open space in the front where many rocking chairs are placed. Usually these are filled with older Amish men waiting patiently for their wives to finish their shopping. This sometimes involves quite a wait, because there is a lower level where Spector’s Dry Goods stocks fabric, sewing supplies, sturdy wooden clothes-drying racks, Amish men’s hats, and fresh, white prayer
Kapps
.

In the middle of the grocery store, on the main floor, there is a piece of bibliophile heaven called the Gospel Bookstore. This is where Eli Hochstetler, the enthusiastic owner, proves that it is still possible to run a profitable, independently owned bookstore.

The foot traffic into Eli’s place is enviable, especially since much of it is composed of Mennonite or Amish customers who have not yet acquired the habit of ordering books at the click of a computer button. Instead, they browse, taking their time, examining the books they are interested in, and more often than not, conversing comfortably with Eli in their own language.

The day after the Amish pizza party, I had my very first book signing ever in the front of Eli’s bookstore. I was enjoying discussing books with the handful of locals who were kind
enough to talk with me. I was especially delighted when my friend Joyanne walked in.

Joyanne and her husband, Clay, are transplants from Texas who run a cozy bed-and-breakfast and hire out to drive the Amish. She had driven Deborah and her daughter Rebecca to the book signing, and they also planned to pick up a few groceries while they were there.

“This is for you.” Rebecca handed me a thick, high-quality envelope, which I opened. Inside was an elegant, professionally printed invitation to her wedding. This is the first I realized that the Amish purchased and mailed out wedding invitations. I had assumed Amish weddings would be a simple word-of-mouth thing.

After they left, I showed the invitation to Eli, the bookstore owner. He was excited for me.

“An Amish wedding?” he says. “Oh, you are going to eat so well on that day!”

Later, when I got home, I attached the wedding invitation to my refrigerator with a magnet, and the next morning, I glanced at it again and did a double take. There was an obvious printing error. The invitation said that the wedding was to take place at 8:30 a.m. on a Thursday morning.

I put on my reading glasses. Yes, that’s exactly what it said: 8:30 a.m.

I have been a preacher’s wife for many, many years and I’ve been to a
lot
of weddings. I’ve sung for several of them and decorated for others. I’ve helped pin brides into borrowed wedding gowns and eaten more wilted salads at receptions than I care to count. I’ve been to afternoon weddings, right-before-noon weddings, evening weddings, late-afternoon weddings, weddings in the woods, weddings on the beach, second weddings, fourth weddings, renewing-of-vows weddings. And never,
ever
, had I seen a wedding take place at 8:30 a.m. on a Thursday morning.

I immediately phoned Joyanne and asked if they had printed the invitation wrong. She laughed and said that this was the customary time for Amish weddings to take place. I asked why on earth they would begin that early in the morning. She gave me the same answer she had been given when she had asked. It was a “tradition.”

She also told me that there would be about three hours of preaching before the actual ceremony took place at around noon. That was when the realization first began to dawn that there was a whole lot more to this Amish wedding business than I had ever dreamed.

As the time for the wedding drew near, I made my plans. The Holmes County community is three hours from my home. Getting up before dawn to drive all that distance did not seem like a good idea, so I stayed overnight in Oak Haven, Joyanne’s farmhouse B&B, which has become a home away from home for me. It doesn’t take a whole lot to give me an excuse to go stay an extra day or two if she has room. When I arrived, she filled me in on a few of the things that had been happening over at the Beachy family farm this past week.

The Thursday before the wedding, Deborah’s sisters and friends had arrived to help clean house, paint, and weed the garden.

On Friday, the mobile kitchen had arrived, and it had taken a great deal of maneuvering to make the large, metal, wheeled structure fit in behind the house.

Saturday, the men had erected the tents that would extend the seating room in the barn, and another that would provide shade to the kitchen workers. They had also given the barn a thorough cleaning.

Monday, the women had begun all the prep work that could be done that far in advance. The bride had been particular, with definite ideas about the spices she wanted mixed into the coating
for the chicken. She had spent a great deal of time adding and mixing and adding and tasting large bowls of coating until it was perfect. Large amounts of celery had been chopped and refrigerated.

On Tuesday, the women had toasted all the bread for the bread dressing, and had mixed the salad dressing and put it into bottles. Pizza crust had been baked for the fruit pizza dessert. Green beans had been put into kettles. Ham had been chopped to add to the beans. All had been stored in the giant walk-in refrigerator built into one end of the mobile kitchen.

The day I arrived, Wednesday, was a very big day. Two hundred and fifty pounds of potatoes had been peeled. The ingredients for the bread dressing had been combined and stirred in a dozen large bowls. The bride had also perfected the exact seasoning she wanted to use for the dressing and had taped a recipe card beside one bowl.

When the dressing was finished, it was put into storage containers until the next morning, when it would be cooked. There had been an animated discussion on the merits of starting the frying of the chicken at 5:30 a.m. the morning of the wedding, but Deborah had decided to fry it the day before to make it easier for the women assigned to that task. Pineapple was cut up and blueberries thawed for topping the fruit pizza. Gallons of mint tea, an Amish favorite, were made and cooling.

Joyanne informed me that we had been invited to take part in their work frolic “haystack dinner” that would start in an hour. I could hardly wait to get over there and witness everything . . . and take notes.

•  •  •

I love the Amish phrase
work frolic
. To my mind, it conjures up a joyful time—which also incidentally involves work—and that is exactly what it is. One of the things that surprised me
most about the Amish is that the women, at least the ones I have met, are not drudges. Even though they don’t have all the time-saving appliances that we have, and usually a lot more children, somehow they don’t seem to be as weighed down with responsibilities as most
Englisch
mothers I know. I believe that a large part of that is because of their work frolics.

Work frolics are called for whenever a woman is scheduled to host the church on Sunday. Walls will be washed, floors scrubbed, stables cleaned, and grass trimmed. If peach trees have a bumper crop, it’s time to break out the canning jars and have a work frolic. A barn needs painting? Someone is ill and has crops in the field to harvest? Work frolic!

A work frolic is always accompanied by talking and visiting, much laughter and gentle teasing, lots of food, and plenty of children running about. The younger children play, and the older ones watch after the smaller children or learn a new skill at their father’s or mother’s elbow. The Amish believe that many hands make light work. From what I have seen, many hands also make for light hearts.

When we arrived, we found the haystack dinner being served in Deborah’s spacious basement, where most of the food preparation for the wedding was taking place. With an outside door and plenty of windows, it felt surprisingly light and airy.

“This is my canning kitchen,” Deborah explained, when I commented on the enviable fact that she had an entire second kitchen in her house. “It makes things so much easier during canning season. When I’m canning, I can work all day and still be able to run upstairs and prepare meals for my family without having to clean up the mess. Then I can come back downstairs and finish whatever I’ve got started.”

I’ve done quite a bit of canning myself, and this second kitchen struck me as an absolutely brilliant idea. There was nothing fancy about it. Everything was plain and utilitarian, but
I couldn’t help but be envious of all that counter space and the large bank of cabinets.

In the middle of the room was a huge, old, scarred wooden table that had been pressed into service as a serious worktable. A few old couches and various chairs were scattered about. That day, every chair, every couch, every place at that table was filled with Amish friends and relatives helping Deborah prepare for the wedding.

Deborah is one of the most serene women I’ve ever known, even under these circumstances. I marveled at the fact that the day before the wedding, a mother of the bride could be so calm about having so many people in her home. I would have been a nervous wreck, but these were her Amish sisters and aunts and mother and daughters. They knew exactly what they were doing and were being an enormous help. It probably would have seemed exceedingly strange to her if they were
not
there helping.

Lunch was not a formal affair. Women filled their plates whenever they came to a good stopping point in their work. A haystack dinner has become the preferred work frolic meal, at least in Holmes County. This meal consisted, basically, of piling every sort of salad-type food item imaginable in layers onto your plate as though mounding up a haystack.

My plate held layers of crumbled Ritz crackers, rice, spaghetti noodles, taco meat, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, salsa, crumbled Doritos—all seasoned with a ladleful of a delicious, thin cheese sauce. The best way I can describe a haystack dinner is to say that everyone brings a big bowl of whatever they have on hand. The cheese sauce blends the various foods together and makes mixing rice, spaghetti noodles, and Doritos seem like a good idea. It’s a little like creating a do-it-yourself taco salad spread, but with more varied ingredients. It was delicious.

Joyanne explained to me that this has become the favorite
meal for raising funds for various charity events, too, such as helping out a neighbor with medical expenses or raising funds for one of their schools. Everyone contributes a dish and then donates money as they go through the food line.

In addition to all the women working there today, there were children. Always children. Having spent days at a time with my Amish friends, I am convinced that Amish children are the happiest children in the world. I hear no bickering, no tattling, and definitely no fights or back talk. I don’t even see any spankings or sharp glances from mothers. Instead, the children simply . . . play. Cheeks grow ruddy from playing tag and hide-and-seek outdoors, as well as investigating every activity in which the adults are involved.

One toddler looked as though she could pose for a painting of a Victorian cherub. Curly blond hair, round, rosy cheeks. She’d just learned how to walk and held on to a couch for stability as she watched all the activity with round, solemn blue eyes. She wore a miniature blue Amish dress exactly like her mother’s and was so adorable I ached to cuddle her. I refrained from doing so because I was concerned that being scooped up by an
Englisch
stranger would frighten her. The last thing I wanted to do was to make this enchanting child cry.

The conversation swirled around me and I wished I knew enough German to join in. Considerate as always, the women switched to English in order to include Joyanne and me. They might as well not have bothered. The intricacies of various relationships and babies being birthed, and who was ill and who was recuperating, were almost as incomprehensible as they would have been had they been speaking in their mother tongue.