The Amish Groom ~ Men of Lancaster County Book 1 (9 page)

As soon as I was done, I felt a crushing weight, not a lifted burden. Despite what Jake had said about my situation being different from my mother’s, I knew this conversation had to be nearly as hurtful to
Daadi
as when she ran away from the Amish life almost twenty-five years before.

“I’m sorry if this is hard for you to hear,” I concluded. “It’s hard for me to say. But it’s been even harder to keep locked up inside me. I had to tell you.”

“Yes, you did.”
Daadi
set the wrench down. “And I’m glad you did, Tyler.”

“I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to be anywhere else but here, but I can’t ignore this restlessness inside me.”

He nodded. I could tell he was thinking. Maybe praying. Trying to form the right response.

“Rachel thinks this has to do with my dad and the fact that he essentially abandoned me here all those years ago,” I added.

“Hmm,”
Daadi
said, but nothing else. He was deep in thought.

“But I forgave him for that. It’s not like I lie awake wondering why he didn’t want me. I’ve been happy here. You and
Mammi
and Jake and the aunts and uncles—you’re my family. And I had my chance to go back with my father.”

“Yes, you did. A long time ago.”

“But I’ve never regretted staying,
Daadi
. Not once. This is my home. This is my life.”

“And yet you have not gone to the bishop to seek your vows of membership.”

I opened my mouth and then shut it again. What could I say to that? My mind spinning, I returned to my own work. Outside in the work bay, I could hear various strains of conversation as one by one the other workers called it a day and began to head home. Inside,
Daadi
and I were quiet save for the clink and clank of our tools, both of us lost in contemplation.

Finally, I turned to my beloved grandfather and said, “It can’t really be God calling me from outside, can it?”

He tightened a bolt. “God is everywhere. You know this, Tyler. If He can call Father Abraham out, He can call you.”

“Yes, but why would He? What is out there that is better than what I have here?”

Daadi
finished putting on the tire, and then he went over to the bench behind us, sat down, and patted the seat next to him. I set my screwdriver aside and joined him there.

“Your life is not one to be spent in pursuit of what is better or best. Your life is to be spent in surrender, Tyler. Surrender and service to God.”

“But I am to be separate,” I countered, hearing the words of the
Ordnung
in my head.

“You are to be obedient.”

Another span of seconds passed. I let my gaze travel around the shop, taking in the familiar tools and products of the trade. Over near the window, the late afternoon sunshine splayed across the sewing area, where the upholstery was made. Beyond that, in the painting bay, sat the half shell of a new spring wagon, ready for its electrical work to be started as soon as the final coat was dry.

I sucked in a deep breath, relishing the buggy shop’s familiar scent of oil and paint and new fabric and metal and fresh-cut wood. The work here could be tedious at times, but I loved it just the same. Why would I ever want to turn my back on this?

Then it came to me. What if God was just testing me? What if He was allowing me to feel the lure of the world outside so that I could firmly renounce it? What if I had only to state my intentions, fulfill the class requirements, bow my head in baptism, and make my vows to prove I could forsake that which I had been born into?

My heart raced. If that were the case, then maybe I really could silence forever this beckoning voice that confused me. I could train myself to see only the Amish Tyler when I gazed into the pond. I could marry Rachel and be done with wondering.

If this was a test, I was ready to pass it.

Eyes wide, I turned to
Daadi
and spoke, surprising both myself and him with the urgency in my tone. “I want to be obedient. I want to become a member.”

Daadi
nodded slowly, but his mind was far away.

“Did you hear what I said,
Daadi
? I want to become a member.”

My grandfather placed a hand on my arm. “I heard you, Tyler,” he said, his voice heavy. “We shall pray about this. And I will speak to the bishop.”

I couldn’t believe it. Here I was finally saying the words he’d longed for, and he was putting me off?

“You don’t think I should take my vows?” My voice sounded harsh, demanding, even in my own ears.

He was quiet for a long moment.

“Vows are never for the purpose of silencing what you don’t want to hear.” He stood, moved slowly to the tool rack, and set the wrench in its place. “But I will pray. And I will consult the bishop.”

With that, he turned and walked out of the shop, leaving me alone with my thoughts, even more confused now than I had been before.

S
IX

T
he days following were strange for me. Morning chores without Jake took longer, and his empty place beside me in the buggy shop was keenly felt. Worse, more than once I caught my grandparents staring at me in concern when they thought I wouldn’t notice.

Daadi
had obviously confided in
Mammi
about our conversation because I could see that she knew and it was bothering her. The fact that he’d shared it with her didn’t surprise or annoy me. I wanted her to know, but I also didn’t want her to worry. And it was obvious to me she
was
worried, even though she never brought it up.

At least I was doing this honorably, I told myself, thinking of how my mother had simply packed her things and left in the dark of night without a word to anyone. I didn’t remember her being unkind or uncaring. I felt certain she left the way she did because she didn’t want a tearful scene peppered by harsh words everyone would regret having said. Such a departure would have been easier for me too, but I refused to repeat the past that way.

It wasn’t just that I knew well the pain such an action would cause. It was also a matter of age and maturity. I was in my twenties, but at the time my mother left the farm for Philadelphia, she’d been all of eighteen and far less experienced with the world than I. She did not have another home and family on the outside where she could visit each summer and try the
Englisch
life on for size.

My aunt Sarah had been closer to my mother than anyone, and I had asked her once why she thought my mother left. I was twelve and wanting to know more than the little my grandparents had told me, but I hadn’t felt comfortable asking them about it.

“I’ve never understood why,” Sarah had responded, and it was obvious not knowing still pained her. “Perhaps she just wanted things the Amish life didn’t give her. Fancy things. She liked the city and dancing and television and movies and riding in cars. I guess it reached the point where the Plain life just wasn’t enough for her.”

“Enough for her,” I echoed.

She nodded. “Jonah believes so as well. We were all good friends back then, you know, and I think he saw the situation even more clearly than I did. He tried mightily to comfort me in those early days after she left. He kept reminding me of all the times she would push for more even as I would insist on holding back. My sister and I were the best of friends, but there was a wild streak in her that I never had—not wild like
bad
, just wild as in she couldn’t be tamed. She had too much energy. Too much curiosity. Too much desire for the things of this world.”

I had accepted Sarah’s explanation then, but now that I looked back, I had to wonder if there had been more to it than that. Could it have been a crisis of faith that drove my mother away? A need to seek something in the broader world? A tugging from outside that she, too, had attributed to God?

Sadly, there was no way I could ever know.

What I did know were the basic facts that my father had told me over the years, how she left her family’s farm in Lancaster County in the middle of the night and caught a bus to Philadelphia. How she moved into a tiny apartment there and took a job as a waitress. How not long after that, my dad just happened to go into the restaurant where she worked, spotted her behind the counter, and fell in love.

He’d been a first lieutenant back then, on leave before heading oversees to an army base in Heidelburg, Germany. He had come to Philadelphia to visit with his old West Point roommate and best buddy, and when the two of them came into the restaurant that night, they both flirted with the pretty girl working the counter. She flirted back only with my father, however, as if it had been love at first sight on her side too. At the end of the evening, half joking, he had asked her if she’d like to come to Maryland and take a ride in his ’67 Charger convertible. To his surprise and delight, she had said yes. And she hadn’t been half joking.

Three weeks later—and just a month before his deployment to Germany—they had driven down to Maryland to tie the knot and spent their honeymoon at the Jersey Shore. At some point fairly soon after that, they went to Lancaster County to tell her family about their marriage—and their upcoming move—in person.

I knew that was one of the few times my dad had ever been to the farm. And I also knew the visit hadn’t gone well. Years ago, I had asked Sarah if she remembered that day, and she’d nodded as a heavy sadness fell across her face.

“That was the last time any of us saw her. She was so happy, and she wanted all of us to be happy for her too, but how could we? First, she ran away without a word. Then when she finally came back it was to announce that not only was she married—to an Englischer—but that her husband was in the military—and that they were bound for Germany for three years. I think it was just too much for my parents to take in all at once. Too much for all of us. I was so upset I couldn’t even talk to her.”

“Did any of you stay in touch? Maybe write to her over there?”

She shook her head sadly. “In the beginning she didn’t send us an address, Tyler. I think she needed some space.”

I nodded, knowing the fault was hers, not theirs.

“I think she wrote
Mamm
once, and then we didn’t hear from her again until after you were born. One day out of the blue she called the buggy shop from the Philly airport, saying that she and her husband had a child now and that the three of you were back in the States while he attended some special training or something in Maryland.”

“Maryland? That’s not far. Did they come out for another visit?”

“No.”

“So did any of you go down to see her—see us—in Maryland?” I was careful not to sound accusatory.

“No.” Sarah grew quiet for a long moment. “But I think
Mamm
and
Daed
would have done things differently if they had realized what was going to happen. I know I would have.”

I could see the truth of that statement in her eyes. I could also see the infinite pain behind it.

“Only God knows the future, Tyler. Sometimes you learn how to handle things by making mistakes the first time around.”

That Sunday, the worship service was held at Rachel’s farm, and though I was glad to see her, she and I did not speak of what I had mentioned at the wedding. Not directly, anyway. Chatting after lunch, she asked me about Jake—if we had heard from him and how he was liking farrier school so far—but there was a veiled concern there, as if her question really didn’t have much to do with his absence at all. We were surrounded by other people, so I wasn’t free to tell her that I had talked to both Jake and
Daadi
about what I was wrestling with, and that
Daadi
would be asking the bishop what I should do. I could only tell her that Jake had left a message on the buggy shop phone, assuring us he had arrived safely in Missouri, and that I missed him but appreciated not having to fight him for the last pork chop at dinner.