Plain Wisdom (4 page)

Nature gives us the unexpected, but it also gives us rhythm. When God created the world, He designed the sun to rise in the east and set in the west at basically the same times each day, allowing for the seasonal changes. We can depend on our Creator for this rhythm day after day, week after week, year after year, as it has been since the beginning of time.

I look forward to each new season. When I grow weary of snow and cold, I am encouraged by knowing an end is in sight. Winter fades and spring begins. During those first few weeks of spring, I love the feel of the sun on my back and the warmth of garden dirt under my feet as I plant fresh seeds in the ground. In summer I enjoy having my children around more, even as the temperatures rise to scorching and the hot sun dries up the ground. By the time fall rolls around, my desire for warm weather and gardening has been fulfilled. Having plowed, planted, weeded, and harvested through spring, summer, and into late fall, I look forward again to the quieter indoor season of winter.

Knowing and trusting in God’s rhythm helps me in many ways, and I use His rhythm to create my own. The rhythm of the day. The rhythm of the season. The rhythm of life.

The first time I entered the Amish world as an adult, I had traveled for eighteen hours by train, my son and I spending the night in a sleeper car. I couldn’t sleep, so I pulled out my laptop and worked, glancing up every so often to take in the beauty of distant lights shining amid the dark towns.

I’d spent years honing the skill of multitasking, so working when I couldn’t sleep made perfect sense. My life’s goal seemed to be sharpening my ability to juggle more tasks using less time.

But when I stepped into my friend’s Old Order Amish world, I found something I hadn’t known I was missing: a sense of morning, noon, and night.

At home my mornings consisted of the same things as my middays, late afternoons, and evenings: the computer, e-mails, phone calls, writing, editing. The family chores had no boundary between morning and evening. I could move a load of clothes into the dryer just as easily at ten o’clock at night as I could at ten in the morning. E-mails were sent just as naturally before daylight as before bedtime. I woke each morning to the call of busyness, but I had lost the rhythm of the day—the tempo of sunshine filtering into my soul, listening to the birds wake, and breathing in the aroma of a day’s fresh start.

In Miriam’s world the uniqueness of morning, noon, and evening is too strong to miss. Laundry has to be washed and hung out early. Cows and horses need to be tended to before breakfast. Without electricity, navigating the home after the sun goes down brings a sense of closure to the day.

During my visit that week, I felt the rhythm and nuances of a day as the sun moved across the sky from east to west, and I began to mourn the years I’d been too busy to truly notice. I certainly knew when morning arrived each day, and I had a long list of morning things to accomplish, but electricity and natural gas provided me with an unnoticed shield.
Beyond the protection it had given me against the harshness of winter and summer, that shield had also blocked my senses and my soul from the beauty of feeling a day slide across the sky. Sipping a cup of coffee on the front porch each day couldn’t solve the problem because it went deeper than how I spent a few minutes here and there. I’ve become so involved in
doing
life that I’ve acquired a type of tunnel vision in experiencing the days, months, and seasons.

As the Amish need to step inside our world from time to time to meet their needs—using a Realtor, seeing a specialist, or borrowing money from a bank—I want to find a way to step into theirs, to feel the pulse of each day even while living in my world.

Early in 2009 my craft orders were piling up, and I was behind in my writing for
Plain Wisdom
. Although I’d set aside working on my crafts in order to write, I still had the items around me. The room was filled with baskets that I had lined with fabric and lids on which I had painted scenery. I make birdhouses from old boots, and after bending a discarded license plate in half, I use that as the roof. I have stacks of prints from scenery I’ve painted and the frames I put them in. And I hand piece and quilt wall hangings, often framing them in a set of wooden hames (curved pieces in a horse’s collar). With all those supplies and
Plain Wisdom
calling to me, I still could not block out my other responsibilities and obligations by closing myself in that one room. With every telephone call or knock on my door, I’d lose my train of thought. Getting ahead with my crafting put me more behind in my writing, and vice versa.

One morning a friend stopped in, wanting my help with some serious issues. On the verge of frustration and feeling guilty for being so selfish with my time, I tried to reassure myself that I was doing the right thing by walking away from my work. This thought came to mind: in
the garden of life, being successful isn’t just about hoeing your own row but also about slowing down enough to help your brother hoe his row until he is caught up, then hoeing the rest of the field together.

My mother once told me that she always had flower beds while I was growing up and that she worked in them regularly. I believed her, but I didn’t remember seeing any flowers or watching her plant them.

I do remember her working a vegetable garden. That was food, and I liked food. I remember her canning and freezing all sorts of fruits and vegetables. That impressed me too.

But flowers? They didn’t do anything. Why work hard planting seeds to grow something you can only look at?

My lack of respect for her love of flowers included houseplants. Except for the aloe plant that I’d cut and apply to burns on occasion, I never understood the purpose of houseplants. So when she brought me several after I had my own home, I didn’t honor her gift. I was nice when she gave them to me, but before long they were dying. It seemed wrong to let them die when she’d spent money on them, so I tried to keep them alive—gave them plenty of sun, water, fresh soil. But my efforts came too late. I’d already either baked them in the sun or drowned them in water. Or both.

When I confessed my failure to Mom, she laughed and said it was a fault she’d overlook. She assured me that one day I’d appreciate flowers and houseplants. I told her not to hold her breath. It became a running joke between us. Whenever a sibling asked her what gift I might like for Christmas or a birthday, she’d wink at me and say plants would be perfect! When we walked through the garden section of any store, she’d lovingly touch the plants and say they were calling my name.

One afternoon in May of 1998, I received a phone call saying that my healthy, sixty-eight-year-old mom had been outside planting flowers when she started feeling odd. Forty minutes later she died. I was in shock.

After the funeral, as my husband was backing out of the driveway to head for home, my sister hurried out to our car, toting a flat of three-inch seedlings with six different types of plants. “Someone gave these houseplants in lieu of flowers. Please take them with you. You know Mom would want you to have them.”

Wondering if they’d survive the seven-hundred-mile trip home in a tightly packed vehicle with antsy children, I took them. Out of respect for my mom, I determined to do whatever it took to make sure these plants survived as long as possible.

The grieving process was long and hard, but keeping those plants alive and thriving brought healing. I’ve replanted them into larger containers four times so far. Now, twelve years later, each of those plants has its own large, ornate pot. Except in the wintertime, they sit on my back porch. How did I not see the beauty of plants before?

When my oldest son bought a home of his own a couple of years ago, I gave him shoots from the once-seedlings I’d received at his grandmother’s funeral. He looked at me with a funny expression and said, “What do I want with houseplants? They aren’t good for anything but sitting around and collecting dust … until they die.”

At that moment I realized that the circle of my mom’s passing on her love of plants to her family was not yet complete—and might not ever be.

The saying “Stop and smell the roses” has lost its impact through years of use, but its message is still true.

On one occasion, when my husband and I had two preschoolers, we took a three-hour road trip to visit my parents. Our budget was tight, and we didn’t usually eat out, but we’d saved a little money so we could stop at a Cracker Barrel and have a nice breakfast.

After ordering we played checkers with our children and drew pictures on scrap paper—the typical things parents do to keep their balls of energy in check and content. I noticed a woman about ten years older than we were who was watching our every move, but I didn’t think much about it. When it was time to pay the bill, the server said it had already been paid, including the tip. The server pointed to the table where that woman had been sitting just a few minutes earlier. She had told the server, “I used to have a family like that. Tell the parents to enjoy what they have while they can.”

My heart wrenched when the server told us that. Perhaps she wasn’t as young as she looked and her children were grown, leaving her alone and regretting that she hadn’t used her time with them more wisely. Could she have lost her children in a divorce or to death? It became very clear that I might have only that day and that moment with my children.
But had I taken time to breathe in their joy and laughter, or was I rushing through the seasons life was giving me? Even now, more than twenty years later, my heart aches at the memory of her pain.

That incident has had a profound effect on my relationship with my husband and children. Since that day I have been more aware that any conversation with one of them could be my last one. Because of that, my anger is tempered, my disappointment is quenched, and my hope for tomorrow becomes a prayer.

Sometime ago Flaud Builders, our family business, built a boat shop in Maine for Bob and Ruth Ives. After spending a week with them constructing the timber frame, we grew quite fond of the admirable couple. Sadly, shortly after we finished the job, Ruth died of a brain tumor following a long, brave battle.