The Amish Groom ~ Men of Lancaster County Book 1 (41 page)

He started the car and put it in gear. “You know, fireproof. Most people use them for documents, but they’re good for pictures too.”

We reached the gate and he again pulled to a stop and typed in the code, this time to let us out.

“She was always taking photos and getting them developed,” he continued once we were on the road. “Used to make me nuts.”

“It did? Why?”

“Oh, not the picture-taking. The part that happened afterward. She would always come back from the store with a packet of pictures, spread them out on the table, and study them for a while, and then end up throwing most of them away. Said she was saving just the good ones. Those she kept in there, where they would be safe.”

He gestured toward the box in my lap, seeming perplexed at the thought of such waste. I totally understood, though, thanks to my time with Lark. Like her, my mother had approached photography as an art, I felt sure, bracketing each photo the way I’d been taught and then pulling the wheat from the chaff. For a moment I wondered how she might have known to do that. Had she hired a tutor too? Or perhaps researched photography at the library? Regardless, judging by what my father was saying now, she must have learned the technique and used it as well.

“When was the last time you looked through these?” I asked, holding the box firmly in my lap and gazing out at the houses we were moving past.

“Probably two years ago, when we moved here and set up the storage unit.”

I nodded, aware that military families like my dad’s typically took stock of everything in their possession every two to three years when they got orders to move somewhere new. No doubt their unit was neat and methodically organized, just like their garage and attic back at the house.

Still, with so many moves, unnecessary items were often jettisoned along the way. I asked my father why he’d kept these particular photos for so long.

He was quiet for a while before he responded.

“They’re such great pictures. I don’t know. I guess somehow holding on to them allowed me to hold on to the memory of your mom in a way that wasn’t painful or complicated.”

“Do you want to go through them with me, back at the house?” I asked, almost reluctantly.

He shook his head, much to my relief. “Nah, you enjoy them on your own,” he replied. “Heaven knows you’ve waited long enough to see them.”

When we arrived home, Brady had just been dropped off from football practice, and he and Liz and my dad all greeted each other warmly. I felt obligated to stick around, one big happy family and all that, but when Dad finally settled down at the kitchen table with a beer and began sharing with them the same stories from his trip that he’d already told me in the car, I excused myself and headed upstairs, box in hand, hoping they wouldn’t think me rude for slipping away.

In my room I closed the door and sat on my bed with the strongbox in front of me. I snapped open the metal clasp and lifted the lid, tilting it back on its hinges. Inside were dozens of envelopes, each one fat with photos and coffee-brown negative strips. I pulled out the first envelope, dated the year my parents were married, and began to go through it. It looked as if the pictures had all been taken in Germany and focused primarily on the rural countryside there. They weren’t especially good—nothing like what Lark would have done—but they were okay.

Returning them to their envelope, I moved on to the next and then the next, pleased to see that my mother’s talent as a photographer grew as time went on. I’d learned enough from Lark to notice the slow, subtle mastery of composition, exposure, technique.

From the packet dated the year I was born, I finally ran across a few shots of myself as an infant. But otherwise, my mother had continued to take mostly landscape shots, the only difference being the ongoing growth in her abilities as a photographer. Once we returned to Germany for a second tour, her pictures got even better, as they were especially sharp and clear and colorful.

I kept looking with great interest, occasionally running across another picture of myself as a child, usually outside, playing ball or patting a horse or jumping into a pile of autumn leaves. But primarily these were beautifully composed photos of rural Germany. There were farmhouses, fields of grain, half-timbered barns, horses, cows, laundry on the line, flowering hedges, hills of green, glistening brooks, and budding trees. No urban landscapes, no street scenes, no skylines. Every envelope that came after was that way as well, a few shots of me here and there, but mostly scenes as pastoral and peaceful as any Amish farm on any day of the year.

The envelopes came to an end once our second tour ended, the very last photo an aerial shot of the German countryside, probably snapped through the window of the plane that flew us home.

I sat back against the pillows and looked into the box, taking in the pictures in their entirety. Almost immediately, I realized what my mother had done here. Through the camera lens, she had managed to recreate an Amish-like world for herself from an ocean away. By focusing on scenes of the bucolic European countryside, she had found a way to tease out scenes reminiscent of Lancaster County.

This was what the photography had given her in the end, the ability to capture scenes that took her home, even if only in her imagination.

Feeling sad but settled somehow, those questions finally laid to rest, I said a prayer of thanks and then set the box on the dresser and headed back downstairs, expecting to find my family still gathered at the table, chatting happily and catching up with each other. Instead, Dad was gone, Liz had returned to the couch and was dozing there, and Brady was sitting on the floor wearing headphones and silently playing a video game on the TV. He didn’t even glance my way when I came in the room, so I went in search of my father.

I was afraid he might have gone on to bed, but I found him in his study, going the through mail that Liz had sorted each day and had me put on his desk. He looked up as I came in, his eyes wide with curiosity.

“Well?”

I smiled, somewhat wistfully I’m sure, as I settled into the chair that faced the desk.

“I went through every single picture.”

He grinned. “Didn’t I tell you? Aren’t they something?”

“They are. It was fun to see her grow as a photographer over the years, you know? She started out a little rough, but then she got better. Eventually, she was very good.”

He nodded.

“Any idea what started her on that in the first place? I mean, photography isn’t exactly a natural fit for someone who’s been raised Amish.”

Dad smiled. “You’re right about that. Actually, it came from a dependents class at the army base.”

“Dependents class?”

“Free courses offered to the dependents of military personnel stationed there. When we first went to Germany, she was struggling a little, trying to find her place both in the non-Amish world and as a new officer’s wife. I talked her into taking a class or two, really just hoping that would give her something to do, maybe make a few friends. She chose photography—and almost right away she really got into it. As you saw when you looked through the pictures, she kept going with it, long after the course was over. Said it was sort of therapeutic, a way to help her merge her old life with her new one.”

“You can say that again.”

My father’s eyes narrowed. “Huh?”

I shrugged. “All those scenes of the countryside…”

“Oh, I know. Your mother was always zipping out of town on her bicycle, heading off on the open road to take more pictures. Sometimes when I was gone, she would even bring the two of you on overnight car trips into the country. She’d find these little farmhouses in the Black Forest that took in renters. Half of the owners didn’t speak a lick of English, but that didn’t matter to her. She’d stay for four or five days just soaking up the rural scenery and letting you run around like a farmer’s kid.”

“Like an Amish kid, I think.”

I realized that Dad hadn’t put two and two together until that moment. His eyes widened, and then he sighed audibly.

“Of, course. They reminded her of home. I can’t believe I didn’t figure that out before now.”

I nodded, and we both grew silent for a moment.

“I’m glad I gave them to you,” he said at last.

I shook my head. “I’ll keep the box with me, if you don’t mind, but I’m not taking the pictures with me when I go, Dad. I am leaving them here with you.”

He frowned. “Can’t your grandfather make an exception just this once? They’re your
mother’s
photos, for crying out loud.”

“This has nothing to do with that. I
want
you to have them. I want you to look at them whenever you need to picture what it’s like to live a simpler life. I don’t need the photos for that. But I think you and Liz and Brady might.”

“What do you mean?”

I pondered how best to say it. “Your lives are very full here but also very complicated. Complex. Filled with distraction. I want you guys to consider coming to visit me more often. In fact, I think I am meant to show you the joys of a simpler life. I’ve been out here, doing it your way. Now it’s your turn to come there and do it mine, at least for a little while.”

Dad laughed lightly. “Trying to get us to become Amish, are you?”

I laughed too. “Merely trying to get you to unplug from time to time. Reconnect with each other. And with God. I think it would be great if the three of you came to Lancaster County for a quiet retreat from all of this.”

He was thoughtful for a moment. “That sounds great, but I’m afraid Brady won’t go for it. Not the way he’s acting.”

“I know. He and I still have a few things to figure out.”

“Want me to talk to him?”

“Thanks, Dad, but this is between us. Brother to brother.”

“I hear you.”

He was just returning his attention to his mail when I added, “But you do need to talk to him about something else.”

He looked up. “What’s that?”

I told him what Brady had said about playing football and the pressure he was under from all sides—especially from his own father.

“He doesn’t want to quit the team. He never did. What he wants is to be able to decide for himself how big a role football will play in his life. It needs to be his decision and only his. Not yours.”

My father let out a long, slow sigh.

“I think the more you push,” I added, “the more he’s going to push back. If you keep going like you have been, I’m afraid you’ll cause him to do the very thing you most
don’t
want him to do, which is to quit the team.”

“Okay. You’re right. I know. Liz has been saying the same thing for a while now. I just didn’t want to hear it.”

“You need to hear it, though, before it’s too late.”

“Fine. I’ll talk to him.”

There was a sound behind me, and I turned to see if someone was there. I didn’t see anything, but I realized we’d been speaking with the door not fully closed. Had Brady been standing just out of sight, listening to our conversation?

A part of me really hoped that he had.

I left my dad to his mail and returned to the living room to find Liz snoring gently from the couch and Brady nowhere in sight.

It was time to start thinking about what we should do for dinner, but before I went to the kitchen to rustle something up, I decided to search for my brother. I found him upstairs in his room, just sitting on the side of the bed and gazing out of the window.

Summoning my nerve, I gave a light rap on the doorway and stepped inside.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

From somewhere in the distance, I could hear the distinct whoosh of wood on metal. Skateboards. Stepping further into the room, I moved to Brady’s bed and sat as well, watching through the window as Chris and some of his friends skated past on the street, whooping and hollering all the way.

“I heard what you said to Dad about football,” Brady told me, his eyes still on the kids. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

I glanced at him, at his innocent young face, so unmarked by time, and I could clearly see the sadness of too many lost yesterdays that we as brothers had never shared and never would.

“My mom was born Amish,” I began softly. “I know you know that. And I’m sure you know she gave up everything about her Amish life when she married Dad. But she passed something on to me before she died. She passed on her love for that other life.”

Brady shifted, his eyes still on the kids outside who were now just specks in the distance. “Why are you telling me this? You don’t owe me any explanations about why you decided to stay.”

“But you’re wrong. I do. When Dad came back for me, I could barely remember that I had ever lived anywhere but right there in Lancaster County. My mother’s parents treated me like their own son, and I felt safe and loved there. I was afraid to give up that security because I’d been forced to give it up once before, when my mom died and Dad sent me to live with people I had only just met. I didn’t have the maturity to figure out what I was turning my back on, Brady. I didn’t stop to think that my staying meant you would grow up with an older brother you hardly ever saw. The truth is, the three of you seemed complete without me. I didn’t want to mess with that. And I confess I didn’t want to be messed with, either.”