Plain Wisdom (10 page)

“They don’t mean to sound so rude.” She slowly lifted her eyes to mine. “That’s what my mom says anyway.”

I was struck by the kindness in her eyes, the oddity of her speech patterns, and how smart she was.

She introduced herself as Luann. I later learned that her bonnet was a prayer Kapp and that she was an Amish Mennonite. Her father wasn’t a dairy farmer either. So she was used to being treated as different and odd, and she seemed perfectly comfortable not fitting in with those around her.

I learned a lot that day about being soft-spoken but not silent, about responding calmly and yet saying all that needs to be said. And I learned that it takes only one person to make a new beginning feel hopeful.

As I think back on my childhood years, I remember the aromas of baking day—breads, cakes, shoofly pies, fruit pies, cinnamon rolls, cookies, and whoopie pies. I often worked side by side with my mother and my four sisters as each week we baked goods, mostly to sell from our roadside stand in the front yard.

Mother’s hands were constantly busy. Besides raising a family, she always had an occupation in the home to help make ends meet. I spent hours playing with the children she baby-sat, picking strawberries with her, and plucking the feathers of chickens that we butchered to sell.

But what stands out most in my mind is her love for her work. Whether baking, sewing, quilting, gardening, or “playing” in her flower beds, she truly enjoyed working and still does. At seventy years old, she has raised seven children and had double knee replacements yet still runs the bake shop by herself.

As a young girl, I lacked the ambition my mother has. I’d avoid work wherever and whenever possible. But somewhere along the line, my mother managed to instill a work ethic in me—one I hope to pass on to the next generation.

I see my mother in myself when I feel a sense of satisfaction in a job
accomplished. I also see a younger version of myself in my children when their motivation doesn’t match mine.

I’m sure it took discipline for my mother to become such a hard worker, and I have to admit that challenge continues for me as well as for my younger children. But it encourages me to see that my adult children have become quite industrious, and they are now teaching their own families to love work and to value accomplishing a goal.

I remember my mom dripping with perspiration as she picked blackberries and canned them in summer. I can still smell the rich soil as she planted her large vegetable garden in spring. And I remember how tan her hands were from hanging laundry on the line all year round. Whether we lived on a small farm in the Northeast or in rural Alabama or a few miles outside of Washington DC, Mom worked diligently and had specific goals for every season.

My dad left for work before daylight and often arrived home after dark, even in the summer months. He had projects mapped out for every weekend—painting a clapboard house; wallpapering a kitchen; building a barn, shed, or garage; or using the rototiller on a piece of ground that had never been tilled before.

Because he and Mom bought houses cheap, fixed them up, and sold them for a profit, their idea of home didn’t fit the image I longed for—the one I saw on television or read about in books.

Neither Mom nor Dad graduated from high school, and both had grown up very poor.

Every year when school began, my mom took me shopping and bought me two or three outfits to go with my mostly homemade clothes. By the time I was in middle school, I hated the clothes she’d sewn for me on her machine and often tried to talk her into buying me more clothes.

One afternoon she was at her sewing machine, which fit into a corner
next to her bed. I heard the familiar whirring sound, and then I heard her gasp, “Oh no!”

I went to see what was up. She was sitting at her machine with a pair of my dad’s pants.

“Mom?”

Her eyes were filled with tears. “I can’t patch them again. They’re too threadbare.” She wiggled a finger through the gaping hole.

“Buy him another pair.”

She shook her head. “I can’t, but he has to have at least two pairs of pants—one to wash, one to wear.”

Two pairs?
Why would my dad have only two pairs of pants? I went to their closet and opened it. There were four shirts and a jacket but no pants. Realization trickled in as I studied the room. A freshly mended sheet lay neatly folded in the stack of items she’d been repairing. I’d teased her and Dad the night before about the ridiculousness of repairing sheets time and again. They’d laughed with me.

Suddenly I saw their life differently. She didn’t sew clothes, pick blackberries, tend gardens, and can foods because it brought her pleasure—although doing those things always seemed to fill her with joy. She and Dad didn’t buy old homes and work every weekend fixing them up because it was fun.

I didn’t know what to say to her or what to do. I’d not been happy a few nights earlier when I’d been allowed only two pairs of shoes for school—everyday ones and sneakers for gym class.

At that moment I began to see into the secret things they hadn’t told me, and I saw the value of their sacrifice in order to provide for their family.

C
HALLENGES
G
REAT AND
S
MALL

D
uring my visits to Miriam’s home, I like to chip in and help, but the Amish way of handling chores is quite different from my way. For one thing, the Amish avoid gasoline-powered motors, electricity, and owning cars. Lawns are cut with push reel mowers. Transportation is provided by horse and buggy. Light comes from kerosene lamps or natural-gas lighting, similar to items Englischers use when camping out. When I go to Miriam’s, I take a flashlight to use after the sun goes down.

In winter, Amish homes are heated by burning wood or by gas that comes into the home from a propane tank in the backyard. The propane also provides energy to heat the hot-water tank and keep the refrigerator running. Cooling a home in summer is managed through open windows and shade trees. When that doesn’t work and it’s too hot to sleep, people who have basements move to them.

When my youngest son first went with me to Miriam’s, he was around eight. One of the benefits for me was the inability of the world to sneak into the home. I didn’t have to monitor sitcoms, movies, computer games, or Internet usage. To my delight he loved every minute of his visits. The only thing he missed was a fan blowing at night, not just to add a little coolness but also to block the noise of the farm. Who knew cows, horses, and donkeys were so talkative at night? I’d lived in a
farming community in Maryland while growing up, and we had a few cows, horses, and chickens, but we kept our windows shut year-round, and in our two-hundred-year-old home, we ran several window-unit air conditioners all summer.

The aim for self-sufficiency is important to the Amish, as is their desire to live separate from the world. Natural gas– and solar-powered items make life a little easier, but they don’t alter the Amish way of life—only their workload. The use of natural gas and solar power are in line with the goal of staying close to home and hearth. They don’t pull people away from their community the way electricity or owning vehicles would.

I began my first morning at Miriam’s home by making beds, straightening rooms, and gathering dirty clothes. I’m sure she doesn’t allow her usual visitors to do those things, but I convinced her that I needed the experience in order to save her time in explaining how the Amish perform their tasks. She was all for that, and I could hardly blame her. I’m sure she could have washed and hung a week’s worth of laundry in the time it had taken her to explain the processes over the phone or in a letter.

On that first day I took my load of dirty clothes to the wash house. This small room is attached to her home through an enclosed hallway; it also has an outdoor entrance/exit that opens toward the clothesline. Together Miriam and I sorted the laundry into piles—whites, black aprons and some pants, and dresses by pale or dark color. Because the wringer washer tends to break buttons, the men’s shirts and pants went into a pile of their own, regardless of their color. Since the Amish don’t use zippers, most pants have a fair number of buttons.

She turned on the hot water in a mud sink and ran an attached hose into the basin of the wringer washer. As the tub began to fill, she sent her daughter up to the
Daadi Haus
(grandfather’s house—pronounced
daw’-dee
), where Miriam’s in-laws live, to ask her father-in-law to get the air compressor running. She said it was difficult to start and he knew how. The machine runs off compressed air, which is powered by a generator. I couldn’t possibly explain how that thing works. All I know is that her father-in-law did what he needed to, and soon a very loud washer began agitating.

Almost all Old Order Amish homes have a wringer washer, usually powered by diesel fuel. Clothes are run through an agitation cycle. The model Miriam and I used has a switch for turning on the wringer washer, and if we didn’t turn it off, like the time we were interrupted by visitors, it would run all day or until the compressor ran out of air.

To keep the buttons on the men’s shirts and pants from breaking, we rinsed them in clean water and wrung them out by hand. We ran the rest of the clothes through a wash cycle and then through the wringer. After that I filled the mud sink with clean, warm water and dipped the clothes up and down until they were as soap free as possible. After running each piece back through the wringer again, I tossed the articles into a basket to be hung on the clothesline. Memories of watching my mom haul laundry out to the clothesline year after year flooded my thoughts.