Ira Wagler's Blog, page 9

Traveling Mercies…

Have you not opened your dark door for us who

never found doors to enter, and given us a room

who, roomless, doorless, unassauged, were driven

on forever through the streets of life?

—Thomas Wolfe

_________________

It was probably about as ordinary a day as I could have imagined, right at three weeks ago. Nothing particular going on. I was busy at work, my mind drifting a bit now and then about the finishing touches to the blog that I planned to post the following night. The Maggie blog. The phone rang, off and on. And then it rang again. I heard Rosita answer. “Yes, he’s here. Who may I say is calling?” When that happens, there’s about a fifty percent chance or so that the call will be for me. There was a pause. And then my phone beeped. Yes? And she spoke the caller’s name. I didn’t recognize and can’t remember it. But the guy asked for me. And then she transferred the call. This is Ira, I said. Can I help you?

“Yes. Ira?” The voice was as unfamiliar as the name had been. And the guy launched right in. “You don’t know me. I live in North Carolina, and I’m a fan of your blog. (He didn’t have much of a Carolina drawl, I have to say.) And your blog’s been down all day. I’m just calling to make sure you’re OK.”

Well. Whatever else I was expecting, it sure wasn’t that. What do you do with such a thing, coming right at you out of nowhere? Wow, I said. Hey, I really appreciate that you called. I didn’t know my blog was down, I wasn’t on it today, yet. Let me see if I can get on it now. And I tried, there on my computer, and couldn’t. The little wheel spun and spun, and just sat there and spun some more. I can’t get on it, either, I said. It must be down for maintenance. Seems strange, though, that it’s been down most of the day. I hadn’t noticed. I’ll contact my webmaster, to see if he can get it back up soon. I know they take it down for maintenance sometimes, but they usually do that during off-hours. Thanks for letting me know.

And then we just chatted for a moment, the man from North Carolina and me. I thanked him again. Thanks for reading my blog, I said. I appreciate that very much, and I appreciate that you called. (I thought about it later. How in the world did the man get the number to my office? And it came to me. From my writings. I’m always writing about Graber Supply, and the things that come down there. He probably just googled the number.)

He chuckled. “Not a problem,” he said. And he went on. “When I was reading your book, I kept saying, ‘Lord, please let this man find Jesus.’ And I was so happy at the end, when you did.”

And what can you say to such a thing? Wow. Thanks, again. I said. And thanks again, for reading my blog. I just write from where I am, and sometimes that’s from a real dark place.

I don’t’ remember his exact words, but I heard something like this. “That’s what I like about your writing,” he said. “You say it like it is, and it don’t matter what anyone else thinks. You write honest.” He paused. And I remember verbatim the next thing he said. “I pray for you often.”

For the third time in about as many minutes, I thanked him. And then that was it. We said good-bye and hung up. And I sat there, floored, and absorbed what had just happened. Absorbed the closing words the man had spoken, words I had never heard before from any total stranger. I pray for you often.

It was a wild thing, any way you look at it. All of it. A stranger, calling me out of the blue, from way down south. Concerned for me, because my blog was down. Who would ever have thunk such a thing could happen? And I thought about it, too. A phone call like that just makes it all worth it, the hours and hours of blood and sweat and toil that go into the writing of each blog.

But still, it was what he said there at the end that made me reflect, that struck me deepest. “I pray for you often.” I mean, who says that to a total stranger? I don’t doubt the guy. I know he was telling me the truth. And to him, I guess, I’m not a stranger. He feels like he knows me, from my voice on this blog. And I certainly have written from pretty much where I’ve been, including some real dark places. I have done that, never even thinking much about the people I might reach, the people who hear my voice.

I pray for you often. I could not shake it, the wonder of those words. I mean, I barely remember to pray for myself, every day, let alone pray for others. Don’t get me wrong. I commune with God a lot, in my heart. It’s a continuous thing, for me. And I tell Him, what I’m feeling. I tell him when I’m grateful. A place I try to stay in, as much as I can. And I tell Him when I’m sad, or brooding, or just plain angry. I talk to God from those places, all the time. Not so much in words, most of the time. But always from my heart. From the heart, you can talk to God without speaking a word. It’s pretty simple. And it’s the best way I’ve ever found, to talk to Him.

But when it comes to talking to Him about others, well, there I have to say I’m lacking pretty sadly, I’m afraid. Sure, I pray for specific situations, specific people. Like my sister, Maggie, and her pain on this earth. And Dad, too, as he approaches the setting sun in his life. I talk to God about all that. But I don’t know that I have ever been in the place that caller was, when he spoke to me, a stranger wandering the earth. I can’t remember that I’ve ever prayed for any stranger, at least not often.

I am grateful, though, that the man who called me that day prays often for me, a stranger. And I thought about it, later. Thought about it a lot. How many other people out there are doing something similar to that? I guess you reach people sometimes with your writing, when you never had any idea you were reaching them. That’s where this stranger came from. How many others are out there, like him, praying for me often? I have no idea. The Lord knows, I suppose, because He hears their prayers for me.

It makes me feel pretty small and humble, the thought of any number of readers out there, praying for me, however sporadically. And I can’t help but think about this, too. It was a dark time, a lot of the last year was, culminating in March. A real dark time, mostly because I chose to walk into the darkness, chose to invite it in. Chose to welcome it into my heart. I wonder how much worse it would have been, how much deeper the darkness that enveloped me would have been, had this guy and others like him not been out there, lifting a total stranger up to the Lord in prayer.

I don’t know how much darker it would have gotten, that little time frame in my life. I have a pretty good idea, though. There were times when I stood on the edge of the abyss and peered down way deeper pits of ever more infinite darkness. But somehow, I stepped back from the edges of those pits, somehow I struggled my way back to the light with strength I could never have found on my own. I have no doubt that such strength, weak as it was, was prayed in on me by people I do not know. People like the stranger who told me. “I pray for you often.”

And today, I am grateful to God, for traveling mercies such as that.

*******************************

This has been one strange week. I hadn’t figured to write about any of it, but it insists on coming out, so here goes. What we saw this week, with the huge uproar about the Confederate flag, was nothing less than the vilest lynching I have ever seen. Or at least it’s the vilest lynching since poor Joe Paterno was murdered at Penn State by the bloodthirsty mob a few years ago. It was just awful, this past week. The whole thing just made me ill, right down to the bottom of who I am. It was all just pure madness, and it still is.

And no, I’m not defending the Confederate flag. I’m not defending any flag. I don’t even like flags. I’m an anarchist. I will never salute any flag of any state. Or any country.

But I won’t join the madness of the roaring mobs, either. I will not do it. I won’t fall over myself to vilify a person or an object just to prove how pure and holy I am. I will not do it.

I don’t pretend to know all the fine details of what the Southern Cross means or doesn’t mean to various groups in the south. I wasn’t born there, and I figure the people who were have the right to mind their own business, when it comes to flying or not flying that flag. And make no mistake about the attack that was unleashed this week. It was birthed and coordinated by the rabid, radical Left. Don’t ever let any political opportunity slip by, from any tragedy. That’s their motto. And boy, did they ever swoop in and crush any dissenting views.

You think about it, and it’s just flat out insane, the notion that the flag caused a young lunatic to enter a black church and murder nine innocent people. There is one factor that connects all the lunatic shooters these past many years. They were all, without exception, on psychotic drugs. Every one of them. But that fact is studiously ignored as the press lapdogs bray and bray about the evil of guns. And now, it’s a flag that is evil. A flag, that must be purged from the annals of this country’s history. A flag.

The insanity is not stopping with the flag, and every reference to it. Next will come the purging of monuments, and the renaming of schools and towns, as all memories of the evil Confederacy are wiped from the historical record. The Leftists on the forefront of this assault simply seethe with rage and venom. Nothing will stop them. They are no better than the Taliban, blowing up ancient Buddhist statues carved in stone on a mountainside in Afghanistan. We have now entered the subjective world of make-believe, where nothing is real or concrete. Old culture must be torn down, destroyed. It has no value. Today this is truth, tomorrow that will be, and this will be false. Just because. We are in an Alice in Wonderland world. We are not getting there. We are there. And these are dangerous, dangerous times.

And I keep hearing it said. You don’t know what it’s like, to come from slave roots. A statement designed to shut you up, right there. Well, no. It’s true enough. I don’t know what it’s like to come from slave roots. And people from slave roots have no idea what it’s like to come from Anabaptist roots, either. Their ancestral memories revolve around slavery, and the evil that it was. My ancestral memories are a whole lot different. My people were hunted down like animals, not enslaved. And they were killed when they were caught. Drowned. Burned at the stake. Beheaded. Those are my deep ancestral memories.

And yes, I despise the state to this day, because of all that. I will never, never trust any government on this earth. I know a lot of you are tired of hearing me keep saying that. I’ll say it again, anyway. The ancestral memory that is the evil of the state is burned deep into my psyche. I will never, never quit speaking that, I will never stop calling evil what it is, when it comes to what the state is.

But I will never call for any state icons of those days to be destroyed, either, because of all the wrong that was done. I’ll make a pilgrimage, instead, and I’ll write my name on the castle walls, where my ancestors were imprisoned and killed. I won’t call for the castle to be torn down. I don’t want it to be torn down. I want it standing there, right where it is, as a silent witness to all the innocent blood my ancestors shed for holding on to what they believed.

Most of us come from hard places, somewhere way back there in our ancestral memories. And banning a symbol of that hard place ain’t gonna make a lick of difference about anything. All it does is make you a whole lot less free. That’s how I see it. And that’s how I’ll say it.

Moving on, then, briefly, to what I was going to talk about. Last weekend, I traveled on down to South Carolina again. It was an important trip. My sister Rhoda’s oldest son, Justin, got married, down there in Fair Play. To a beautiful young lady named Jessica Miller. And it was a little hard for me, to justify going down that far twice in three weeks. I mean, I work for a living. I’ve got a job to go to. But in the end, I told Rhoda and Marvin. This is your first wedding, in your family. I will come, because that’s an important thing. And I went.

The wedding was on Saturday afternoon, at five. I got down there early, and stopped by Ray and Maggie’s house, to hang for a few hours. Janice was there, and we connected, for the first time in a while. And I just sat there and hung out. Maggie is looking pretty good. Still way too thin, of course. But she’s supposed to be in all kinds of pain, and she’s not. Her blood counts are supposed to be tanking; they are not. They are improving. “I’m still here, I’m still alive,” she told me as we hugged. And indeed she was, and indeed she is. What all this means, no one knows. It could be the calm before the storm, or it could be something more. We expect nothing, as family. We simply rejoice and celebrate, for every day she remains with us on this earth.

And then it was on over to Fair Play, for the wedding. Maggie couldn’t make it, so we hugged good-bye for the second time in the last three weeks. And my nephew, John Wagler, and his wife, Dort, took me. It was an outdoor affair. Simple. Beautiful. And touching. I don’t know my nephew Justin that well. I don’t know many of my nieces and nephews that well. But he looked all strong, and his bride looked all beautiful. I wish them all the best. And I told Rhoda and Marvin. You sure have a real nice family. Beautiful daughters and real strong, manly sons. They beamed and beamed.

And it’s only a few days away, now, my big trip over the pond. Late next Wednesday afternoon, I’ll be boarding a big old plane to Germany, and points beyond. I’ve been in contact with Sabrina, and she claims they are all looking forward to hosting me. I sure am looking forward to getting over there. Looking forward to leaving my drab everyday life behind, for a few days. Looking forward to hanging out with my friends at Leuphana University. And maybe not looking forward all that much, to my keynote speech on Friday night. I think I’ll be good, though. I usually talk for half an hour or so, then open up for questions. It’s always real interesting, the questions that come. You talk about what people want to talk about, not what you want to drone on about on your own.

I’ve talked to the tenant and told him where I ‘m going and why. He looked all wise. I have no idea if he ever got my book read; I’ve never asked him. He’ll keep an eagle eye on the place, when I’m gone. And my Amish neighbors, next door, too. They keep an eagle eye on the place all the time, anyway. They’ll do that all the more, now that I invited them to, while I’m gone. They are happy to be of service, and I’m sure they’ll be peering over at my house, nonstop.

It’s all pretty crazy, all of it. The fact that I’m heading to Germany, because of my book. Again. The second time. I have to pinch myself sometimes, to make sure it’s all real. And no, I won’t be posting again on this blog, not until I get back, and I get a mind to. It’ll be three or four weeks or so.

I am beyond grateful, for all the blessings the book has brought, almost more than I can count. And I am trusting the Lord for traveling mercies on this journey.

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Stairway to Heaven…

Come to us, Father, in the watches of the night. Come to us as you

always came, bringing to us the invincible sustenance of your strength,

the limitless treasure of your bounty, the tremendous structure of your

life that will shape all lost and broken things on earth again into a golden

pattern of exultancy and joy.

—Thomas Wolfe

________________

I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s just that kind of season, for my family. But so far this year, seems like, no sooner does one crisis recede than the next one comes sidling right along. It’s like they’re loafing about outside the door, like specters. And when the door is clear, a new crisis steps up to enter. Sometimes, a couple of them bump shoulders, and there’s a little argument about which one gets to step through the door first. And you gotta deal with both of them. That’s how it’s been. And there’s nothing, really, that you can do about any of it. You face whatever comes in the moment.

And the news came sliding up from the south, a few weeks back. From my sister Magdalena’s family. She’s my second-oldest sister, married to Ray Marner. Briefly mentioned in the book, in the early chapters. Dorothy’s mom. Abby’s grandma. Janice’s mom. Every summer, the family stays at a beach house off the coast, somewhere in South Carolina. For a week, they hang out, the extended family. The married children and all the grandchildren. Last year was little Abby’s last year, at the beach. And this year, they arrived on a Friday, and settled in for the week.

Maggie had not been well lately. Not eating right or feeling right. And on Saturday, I’m not sure what time of day it was, she suddenly collapsed. From sheer exhaustion, and from something else. She did not improve, so eventually they took her to the local ER. The place wasn’t busy at all right then, so the doctor had all the time she needed to diagnose Maggie’s ailment. She did tests. A complete CAT scan. And by late that night, or maybe it was the next day, here came the pronouncement. The dreaded C word. Cancer. It was in her colon, in her liver, and her lungs. And maybe a few other places. Stage four. And there were blood clots in her body.

I remember how calm it all was, when the news reached us. We communicated, some of us, on a private page on Facebook. Dorothy and Janice were very calm. Their mother had not been well for some time. So they knew there was something wrong. And we were calm, too, the family. Not stoic, don’t get me wrong. We talked. It’s a dark and evil thing, cancer is. And you don’t sugar-coat the suffering of anyone who’s afflicted. We grappled with the brutal truth of it. Maggie. Our sister. Cancer. But you can face evil things, you can walk through darkness, you can do that with a calm heart. And our hearts were calm. At least I know that mine was.

Dorothy and Janice kept us updated, as events moved along. The week was cut short, of course, at the beach. On the last full day there, Maggie stood on the shore with her son, Steven, and fished for a shark. She hooked one, and he helped her pull it in. It was on her bucket list, to catch a shark, she said. And then they all headed back to Ray and Maggie’s home, in the Donalds, SC, area. There they settled in, to decide what to do. Fixed on a plan of action. She would not take any kind of chemo, for the cancer. Any treatment would be all natural. Dorothy stayed to take care of her Mom, with her children. Her husband, Lowell, headed on home to Kalona, and back to his job. And the first few days after she was home, it seemed like it was nip and tuck for my sister. She was already thin before. And now, she lost even more weight, from the stress, the cancer, and from not eating. I fretted a bit, about all that. And I asked, on the Facebook page. Should I come to see her sooner rather than later? And the answer came from her family. Yes. Sooner. And that’s why I headed on down to South Carolina last weekend to see my sister.

It would be a quick trip, I figured. Drive down Friday, be there that evening, the next day and evening, and head on back home on Sunday morning. Around mid-week, I called the nice Enterprise people. Oh, yes, they said. They’d have a car ready. I stopped by after work on Thursday to pick it up. Of course, I asked my usual question. Do you have a Charger on the lot? The young man shook his head. “I have one car left, because I saved it for you. It’s been a real busy day. It’s a VW Jetta.” Wow, I said. I’ve never driven a VW before. After filling out the paperwork, he gave me the keys, and we walked out to inspect the car. It looked sleek enough.

I was disappointed, though, when I got in to drive it home. The car seemed sluggish. I had to stomp down, hard, on the accelerator to even get it to move. And it had an astonishing 25,000 miles on it. That’s real ancient, for a rental car. Oh, well, I thought. I’ll make do with what I got. I’ll get used to its quirks, on the long drive tomorrow.

Well. The next morning, I packed my bags, and a few copies of my book. I always take some books along on every trip, for PR purposes. And I stopped at Sheetz to gas up. Got me some coffee and a bottle of water. All right. I’m ready for the long drive ahead. Let’s get the GPS set up. I stamped it on the windshield. And plugged it in. It stayed dead. I pulled the cord and plugged it in again. Still obstinate and dead. There was no connection. That’s what happens, when you get a rental car with 25,000 miles on it. I was frustrated and outraged. Now what?

There really was only one choice. The Enterprise lot was about a mile east, and they had just opened. I pulled out onto the street and drove over. Walked in. The young man looked at me quizzically. You gave me a junk car, I said. The plug-in doesn’t work, for my GPS. Right then, his boss, a guy I’ve dealt with many times in the past, wandered over to see what was wrong. I told him the same thing. You gave me a junk car. They both looked alarmed and dismayed. The boss man stirred and punched at his computer. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ve got a brand new Jeep Cherokee out there. Let me go pull that up for you.” That’s beautiful, I said. I knew you’d take care of me. He went out and returned with a sleek gray spaceship of a vehicle. The young man took care of the paperwork while I transferred my luggage. And that’s how I got to drive a brand new SUV to South Carolina to see my sister, for the price of a clunker Jetta.

And I cruised into the long day. And I thought back in my mind, to my old memories of Maggie, memories from way back when I was a child. She was the first sister I have clear memories of. Rosemary is the oldest. And she got married when I was so young I have only vague memories of her wedding. Maggie didn’t get married, though, not for a good many years after that. And whatever else she was or wasn’t, she was her father’s daughter. Like me, it turned out she was a lot like him in a whole lot of ways. Brimming with fire and passion. Stubborn. And determined. Oh, yes, you have to be pretty determined to be the first one in your family to leave the Amish. Which she was. And she was a girl, yet. It’s a lot, lot harder for a girl to leave, than it is for the guys. Maggie did it. I don’t know if she plotted and planned it all out from the start, or just kind of walked through the doors that opened when they did. But she left, and she left for good. It was all a huge blow to Dad. And he took it pretty hard.

She was a strong force in my childhood. She was a strong force in the lives of all us children, from probably Titus on down. Nervous and intense, she always knew where we were and what we were playing. Nathan, the baby, got particular care. When he was old enough to run around and play, Maggie assigned Titus to keep an eye on Nathan at all times. And woe betide Titus if he didn’t know exactly where Nathan was and what he was doing at any given moment. I felt sorry for my brother, that he got burdened with such a chore as that. At the end of each summer, though, Maggie always gave Titus some real nice toy, as a reward, as a gift, for watching over Nathan.

And I’m not sure exactly when this happened. Probably about the time she knew she’d be leaving us soon. But she gathered us together, from Titus on down. Four of us. Titus and me and Rhoda and Nathan. And she taught us half a dozen little children’s songs. Ich bin Klein. This little Light of Mine. And the classic. Müde bin ich, geh zur Ruh. And a few others that now escape my memory. And she sang with us, and taught us those songs. “Every night, I want you to sing these,” she instructed us. And we did it, too, after she left. Got together after supper, and sang and sang in our childish voices. It got to be too much, after some time, though. Titus, the oldest, muttered one night that he was tired of singing. And so it all eventually faded away, and we didn’t sing anymore.

Moving on, then, or this blog is going to be way too long. My clearest memories of interacting with my sister after I grew up, and left. In 1991, I moved down to Greenville, SC, to attend Bob Jones University. Good old BJU. Maggie and her family lived less than an hour away. And I went out there, often, on a Sunday. I worked as a waiter, serving tables on Saturday nights, so I mostly headed out on Sunday mornings. At Maggie’s home, I was always, always welcome. I attended church with the family, and shared the noon meal. And that was the time I took my little nieces, Dorothy and Janice, under my wing. Not that they were that willing to listen to me bossing them around. We still hash out some of the things that happened, when I got all stern and firm with their boyfriends. Well. I was their uncle. I had the full right to interfere, I still claim. Anyway, it’s all good now, and we can all laugh about it. Back then, not so much, sometimes. It all just was what it was, I guess.

And I especially remember this. Every time I came around, Maggie always had a bunch of leftover food stored up for me. She saved leftovers from a lot of meals, and stored them in little Styrofoam containers. And froze them. And every time I came around, there were a dozen meals or more, all ready and waiting. I took them back to my trailer house, and stuck them in the freezer. And thawed one out, each day, for lunch. Mashed potatoes. Gravy. Vegetables. Ham. Beef. She served up a huge variety of food for her destitute student brother. Of course, I always thanked her. But it was only years later that I realized the effort she made, right there, just to keep me provided with some decent home-cooked food.

The Cherokee pulsed right along, down 81 South, then on to 77 South. Through North Carolina, then on into South Carolina. It had been a lot of years since I was down there. Last time was in 2006, I later figured out, when Ellen and I attended the wedding of my niece, Becky, Jesse’s oldest daughter. Somehow, I had never made it back since. Most of my travels go west, not south. And it all was so familiar, when I got off the interstate in Greenville, and drove on east and south through small towns.

It always amazes me, how many churches there are in the south. The First Baptist Church of (take your pick of names). I mean, even the smallest town seems to have half a dozen churches. I don’t know how they can pull it off, the cost of running and maintaining all those buildings, some of which are quite old and beautiful. Not to mention the capital it took to ever get them built in the first place. Down 291 out of Greenville, then on to 25 I drove. Closer and closer. And right at a few minutes after six, I pulled into the drive. The home where Ray and Maggie have lived for the last fifteen years or so.

I pulled up to the house. Carefully. Little children ran about, underfoot everywhere, seemed like. I edged up and parked and got out. Janice wouldn’t be here, I knew. She was back home in Phoenix. Dorothy met me. We hugged. I love you, I told her. “I love you, too,” she said. “Mom has been looking forward so much, to you coming. She’s been talking about it all day.” I pulled off to the side, then, on the grass, and followed my niece into the house. Through the kitchen, and around to the right into the living room. My sister Rachel sat there on a chair. She had flown in the day before. And there she sat, on an easy chair, her right foot propped up on a footstool. Maggie. She smiled in welcome. I bent down and hugged her tight.

She looked so frail and thin. Dangerously emaciated. But her hug was strong. “Welcome, brother,” she said, and her voice was firm. “I’m so honored that you drove all the way down, just to see me.” Ah, stop it, I said. Of course I drove down to see you. After greeting Rachel with a hug, I sat there beside Maggie, on the end of the couch there by her chair, and held her hand. And we just talked. She was feeling pretty good, she said. There was a big blood clot in her right leg, inside, just above the knee. They soaked the spot with a hot water bottle every hour. Overall, she claimed to be resting well.

And we just sat there and chatted, Maggie and Rachel and me. Dorothy bustled about, making supper. The poor girl was always moving, always busy, always smiling, always serving. And soon, they trickled in. Family. Jesse came by. Ray arrived home from work. And the married children from both families stopped by, too. I hugged people and shook hands and smiled and talked. After the meal, we sat around, sharing boisterous stories from past and present. Maggie requested that we sing a few songs, then. Rachel and I stood beside and behind her chair and held her hands. Dorothy strummed up her guitar and led us in a few old-time hymns, including one I hadn’t heard in a few years. How Beautiful Heaven Must Be.

People made noises to leave, then. I was pretty tired, and ready for some rest. It had been a long day. Jesse told me, as he was leaving. Tomorrow morning he wanted to come and pick me up and show me around a bit. Over the years, my brother has accumulated a little real estate empire of sorts. He buys up an old house here, an old house there, then fixes them up and rents them out. I think he had a dozen or twenty houses or so. And recently, he made one of the oddest real estate acquisitions a person could make. Through a sealed bid, he bought the old jailhouse in Abbeville. A jailhouse. Not many people can claim they have a brother who owns a jail. I can claim that. Anyway, he definitely wanted show me the jail, too. Absolutely, I said. I’ll look for you around nine or so.

Maggie was up and sitting in her chair the next morning when I walked up from my basement bedroom. She smiled and greeted me. I hugged her, got me some coffee, and sat beside her, holding her hand. I’m going out with Jesse for a while, I told her. “Oh, yes, go.” She said. “I’m sure he wants to show you around.” And Jesse came wandering in right then, with a newspaper. “The only privately owned newspaper in the state,” he boasted. I shrugged. I don’t read newspapers anymore, I said. Those things are for old people. I get my news off the internet. I did check out the sports page, though, real quick. Sadly, my Rangers got knocked out of the Stanley Cup playoffs the night before, in game seven. They lost to Tampa Bay. What’s a hockey team doing in Florida, anyway? I grumbled. Oh, well. At least they got as far as they did, the Rangers.

Jesse was all excited to get going. I sipped my coffee, then hugged my sister. We’ll be back, I said. And off we went, in Jesse’s old pickup, into the beautiful sunny day. He wanted to show me where his children lived. And his son, Ronald, had a garden I needed to see. Ronald has quite the green thumb, from what I heard. We puttered down the road. Everything is so laid back in the south. Northerners could learn a thing or two about what it is to live relaxed.

Jesse chattered and chattered as we drove along. He has many wild tenant tales. First stop, Ronald’s house. He greeted us at the door, and led us through the house, out back to his garden. Lots of exotic vegetables growing there. He waters the garden every day. And in an old water tank off to the side, he showed me a big old (yes, it was both big and old) snapping turtle he had caught a few days ago. He planned to butcher the turtle sometime soon, he said. It’s got a good seven to eight pounds of meat. I’ve never had turtle meat, I told him. I’d sure like to try some. I wish I could be here, for that, when it happens.

Ronald joined us then, and off we went, on a great rambling tour of Jesse’s world. A rental house here, a rental house there, and here was the trailer park he manages for someone else. It was a lower end trailer park, I must say. Still, it was all quite interesting. And then he pulled up to a large two-story brick structure. “This here’s the jail,” he said as he parked. The jail? I hollered. It sure don’t look like any jail I’ve ever seen. Not that I’ve been around jails that much.

The place just looked like pure evil. It’s haunted, I’m sure, I told Jesse. By all the ghosts of all the poor souls who were tortured there, and died there. We walked to the entrance, and Jesse unlocked the door. Before stepping in, I crossed myself. Can’t hurt, I figured, to have a little extra protection. We walked through the halls lined with cages. Jesse’s got the ground floor pretty much filled with flea market stuff, anything imaginable. Upstairs, though, the cages stood, still and empty. We walked back into the “hole,” the solitary confinement pen. “They put them in there, and carried a lot of them out, feet first,” Jesse said. It was a grim and evil room. And there was another large holding cell around the corner. Where they kept the pregnant women, many of whom suffered miscarriages over the years. Jesse showed me the doors of that cell, chained open. “They kept shutting on their own,” he told me. “I was afraid they would shut and lock on me sometime when I’m in here.” I shivered. “And at night, from downstairs, you can sometimes hear babies crying, from this cell,” he went on. I gaped. You mean you’ve heard that? I asked. “Yes, I’ve heard that,” he said. I shivered again. And I was ready soon to shake the dust from that dark and evil building.

We got back to Maggie’s around noon. I ate a bit of lunch, and then sat with my sister. This afternoon was hers. And we just talked, she and I, and Rachel, too. I spoke of my memories of who she was in my childhood. And she remembered most of what I talked about. She remembered teaching us those songs. Like me, Maggie has an intense and vivid memory of so much that happened so long ago. The good things. And the bad. And, like me, she’s got some serious “father” wounds. And, like me, she tends to go down the dark holes of the bad things now and then, too. But that day, she didn’t, much. And I asked her a bit, of how it was to break away when she did, from the Amish and from Aylmer. She spoke freely of the people and events in her world at that time.

And I asked her, because I never really knew. Tell me about how you and Ray got together. And she chuckled. Ray’s family lived in Aylmer, way back, too, so the two of them knew each other from childhood. Ray is a few years younger, and Maggie never figured she’d date a younger man. They were just friends, she said. Then some mutual friends from Ohio asked Ray to bring Maggie around for a weekend. And so they went, just as friends. They weren’t dating or anything. I guess on the way home, the heater core began leaking in Ray’s car. And the floor on Maggie’s side got all soaked with water. So she had to move over to the middle of the seat, closer to Ray. And by the time they got home, they had agreed to start dating. I howled at that story. I’ll bet you did agree to start dating, after sitting real close to each other all the way home like that, I said. Maggie laughed, too. And Rachel. We laughed so hard that Dorothy inquired from downstairs. What’s so funny?

The afternoon drifted on, and I sat with my sister. We were just silent a lot, too, and I held her hand a lot. As evening approached, Dorothy bustled about, preparing a haystack supper. And all the children and married children arrived to eat. It was like the night before, just good food and good company and good conversation. It was family.

And later that evening, Dorothy offered to give me a “foot treatment,” something I haven’t experienced in years. Like her mother, Dorothy is a skilled Reflexologist. And that night I relaxed and just let the stress flow from me. Dorothy chatted as she worked. She does reflexology from her home, up in Kalona. She has regular clients. And she told me. Some kind of false preacher swept through the area some time ago, and now a good many people around Kalona think she’s a witch, because she does reflexology. I was pretty horrified. They better not call you that when I’m around, I said. I’ll go after anyone who calls you that, both personally and on my blog. I’ll call them out, you bet I will. People like that are spiritual bullies. The worst kind. I do not suffer such fools gladly. Especially not when they go after my kin like that.

And I’m guarding the gate, right here. If you got something against what reflexology is, you come through me before you go calling anyone like my niece a witch. I have some choice words for you. Like false, freakin’ false prophet. Shame on you, for all the innocent souls you have tortured. You probably think cancer can only come from some kind of unconfessed sin in your life, too. Everything is all about demons and witchcraft. If so, you are not only a false teacher, you are the worst kind of false teacher.



And everyone drifted out then, before it got too late. Rachel went to stay at Jesse’s house for the night. Early the next morning he was taking her to the airport for her flight back home. And I chatted with Maggie and Ray a bit. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be heading out. I figure to be out of here by seven. And then it was downstairs to my bedroom, and fitful slumber there.

A little before seven the next morning, I lugged my bags up the stairs. Maggie was already on her chair. I don’t know if she had slept well the night before, but she smiled at me. I set the bags in the kitchen, got a cup of coffee, and went to sit beside her one last time. I reached out, and she placed her hand in mine. And we just talked about the little things.

After fifteen minutes or so, the coffee cup was empty. I have to go now, I said. I got up, and placed the cup on the table. And then I turned back to her. Bent down. And we hugged. I love you very much, I said. Her arms were strong, around me. “I love you, too. Thank you again, for driving all the way down to see me,” she said. “And drive careful. That’s a long way, up there.” I will, I promised. And then I turned to Ray, and we hugged. I wish you all the strength that God can give you, I told him.

And then I turned and picked up my bags and walked out. The Cherokee had me home by early evening.

A few notes, here at the end. The family has been closing in, around Maggie. As it is in every cancer case, we don’t know. She could be with us for a long time, yet. Or she could leave us today or tomorrow. Of course, that’s true of all of us, whatever our health. There simply is no promise of tomorrow, ever, for anyone.

As I said, the family closed in. Joseph and Iva were the first to get there, to visit, the weekend before I got there. And then me and Rachel went. And then, this week, well, there was more company coming.

My father heard about Maggie’s condition, from where he’s living up in Aylmer. And from the first day, he got all fretting and demanding. He wanted to go see her. And you think about that. He’s 93 years old. It’s about a thousand miles, from Aylmer to Donalds, South Carolina. The logistics are not good, to get an old man like that to travel that far.

But he kept insisting. It’s all he could talk about. He wanted to go to see Maggie. And when a 93-year-old man gets that persistent, you do what he tells you to do. Which they did, up there. Rosemary and Simon Wagler (Dad’s nephew, the preacher) and Mary Luthy took him down. Simon came along to take care of Dad. He and Maggie grew up together, and were very close childhood friends. Mary had an aunt in the area, and she too was Maggie’s old friend from childhood.

And they came, earlier this week. To see Maggie. And Naomi flew in, too, from her home in Arkansas. I was a little envious. I sure would have loved to be there, too.

And Maggie got a lot of one on one time with her sister Rosemary. The two oldest children, they share unique memories that no one else on earth knows. It’s a special bond. And Dad got some of her time, too. He parked his wheelchair right beside her easy chair. He was here to see his daughter. To “visit,” as the Amish say.

And it all went down real well, that first day and evening. We hovered on the Facebook page, looking for updates. Dad sat beside his daughter, all evening. And now Dad was going to Jesse’s house for the night. This was new territory, news like that. Dad would never stay with his non-Amish children before. Not that I recall. He stopped to visit them, here and there, like once in their lifetimes. But he would not stay the night in their houses. Until tonight. It was a milestone, in the family lore.

And yesterday morning, they all gathered at Maggie’s house for breakfast, before the people from Aylmer needed to depart. Rosemary cooked up biscuits and gravy, as only she and Mom ever could. And I would guess they all feasted with joy, that morning. Because of all the delicious food, of course. But also because something else was going on, that no one had ever seen before.

Dad parked beside Maggie’s chair. And he just sat there and held her hand in his.

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Sons and Roses…

Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not

know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come

into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.

—Thomas Wolfe

_______________

I didn’t feel it coming on, much, as last Saturday ended. I was up late, as usual, getting a little writing done. (Yep, I’ve been getting a little random writing done, lately. One of these days (a vague term that could mean years), I’ll have a few dozen pages to throw out there on the market, to see if some publisher wants what I got. It’s all coming. It’s just a matter of time.) And when midnight came, it hit me. It’s a new day. Today is Mother’s Day. And yeah, it was way late, and yeah, I’d had a few scotches. Maybe that’s what made me all melancholy and reflective, all of sudden, at that hour. And I went back in my head and looked at it, what all Mother’s Day was to me, from the time I was a child.

Childhood. What was that day like, way back then? As I recall, it was a day we recognized. I won’t say we celebrated much. But we recognized it, in my Amish world. And I want to be real careful, here. The Amish world I knew as a child is no longer the same world today that it was back then. Not in the places where I grew up, not in the communities of Aylmer and Bloomfield. I look back, and my memories are what they are. Coming out of all that happened when it happened. Today, I think, both Aylmer and Bloomfield are much more relaxed about a lot of things. I can’t speak firsthand, about all that much of it, at least not the living of it. I know I am certainly welcomed in a few places that used to be pretty hostile, years ago. There’s more communication, I think, at least at some levels. And I hear it told, about how it is now, how things have changed a lot, in a lot of ways. And I try to imagine what it might have looked like, had today’s Amish world been the Amish world I knew. It’s impossible, of course. So I can only speak from what I saw, back decades ago. I can only speak from where I lived and what I felt.

And they observed Mother’s Day, there in the Aylmer of my childhood. A special day for Mom. I’m trying to get a grip on my memories, of how that all happened. I can’t quite say for sure, but I seem to remember we made little homemade cards for our Moms at school. Little sheets of white typing paper, folded in half a few times, to make it card-sized. And a drawing or two, always roughly colored by a child’s hand. Happy Mother’s Day. I love you, Mom. We gave her those little shreds of paper, with no real concept of what we were saying. No real grasp of the meaning of our words. We could write the words. I love you. But we never heard those words spoken, in our world. There was a big void there, between what you could write and what you could speak. I’m talking from a child’s perspective, here. The Amish language is a simple language, and it doesn’t have a whole lot of expressive “love” words in it. And it’s only much later that you can see that void, and make some sense of it all.

And the years flow by when you are a child, and those years bring what they bring. It never was that big a deal to me, growing up, Mother’s Day. Mom always smiled and made like it wasn’t necessary at all, that we would honor her. And the thing of it is, once I grew out of my childhood world, I didn’t honor her much at all. I chose to walk my own roads. And I chose to leave, in the middle of the night, chose to walk away from all the Amish were or meant to me. You do that, from where I was, and you don’t realize how deeply you are hurting the people who love you the most. And especially, you don’t realize what you’re doing to your Mom.

And no, I’m not talking about guilt here. And I’m not talking about forgiveness. It’s just that certain things, or certain dates, like Mother’s Day, can trigger a river of thoughts, can make me pause, and look back on it all. And it’s just sadness, mostly, that I feel, reliving some of those scenes. You focus on where you want to walk, when you’re a troubled youth, like I was. And you don’t think a whole lot about it, the ripples you cause in the lives of others. And in that period of my life, I can’t remember that I ever acknowledged Mother’s Day, to Mom. I probably did, offhand like, when I was around. And it was all a part of the deep pain I inflicted on her. Mom was just Mom. I didn’t want to hurt her. But it didn’t matter that much, if I did. In retrospect, all I really wanted was out.

And that’s the second stage of my Mother’s Day memories. Now, you fast-forward a little bit, from those years. To a time when all that dust had settled some. To a time when me and Nathan had left Bloomfield and the Amish for good. We were both a little skittish, back then, from all we had gone through, breaking away. But even from the first years, there were two things we did every year, like clockwork. We went home for Christmas, every Christmas, if only for a few days. And every year at Mother’s Day, we sent a bouquet of roses to our Mother.

And, yeah, I gotta say. It was Nathan who always remembered, who brought it up to me, every year, a month or so out. In July, it was Mom’s birthday. And Nathan always called me. July is coming up. Make sure you send her a card. And every year, too, he called me in May. It’s Mother’s Day, next weekend. I’ll order the flowers delivered. I’ll have them put both our names on the tag. And I always answered Nathan. Yes. Put my name on, too. I’ll pay you for my share, next time I see you.

It was all a little strange, back then, when it came to the Amish and flowers. And I want to be real careful here, like I said. It might be different today, in Bloomfield, and probably is. But back then, it all was what it was. When we went home for Christmas every year, we always took Mom a special gift. The largest, reddest Poinsettia we could find, in any local store. We took Dad a gift, too. A box or two of chocolate covered cherries. And it was all OK, it seemed like, with the flower we brought to Mom. Maybe it’s because the Poinsettia was alive, in a pot. Because there’s something about dead, loud roses that seemed to not go over so well with Dad.

And this is how it was in the Amish world I came from. The preachers preached it many times. Not all of them preached that way, but enough of them did so you couldn’t help but hear it. And they spoke with all the authority the Amish code of discipline could instill in them. When a wayward, rebellious child gives flowers to his mother, that means the child is feeling guilty in his heart. That’s his only possible motive. And you think about that, what kind of a hard cold heart you’d have to have, to even claim such a thing. But claim it they did, that certain element of old time preachers in Bloomfield. It’s a hard core Amish platform, right there. Your children, the ones who left, the rebellious ones, those children will send you flowers, sure. But those flowers don’t really come from their hearts. If your son really felt that way, he’d come home and repent and behave. If your rebellious son sends you roses, just know the real reason he’s doing it. He’s feeling the guilt of all the wrong he’s done.

It was so simplistic, that teaching. And so deeply and brutally wounding. I look back at the world my Mother lived in, a bleak and hopeless world like that. And I simply admire her all the more for her unwavering strength in the face of all she endured in life. Sons who got up and left in the middle of the night, without word or warning. A husband who uprooted his family and moved around again and again, and kept her isolated from her own family, back in Daviess. I look at all that, and once again, I marvel. Not from guilt, but simply from deep sadness and pity that she was trapped in a culture that could be so cold and colorless as to forbid her sons to send her roses. Not that we listened that well. For a lot of years there, we sent her roses anyway, Nathan and me.

And for my father, too, well, it all just was what it was. Back then, he was a highly prominent man, a leading intellectual, a writer among his people. And hard-core, hard-core Amish. I’ve wondered sometimes, about all that. If he had relaxed a little, and not insisted so firmly and harshly that we all remain Amish, would more of his children be Amish today? There’s probably a pretty good possibility there might be. Not saying I would be. I just can’t live that way. But still. He was a hard-core defender of the faith, all the way. If you considered any other path, back then, you might as well concede that you’re going to hell. Because for anyone born Amish, there was no other path. That’s what Dad believed, that’s what he wrote, and that’s what he insisted on pressing into the lives and minds of his children.

And I remember when he approached me about those roses we were sending Mom. I remember very clearly. I was home to visit for a few days. It was summer, as I recall, so it must have been a flying trip I made home on my own. Nathan wasn’t with me. And Dad and I visited, just like we always did. And he got all stern, all of a sudden. It was like some sort of dark force just swept through him.

“I want you and Nathan to stop sending roses to Mom,” he said. The edge of his voice was flat and hard and harsh. “If you can’t come home and be obedient, as you know you should, you don’t need to be sending her things like that for Mother’s Day.”

I was mostly pretty deferential, to Dad, after I left home, and came back to visit. Don’t rock any boats. Try to keep things conversational, don’t get into any real serious arguments. But that day, when I heard those words from him, I simply gaped. And I got real mad. No, I got livid. And I lit into the man like I rarely have, before or since. No. I spoke in quiet rage. You are wrong. I reject what you are saying. How can you be all harsh like that? Don’t you even, ever tell me I can’t send flowers to Mom. Don’t you even do it. I reject what you are saying. It’s not right. It’s cold and hard and cruel. And you know it.

We left it at that, then. We settled back into normal, somehow. It was like a flame of stress flared up, then just kind of slunk away. Maybe we both knew what to expect from each other. I don’t know. I still seethed inside, at his words. But from here, today, I can say this. Dad was a product of his Amish roots, and he embraced those roots with all the passion any Wagler could ever muster. And from what all he had ever seen, Mom’s obedient sons didn’t bring her roses. They never did that when they lived at home. Or after they got married Amish. Roses were supposed to grow in a garden, not be given as tokens of guilt or love or anything else.

That’s how Dad saw it, I think. Her children only sent her roses from a worldly place. And it was a foreign thing to him, seeing the stems of cut flowers in a vase. We didn’t do that, where I grew up. We didn’t give gifts like that. Well, we did give roses to our girlfriends, I guess, now that I think of it. That was OK. But we never gave roses to our Moms. From where I am today, it’s all so strange and tangled up, what was allowed and what wasn’t.

Back to Dad, though, and who he was. It was a hard place, where he came from. I’ve often wondered what all the man saw, growing up, that I never knew he saw. Because he never spoke it, never wrote it. And for him, it seemed pretty natural, to forbid his sons to send flowers to their mother. It’s what the preachers preached. I see that now, how he would feel he needed to support that Amish church he had so stridently defended all his life. So he told me what he told me. And my instinctive reaction was natural. Don’t tell me I can’t send roses to my Mom. I don’t excuse him for what he told me, and I will not ever justify him for saying such a thing. Still, I’m struggling to understand just exactly where he was coming from.

There will never be any legitimate reason for any father to forbid his sons to send roses to their mother. Never. I don’t care what culture you’re in. And I don’t care where the sons are coming from. It’s a harsh and cold and cruel thing to do, by any standard. And you just don’t do it.

It all was what it was, back then, I guess. And it wasn’t all that long after Dad scolded me, a few years, maybe. Nathan told me, when we were talking. “You know Mom can’t enjoy the flowers we send her. She gets too nerved up.” And we talked about it, my brother and me. And I groaned. Good grief, I said. It’s not right, that we can’t. I mean, we are her sons. We can send her flowers, whenever we want to. “Yes, that’s true,” Nathan responded. “But what’s the good of sending her roses, when we know she can’t enjoy them? What’s the good of that?”

And eventually, we got it hashed out. We’d keep sending her cards, for Mother’s Day, and on her birthday. And a large red Poinsettia for Christmas would always be offered, each year. I remember how I kept thinking, and how I kept exclaiming. It’s just not right. We are her sons. We can send her roses if we want to. And Nathan’s calm answer. “It just is what it is. If we really care for her, we won’t deliberately cause her any more stress in her life than she already has.” And in the end, I simply could not argue with my brother’s words.

And from here, today, I hear a variation of what Nathan spoke, again. It is what it is. It was then. And it is now. We did what we could, in our rough and uncouth ways, to show Mom we loved her. We sent a strange literal message into her world. Cut roses, that would never bloom again. And when not sending her those roses reflected our love more clearly, well, that’s what we chose to do, too. We chose not to send her roses, then. It still haunts me a little bit, though, all of that. That little sliver of time was a barren desert in all our lives, I think.

From today, I look back on it all, and reflect. Mom never rejected our roses, even though they caused her more stress than they ever were worth. She never rejected our roses from the world she was trapped in. Because she loved us, as we were. She loved us from way deep inside, her two most wayward sons. And nothing is ever gonna take away that truth from the hearts of those sons.

But still. I have to say this, too, here at the end. A whole lot of things would be done a whole lot different, if life could be lived over. I know Dad would do things different, because he told me that more than a few times. He spoke those words to me, and his voice was heavy with regret.

And yeah, I would have done a whole lot of things a whole lot different, too, if I knew then what I know now.

**************************

OK. Moving on, then. There’s been something I’ve been wanting to mention. But I never could, quite, until it all came together. And I will say this. The past fourteen months have been real up and down for me. The darkness finally caught up with me in March. But the thing is, there was always lots of good stuff going on, too, in my life. It’s a tapestry, I guess. You live it all at the same time, but you can’t write it simultaneously. It’s impossible. You write what bubbles up, first. And the dark stuff is what bubbled up, mostly, in the past year.

Right there from the trenches, right when I was writing to all the world from all kinds of dark caves, right then, here came an email, oh, sometime early last year, I think. From my old friend in Germany. Dr. Sabrina Voeltz. She was just enquiring. She and her team were trying to get a conference going, next summer, in 2015. Plain People Conference. She wasn’t sure the funding was going to come through, but if it did, would I consider being a keynote speaker? They would pay my travel and lodging expenses, and give a stipend on top of all that. She would be honored. Sabrina said, if I would consider coming over to speak, if it all worked out. And she was fairly confident it would. No promises, of course. But she thought it might, from what she was seeing.

You get a “feeler” email like that from an old friend in the academic world in Germany, and you just gape a bit at the impossibility of it all. Umm. Let me think. I’m driving to work every day, in Big Blue. Talking and selling pole buildings. Which I very much enjoy doing. But a paid trip back to Leuphana University, in northern Deutschland, to give a talk about my book? Oh, you bet. I’d like that very much. You bet I would.

And I didn’t think that much about it last year, as life rolled at me. I had it in the back of my head, of course, that it might all happen. And a few months ago, I got the email from Sabrina. It’s on. The conference is on. Book your flight. We will reimburse you. You are a keynote speaker, along with Dr. Donald Kraybill. My good friend Dr. Kraybill is the preeminent Anabaptist scholar in academia today. I think he’s just now retiring from a long and distinguished career. And all I could think was, how in the world am I gonna be anywhere near as interesting as a learned man like that? A man who has stood and spoken to thousands and thousands of audiences. I haven’t done any such thing.

But it doesn’t matter, I guess. I am beyond honored, to be billed with Dr. Kraybill at any conference, anywhere in the world. And I’m looking forward to seeing my friend at the conference, too. I think what we have to say will complement each other.

And one last thing I just gotta say. The book took me to Germany, back in 2013. I wrote it all out, when it happened. It was one of the biggest adventures of my life. I’m thinking, though. The first time your book takes you to a foreign land like that, it might be (or most likely was) an aberration. The second time your book takes you to a place like that, well, I think I’m gonna start calling myself an international lecturer.

The journey of the book just keeps rolling right along. Down through some dark places and up over towering mountains. And every place between. I just keep walking. And I am grateful every day, for all of life.

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Cultural Upheaval; The Amish Countdown

The Times, They Are a-Changin’

—Bob Dylan, lyrics

____________________

I’m not quite sure how it all came up. It was the setting, probably. A Tuesday night, a week or so back. The Bible Study is still chugging along. Or trudging along, depending on how you look at it. Every Tuesday night (unless Reuben and I are both out of town, so there is no one there to host.), there’s a few people upstairs at the office, listening to a Tim Keller sermon. The official Bible Study. It’s still happening, there. And it’s always a real good thing. Sometimes it’s two people. Sometimes it’s six. The most ever was nine. So far, we’ve held on to the schedule. But it’s what happens afterward, that’s what triggered this little tale, right here.

Because after the Bible Study, every Tuesday night, I go to Vinola’s to hang out with the guys who won’t come to a Bible Study. The guys who will pretty much only hang out with you at the bar. Not across the board, that statement does not apply. A few times, a friend or three made it from the Bible Study to Vinola’s. But mostly it’s the guys who won’t.

I don’t judge them for it, the people who will meet me at the bar, but not at the Bible Study. Maybe it’s too far to drive. It’s about halfway across the county. Or maybe they just think they got better things to do, than to come and listen to Tim Keller preaching. Whatever. Their reasons are their own. But it’s developed into a new little tradition, between me and a few good friends. We’ll meet at Vinola’s around 8:30, every Tuesday night. And I try to make it, and always have, except once, last month, when I had a savage cold and could hardly breathe, let alone speak. That one time, I missed it. But I’ve been there, every other time I was around.

It’s a ragtag group of four to seven people, all guys. The most ever was around eight or nine, I think. It’s a real weird mixture, mostly. Not everyone is always there, every Tuesday. But the group loosely consists of a couple of atheists, a couple of agnostics, and a couple of Christians. And we always sit at the same table in the same back room. We have a few drinks, and maybe some finger food of some kind, or a bowl of soup. We’ve gotten to know each other pretty well, and we’re comfortable around each other. And nothing, I mean no subject matter, is off the table. We’ve discussed a lot of things over the past number of months. Including what it means to have faith that there is a God. Or what it looks like when you don’t.

We’ve gotten a little loud, more than a few times. Well, I think we’re always louder than your average group, don’t matter what we’re talking about. It’s totally OK, though. Because it’s always real, our talk. We speak it as we see it. And there’s a lot of clashing going on, sometimes. You have to have some faith in each other, when you’re talking in a group like that. And you go right down to the core of who you are and what you believe. It’s been tense, more than a few times, too. Oh, yes, it has been. There’s been some yelling going on, coming from every side. But in the end, so far, we have always managed to part ways in peace. At least, I think so.

It’s not always loud and boisterous like that, though. We get along pretty well, most often. And we discuss far more benign things, too, like genealogy, and the history and future of the Amish. All of us emerged from Plain blood, somewhere. And that’s what came up, the other Tuesday. Where are the Amish headed, as a culture? How long will they be able to hang onto their plainness, their identity? And I did what I always do, when that particular subject comes up. I reached into my shirt pocket, and plucked out my iPhone. This little dude right here, I said. This is going to have a major impact on Amish culture and identity. And I’m not talking down the road. I’m talking in the near future, certainly within a generation. And I’m talking major upheaval. There’s a big split coming, and it’s not that far away.

It’s kind of strange, when you look back on history. A hundred and fifty years ago, the Amish were not that different from the people around them in regular society. They looked about the same, dressed about the same as the English people around them. They had modern farming equipment, for the times. Back then, it was common for many English women to wear head coverings of some kind, so the Amish weren’t unique in that, either.

It was only when the automobile came along, and got affordable to the common man, it was then that the Amish made their fateful decision. A decision that would set them apart, both visually and in practice of lifestyle, from all the world around them. They would not drive a car. They would stick with the horse and buggy. At first, it wasn’t all that big a deal. Buggies and cars shared the road. Cars were the aberration. But after a generation or two, well, it wasn’t like that anymore. Buggies were the aberration. And the Amish stuck out. Big time. Cars were whizzing down the roads, all around them. But still, they insisted on keeping things like they’d always been. And as time passed, they were increasingly seen as odd and silly people. I mean, look at them. Plugging along, jamming up the roads, and you can’t see their buggies at night, what with those little lanterns they got shining weakly from one side or both. Talking way back, here. Except maybe for the Swartzentrubers. I think they’re still stuck, way back there.

But still, whatever level it was going on, the Amish persisted in being who they were. It was ingrained, by now, in the cultural mindset. They would not touch the unclean things of the world. Like cars and electricity and telephones and such. They would not do it.

I’ve said it before, I think. When I was a child, the Amish weren’t viewed as the high and holy pastoral people they are viewed as today. Nah. It was a far cry from that. There wasn’t a whole lot of adulation going on, about how beautiful and peaceful that lifestyle is. Back then, we were seen as second class citizens, pretty much. People looked at us all funny. Why are you dressed like that, and why are you driving a horse and buggy? None of it made any sense in that world, and there wasn’t a whole lot of sympathy for any of it.

In my lifetime, though, that all changed. I saw it change. Change from scorn and derision to all kinds of lofty rhetoric about how peaceful the Amish live. I look at all that, a little cockeyed. I’ve been in both worlds. And I’m telling you. You can’t trust the praise, and you can’t trust the adulation of a fickle English world. You better not. Because that world is all about fame and the worship of fame. And I gotta say. The Amish haven’t trusted any adulation of a fickle English world. Not saying they don’t feel a little proud, when it gets too thick and gooey, the praise about how right they live. That’s just human. But whatever pride they might feel, you’ll never, never see it. They just plug along, like they always have. It doesn’t have to make sense to you, what they believe. They’ll believe it anyway. And they’ll be different, anyway. I’m most proud of that trait, of all the traits of my people.

And right along about when it all crested, the adulation of the Amish, right about then is when my book came stumbling out into the market. I look back on how that all happened, and I marvel more every day. It was just impossible. I was a total unknown. With not much of a platform at all. I’ve never worried much about “platform.” It’s just something that publishers tell their authors they better have. Go out there, all breathless, and tell the world. Come, and look at me. I’m a writer. I’ve always deeply and instinctively recoiled from how you have to be all aware of your platform. And how you have to keep hustling to increase your readership. You write. If what you wrote is worth reading, it’ll get read. It’s as simple as that. You don’t worry that much about whether you get published or not. Well, I fretted a little. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. But to calm those worries, I went and posted a new blog now and then. Kept writing. Mostly, it’s like this, in the end. If you’re gonna write, you’ll write anyway. Whether the world will ever see much of anything you wrote makes no real difference. You’ll write anyway.

Well, that was a bunny trail, some of that. But this is my blog, so I guess I can go down whatever trails I want to. Getting back, to somewhere close to where I started from, here. We got to talking at Vinola’s about who the Amish have been, historically. They have been a culture (and no, I will not label them a cult) that has chosen to separate itself from much of the outside world. And I got no problem with that. Leave people alone, to believe what they want. I am very proud of my heritage. Very proud, especially when it comes to how implacably my people stand against the state, whenever they feel it necessary. There are very few groups around, large or small (and the Amish are a very small group) who have stood up to the government like the Amish have. The beautiful thing is, it doesn’t matter to them, if it makes any sense to anyone else or not. They will stand against any force. Quietly, yes. Meekly, yes. But persistently, always.

It’s pretty basic, how the Amish have traditionally separated themselves. No cars. No electricity. No telephones in the house, you have to have a little phone shack outside. And those three things have held up real consistent, for generations. It’s just who they were. People who don’t believe in owning any of those things. And for all anyone ever thought, it was just who they would always be. I don’t think there was ever any doubt about that, at least in the generation I’m in, and the one behind and before me. The thing is, each generation looks at the world it’s in, and imagines it will always be like that. And often, it’s true, for a few more generations. The world stays pretty much the same. And then, sometimes, some major changes come rocking along a lot faster than anyone could have imagined.

From today, I look back at the unclean things my friends and I latched onto, way back when we were running around. It was an ancient age, back then, I guess. It’s stuff you’d find in a time capsule, the contraband we had. Little transistor radios, with a strap, so you could hook it onto your wrist. That was the smallest thing in our arsenal. Then it was 8-track tapes, and 8-track tape players. Big, bulky stuff. And later, it was the early version of a boom box. A large radio. And then cassette players. We adapted all this stuff to where it could be hooked up to the twelve-volt batteries in our buggies. It was all stuff that was real hard to hide, too.

And I wrote a scene about all that in the book, where Dad got up real early one morning after I got home real late. And he snuck a feed bag with a bunch of 8-track tapes right out of the back of my buggy. I should have hidden that bag in the hayloft the night before, when I got home. I should have. I kicked myself a hundred times, later. But, that night, I was just too tired. So I didn’t.

Kind of a funny little aside, here. When I was up in Aylmer to see Dad last fall, we got to talking about a few scenes in the book. And I asked him about those tapes in that feed bag. Do you remember that? I asked. I’ve always wondered. What did you do with those tapes? Burn them? I always figured you incinerated them in the water heater stove.

Looking back, it was almost surreal, that we could even have that conversation. It was like two old enemy warriors, almost fondly discussing the battlefields of long ago. He sat there and stroked his long gray beard and chuckled. “No,” he said. “I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them, so I walked down to Joseph’s house. It was early in the morning, just after daybreak. I told him what was going on, and how I have this bag full of something I found in Ira’s buggy. I don’t know what to do with this.”

And he claimed Joseph told him. “Just leave the bag here. I’ll take care of it.” So Dad left the bag and began walking back up the lane to our home. And he told me. “I turned and looked back, and there was all this hot black smoke coming out of the chimney of Joseph’s house. Something was really burning, I thought to myself. So I guess Joseph took care of that bag for me.”

I laughed. And he laughed, too. Well, those are some small details that sure are interesting, I said. I never knew that. I guess I’ll have to ask Joseph about all that, next time I see him. Which I completely forgot to do, when I saw him in Pinecraft in February.

There is a point to that little bunny trail. Well, I think so, anyway. We had all that bulky stuff that was hard to hide and easy to smash and burn, if we got caught. If it were today, I’d have an iPod. A little sliver of technology not much bigger than a credit card. And that iPod would store more songs than I could have hidden in 8-track tapes in five hundred paper feed bags. Dad would have lit a real bonfire with five hundred feed bags. Maybe there would have been a neighborhood weenie roast, or some such thing. What I’m saying is this. That’s the technology, the iPod, that young Amish kids have today. So affordable, so easy to hide. And so much harder to give up, when the time comes to “straighten up and settle down.”

There’s another little item out there that will affect the Amish a lot more than just a simple iPod. And that’s the smartphone. A cell phone, yeah, which helps everyone stay connected. But so much more than that. With a smartphone, you’re not only connected to your buddies. You’re connected to the World Wide Web. The internet. And Facebook. You get that phone as a young Amish teenager, and you are connected to the whole world on a computer more powerful than anything on the market even ten years ago. Against such a vast ocean of temptations, who can expect any Amish youth to ever really give it up and settle into the culture? To “straighten up and settle down?”

Some have the strength to give it all up, when the time comes, I guess. At least, so far. But a lot of others don’t. The thing is, a lot of Amish youth are not giving up that technology, when they join the church. I’m talking about Lancaster County, here. I can’t speak first hand of other communities, because I don’t have that much exposure to any Amish place other than Lancaster. I’ll take a bet, though, that what I’m seeing here is happening to some degree in a lot of Amish settlements that have no clue as to what’s about to hit them. Around here, I’m connected to the Amish world. I know what’s going on. And I’m telling you, there is some serious upheaval coming in that Amish world, sometime before too long. There just is.

Here, in Lancaster County, the cell phone (and smartphone) has pretty much been accepted as the norm by the business community. There’s been some muttering and some movement among some Bishops, to clamp down on it all. But that horse left the barn long ago. You gotta be connected, to compete. I can talk, firsthand, too, about the cell phones. I work with Amish crews, at Graber. There has to be a cell phone, somewhere, for me to connect with them when I need to. And for them to connect with me. That’s all there is to it, these days.

Don’t get me wrong, here. I got no bones to pick, with the Amish. I’m not hostile to them. I’m simply observing, and, yes, I’m simply fascinated. But there’s no moral equation involved, for me. What happens will happen. The culture will move and morph when and where it will. And I’m fine, with whatever happens, and whatever the Amish end up being.

It’s just how it is. I’m not criticizing. I’m not moaning. I’m just observing. And this is how I see it. If you’re Amish, and if you’re old enough, you can probably withstand the pressures. If you’re a businessman, married, with a family, you can hang on and make sense of who you are and what you are. But I’m talking about the youth. There will come a day when they will look at that smartphone in one hand, and the horse and buggy they’re driving down the road, on the other. And it’s going to hit them, or at least a whole lot of them. That horse and buggy just don’t make a whole lot of sense. Not when you’re connected to the whole world. It just can’t. And it won’t.

There’s some major upheaval coming. I’m not saying the Amish will disappear. There will always be a remnant that will hold back. At least for a few more generations, and even then, there will be a remnant that will hold back again. Eventually, though, throughout history, almost all cultural groups get absorbed into the mainstream around them.

And with the lure of today’s technology, the Amish are as close to that precipice as they’ve ever been.

***************************************

A few thoughts, here, in closing. This week, last year, Mom was released from all her pain on this earth. They told me how it all came down, that Monday morning. As the sun rose, her breath of life faded, then expired, and she left this world for a far better place. I look back on it all, and I remember vividly the mixture of emotions that flooded me that moment. The feeling of deep relief, that her silent suffering in the long dark night of Alzheimer’s was finally, finally over. And the feeling of almost indescribable loss, that the only mother I’ll ever have was gone. It seems so close, in some ways, that morning, a year ago. And in some ways, it seems so far away.

She suffered so much. And it took her so long, to get to where she could leave us for a better place. I remember how I raged at God, the night before. Why are You keeping her here, on this earth? You know she loved and served and suffered all her life. You know that. Just take her home.

I don’t think my rage had anything to do with it. But the very next morning my mother was called home. And I think back to how we all came together, the family clan. From all over. To mourn her passing. To grieve the loss of who she was. And for me and Nathan, well, it was the two sons who hurt her the most, those two sons placed roses on her grave, after everyone had cleared out. It wasn’t something we had long planned ahead. It just happened.

And it settled in me this week, a little bit, the heaviness of it all. If I could, I would tell my mother, face to face, how sorry I am at how senselessly and how callously I hurt her, way back in my youth. It’s neither here nor there, now, I know. But still, this week, I felt that sorrow seeping in again. And I know she knows what I would tell her, from where she is.

We all mourned her, back a year ago. The matriarch of the clan. Dad mourned her, too. He seemed so lost, without his life’s mate. His wife, my mother, a woman he took for granted almost all her life. Until he saw she was leaving him, slipping away. He didn’t take her for granted then. No. He tried to keep her with him, for as long as he could. It was so heart-rending to watch. I don’t know if he ever quite realized what he had squandered. It was always all about him. Now he’s an old man. Now he valued her, when she didn’t know what was going on. Now, after all those years.

And he wept and grieved her after she died. An old man, all alone now. And then he almost got taken from us last July, from a severe infection in his leg. I mean, the man came that close to joining Mom. But he didn’t. He held on. And when his health improved and he came back, something had changed, pretty drastically. It seemed like some of his memories had been burned out of him. He wasn’t missing Mom all that much, anymore. “She’s gone,” that’s what he said when her name came up. “We can’t bring her back. She’s gone. She’s buried.”

Yes. She is gone. And yes, she is buried. We did that as a family. And I can feel all of it, the loss of it, from here, today. And this summer, sometime soon, the family will gather once again. This time, to honor Mom again. The family will plant her simple gravestone, complete with the information of who she was. That’s pretty much all the Amish put on gravestones. Just the bare facts.

Ida Mae (Yoder) Wagler, wife of David Wagler. And there will be the dates of when she was born, and when she died. Unspoken, on the gravestone, will be this message.

She was deeply loved by all her children.

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Re-Connecting…

Men do not escape from life because life is dull, but life

escapes from men because men are little.

—Thomas Wolfe

________________

It’s been a bit of an odd spring around here, so far. And it’s been odd all around, I think. First, the long vile winter just would not end. Kind of made me all brooding and cranky, that did. And then, March was what it was. Everything got all dark on me, so I couldn’t write. You just kind of stumble on through life, when that happens. And then, one of the main office guys got ill, at work. Dave Hurst. His legs just gave out, lately. So he can’t make it in to work. And all of a sudden, it just got real busy, what with the normal spring rush and all. And being short-handed, it’s been even more hectic than usual for this time of year.

The phone rings, right along. And people walk in, too. People wanting quotes, people placing orders. Seems like you can’t get much work done on those more complicated quotes without getting interrupted. And when you’re all busy like that, and it happens like that, it gets a little tense sometimes. And sometimes it’s easy to get a little short with a customer, particularly if that customer seems unsure of what he wants. And that’s how I felt one day last week, soon after lunch. Rosita and Andrew had not returned, yet, so I was all alone in the show room up front. And he walked in, right when I was in the middle of a getting some work done on a quote. I heard the door open, so I glanced up. Lord, I thought, when I saw how the man looked. Please spare me from any eccentric people today. I talk to God like that, right along, just about any time I feel the need to.

The man had been around. You could see that. He was an older guy. Short, and wiry. Wrinkled face, with flat sun-burnt hair and a thin mustache. A toothy smile. But the strangest thing about him was his boots. Moccasin boots that almost reached his knees. That, and his walk was strange, too. Kind of a shamble. He approached the counter, and I got up to serve. I must say. I hoped he just wanted a few pieces of lumber, or something simple like that. Because right that minute, I figured I had about as much chance to sell him a bridge as I had to sell him a building.

He smiled, a little unsure of himself. I smiled back, a frozen smile. Can I help you? I asked. Yes, he thought maybe I could. He needed a pavilion, a building with a roof, but no sides. We’ve built plenty of those, over the years. I forget the size he figured he needed, but I pulled up the template on the counter computer. He had a list of questions. I was pretty curt, answering. Just get this guy his price, and get him out the door, so I could return to my desk.

He stood there, looking a little plaintive, as I worked up his quote. And the questions just kept rolling from him. I kept answering, curtly. And right about then, something went off inside me, in my head. And I scolded myself. Here is a customer. A man, looking to maybe buy something from you. Sure, he looks all eccentric, but, good grief, cut it out with the grumpiness. Treat him as a real person, with real value. Don’t matter if he wastes your time or not. This is the market. And he just walked into your store. Treat him real. Treat him with respect. And just like that, I got a grip on myself. And I turned to Mr. Eccentric and smiled.

Help yourself to a donut, there, I said, motioning to the large Dunkin’ Donut box a sales rep had left on the counter earlier that morning. You might as well relax and enjoy a treat, while I’m working up your price. He smiled, all pleased. He shouldn’t, but he believed he would, anyway, he said. He opened the large flat box and helped himself to some cream-filled monstrosity loaded with white frosting and sprinkles at the top. And he stood there munching away quite contentedly as I worked. He kept wiping the frosting from his sun-burnt mustache. I went back to my desk, got a napkin from the middle drawer, and handed it to him. He took it, wiped his mustache, thanked me, and kept right on munching.

And I asked. Where do you live, as in where do you come from? “I’m from Jersey, but I live local,” he said. And I gave him his price, and he seemed all happy and impressed. “You know, that’s not too bad at all, that’s not bad at all,” he kept saying as he chewed on his donut. “Nope, that’s not bad at all.” Well, you know where I am, when you need it, I said. And then I leaned against to counter, to visit a bit.

You said you’re from Jersey, I said. Where in Jersey? We ship quite of bit of stuff down there. And he told me. “Over close to Philly, just over the line. I moved over to this area when I retired, back in 1997.”

Retired, eh? What did you retire from? I asked. And here it came, the mother lode. The gold mine. “I was a tugboat skipper for twenty-five years,” he said. A tugboat skipper? I half hollered. Wow, is all I can say. I’ve never met anyone like you before. This is just fantastic. And his face lit up, and he beamed and beamed.

I’ve met a lot of different people from a lot of different occupations, over the counter, during my fourteen years at Graber. All kinds of unusual backgrounds, I’ve seen. A few years back, a guy stood there and told me how he had been a train engineer years ago, for many years. I asked him a hundred questions, including if he had ever hit any vehicles that were crossing the tracks when he came blaring along. He had hit a few. “But I never killed anyone,” he said. “I never killed anyone crossing the tracks.” That seemed to be his measuring stick, on how successful he’d been as a train driver. And I could understand that. Who wants to have such a thing on his mind? Even if it wasn’t his fault. I hear that, I told the guy. And that’s so way cool. I’ve never met a train engineer before.

And here stood Mr. Eccentric, telling me he skippered a tugboat for twenty-five years. No wonder he walked funny, I thought later. He walked that way, from all those weeks and months and years of sailing the seas on his tugboat. And I just leaned right into the counter, and we talked, he and I, for the next ten minutes or so. And when you show genuine interest in someone’s life or occupation, most people are all too happy to get real chatty. They can tell, if you really mean it or not, with your questions.

And I asked the questions, rat-a-tat. I’ve always wondered. How big is a tugboat’s propeller? “Twenty to twenty-two feet across,” he said. Wow, I said. No wonder they can push and pull like they can. He worked the North Atlantic, that’s what he told me. Towing barges and pushing big old ships around. And sometimes, he towed barges full of flammable stuff, fuel and such. When that happened, he could stretch out the cables so the barge was three/quarters of a mile behind his tugboat. It was all just fascinating, what he was saying. And we wound it down, then. One more question.

How big was your boat? I asked. “One hundred and twenty feet long,” he told me. “With a crew of six.” And we just talked, the two of us, as he told me his stories. He took his leave, then. And I thought about it, as he walked out the door, with his strange sea-leg shamble. Just that close, I missed it, what all he had to tell me, because I was too busy and too grumpy to pay any real attention to an eccentric old man who came shambling into my office for a quote on a pavilion.

Just that close, I missed it.

Moving on, then. It’s been a while, since I’ve mentioned the tenant. We’ve wintered well, he and I. It goes weeks and weeks sometimes, and I never see him. I hear him walking around upstairs, but that’s about it. And now and then, we’ll run into each other, and catch up with what all’s going on. And no, near as I could tell, the man never had any idea that I ever wrote a book.

Until just last Saturday, that is. It finally caught up with me. Not that it was all that big a deal, one way or the other. I just didn’t want him to know I’m an author, until he had a real chance to get to know me. That’s all. It wasn’t any big plot or anything.

Anyway, last Saturday, I went and did something I hadn’t done in a long time. I went to a real, honest go gosh book signing. Not a talk. Just a signing. My friend, Amos Smucker, the horse dentist, has a variety stand at the Farmer’s Market in Trenton, NJ. Just past Philly. And he’s been wanting me to come, and sign books one day. So a few weeks back, I gave him my big old glossy poster, and he took about twenty copies of my book. Saturday, April 11th. That’s when I would come to sign.

And so I headed out, last Saturday morning. I had told Amos. I’ll be there from ten until two. And then I’m heading home. My GPS took me right to the place. Real nice, quite plain, the market’s been there for a long time. It goes way back. And in the back, there’s Amos’s store. Amish Country Store. He had my books laid out in the empty space across the aisle. And I settled in, and just enjoyed the feel of a good old-fashioned book signing, where no one has any idea of who you are or what you wrote.

Traffic was sparse, but steady. By two, I’d signed around a dozen books or so. I offered to take back the excess copies. Amos had me sign five, and I took the rest. And I just headed on out, and back toward home. It was a beautiful sunny day. The finest Saturday I had seen in a long time. Too bad, I thought to myself, that March didn’t have a few sunny, warm Saturdays like this. I could have stayed out of some of those dark places, I bet, if there had been.

Driving through New Holland, I stopped to see Dave Hurst, my co-worker who hasn’t been able to get to work. He looked a little better than when I last saw him. We sat and just visited for twenty minutes or so, and then I headed on home. The tenant had his car out in front of my garage, when I got there. The hood up. The man tinkers more with his two cars than anyone I ever saw. I parked Big Blue in the first drive and ambled over to chat with him. And we just talked.

And somewhere, along pretty soon, he asked me. “You’ve been gone most of the day. Where were you at? Working at the office?” It wasn’t that he was prying. Just making conversation. And I figured the time had come, to tell him. We chatted as he walked with me, back to the house. I reached into my truck and pulled out a copy of my book. Showed it to him. Did you know I wrote this? I asked. I was at a book signing today in Trenton.

He held the book in his hands, and looked it up and down, keenly. “No, I never knew you wrote this book,” he said. And I chuckled. Look at the very top, there, I said. It’s a New York Times Bestseller. I’m pretty proud of that. And no one can ever take that accomplishment away from me. No one. Don’t matter, what happens. And I told him the short version of how it all came down, the how and when of it. And how the book had taken me to Germany, to talk at a University, back in 2013.

He kept on looking astonished. “I never knew you wrote this,” he said again. “I remember a few times that you mentioned that you were up late, writing. I wondered about it, when you said that. Now I know what you meant.”

I signed the book. “To _____, the best tenant I ever had,” and gave it to him. He thanked me. Well, I said. I wanted you to know me as I am, not as a “writer.” He chuckled as he kept thumbing through the pages. “Oh, don’t you worry about any of that,” he said. “I don’t care if you’re a hifalutin’ bestselling author or not. You’re Ira. You’ll always be Ira to me.”

You bet. That’s the way it should be, I said. And that’s how we left it.

And moving on, again. It was so strange, when I got back from Florida. I had every intention of writing all about the trip, and how it went with Dad. I hung out with the man for a week. And it all went pretty well, mostly. That first week home, I sat down to write it all out. And I wrote and wrote. A couple of dozen pages in all. And by late week, I saw it wasn’t working. Something inside me wasn’t wanting to get out right. My voice was all forced and taut. And when that first Friday came along, I just didn’t post. And when the next Friday came along, I didn’t post again. And the next. And the next.

It was hard, seeing a Friday coming, and I couldn’t write. But every time, when I realized what was actually going on, I drew back in. I will not post, if my voice ain’t right. I don’t care if my blog shuts down. I will not force my voice. I will not do it.

And now, from here, maybe that little father/son story will never get told in detail. I don’t know. Maybe it will, too, someday, when the muse hits just right. So I’ll leave it all for now. Except for one little thing that happened, one little story I want to say, right here.

I had told the Lord, when I went down there. I need some sort of blessing from this trip. I want one. It don’t have to be a spoken blessing from Dad, I’ve given up on such a thing a long time ago. He’s old, and where he comes from, you don’t speak a real blessing on your sons. Because you don’t know how. But I told God. Just give me something, some blessing I can grasp and hold on to. I’ll fight you, I’ll wrestle with you, until you bless me. Like Jacob did, in the Bible. Make me lame, if you want, just like you made him lame. But I want that blessing.

And there was a thing that came down that week, that certainly was a blessing. The first morning, during devotions, Dad asked me to read a passage aloud from Psalms. In German, from his German Bible. I was a little astounded to be asked, but I found a real short Psalm, and kind of stumbled my way through it. I still had it, the ability to read the old High German. I was just a bit rusty, that’s all. And every morning after that, it was my duty, to read a Psalm in German. That was a high place in my mind, an experience I never dreamed I’d get to see. I figured that was the blessing I had asked the Lord for. I figured my demand had worked, and I was pretty relaxed about it all.

And so I wasn’t even looking for it, when the real thing rolled right on down on me. Friday, around mid-morning. My last full day there. Dad and I were just lounging on the couch in the living room. I don’t remember where my sister Rhoda was. Probably bustling about, doing the laundry or something. Dad and I chatted sporadically. And right out of the blue, he just asked me a question, all of a sudden. “Is your book still selling?”

Well, yeah, some, I said, startled. We hadn’t talked about my book much, all week. And I told him. It’s still selling, mostly on Amazon. It never occurred to me that he might not know what Amazon is. And he didn’t. “What’s that?” he asked.

I had my iPad right with me. That’s what I used to stay connected on the trip, with my direct link to Verizon. I don’t need wireless. I can connect anywhere Verizon has service. And I pulled up my book on Amazon, on the screen. Showed it to him. See? There’s the book. The Kindle version is on sale for $9.99. And then it hit me. I could show him something so much more.

I’ve often wished that Dad could read some of my book’s reviews on Amazon. Just to get a taste of how totally disinterested (by that I mean disconnected) readers reacted. It was a fond, but distant wish for me, that my father could maybe see some feedback from outside people who appreciated the story, that he might glimpse the universal struggle of flawed fathers and their flawed sons, that he might let go of the hurt of his son speaking his story to all the world. Well, maybe that’s yearning for too much, that he’d let it go. But at least that he could read some outside perspectives. I never did think I’d see that day, though. And I sure never thought to ask the Lord for such a gift.

And now it was falling into my lap, the thing I never even dared to dream of. And sitting right there, I told him. I have 530 reviews on Amazon. Reviews, as in people posting their reactions. I’m pretty proud of that. Not many books have 530 reviews, anywhere on Amazon. And then I asked him. Do you want to read some of them? He never hesitated for a second. “Yes. I’d like that,” he said.

Almost in disbelief, I pulled up the page where the five-star reviews begin. I handed Dad my iPad, and he actually took it from my hands. I don’t think he was really aware that he was reading from the internet. He didn’t process it that far. So he just sat there and read. I showed him how to move the page up with his finger, on the screen. And I just sat there and reveled in that moment. He read and read, for probably fifteen minutes. And then I told him. Here. Let me show you. You’re reading all the five-stars. The top reviews. Let me show you a one-star.

I pulled up a short one-star, a vicious little screed about how the book should never have been written, how terrible the writing was all around, and how it would have been better for all the world had I never been born. Or something like that. One-star reviewers are a weird breed, all their own, because they expend all that energy to tear someone down. Dad took the iPad and read the review. “Har, har,” he chuckled, after he’d finished. “That person doesn’t like you very much, does he?”

And I chuckled, too. It’s OK, Dad, I told him. It’s the market. Not everyone’s gonna like what you write. It’s just how it is. Yeah, those one-stars stung, at first, because I took them personally. I’ve let all that go, a long time ago, now. It’s just not worth it. And I linked him back up to the five-stars, and the man just sat there and read and read and read.

And that right there is probably my most special memory of my trip to Pinecraft. Maybe I’ll get it all written sometime, a more detailed account of how it all went down there when I spent a week with my father. And maybe I won’t. If I don’t, at least I got this much told.

And now, winding down, here. Speaking of books and publishing. It’s pretty well known in the publishing world. Don’t ask Ira to endorse your book. He won’t do it. He will politely refuse. And it’s not that I got anything personal against anyone. It’s just that once you go down that endorsement path, well, I think that tune just keeps right on playing. So I flinched from it, instinctively, from the start. Besides, I don’t think endorsements do a whole lot of good, anyway, from what I’ve seen. Either the book will sell on its own, or it won’t. My words on the back cover ain’t gonna make a whole lot of difference, one way or the other.

All that to say this. A good friend of mine recently got her book published. And I told her, back last year when I read an early draft of the manuscript. Your story is raw, and it’s real. No, I won’t endorse the book. But I’ll write a short review about it. Or I’ll at least mention it on my blog. And that is something I rarely, rarely promise to anyone.

I was born into an Amish family in southern Ontario. Trudy Harder Metzger was born into a Russian Mennonite family in Mexico. I thought my life was hard, and I thought it was a hard thing, to break away from my culture. Well. Compared to Trudy’s journey, my life was a walk in the park, with maybe a nice little picnic lunch spread out on a clean blanket under sunny, pleasant skies. She comes from a tough and brutal place. And the miracle is, she survived. She not only did that. But today she ministers to the broken and wounded in plain Mennonite communities all over Canada and this country.

She grew up in a setting that was riddled with superstition. And riddled with abuse. Abuse of every kind. Physical. Emotional. Sexual. Some scenes in her book are so raw and so brutally harsh that I shrank from reading them. But I did. It’s a journey of grace, for all of us who come to know Jesus, and the healing and forgiveness He so freely offers. When you read the stories of what Trudy went through, you’ll grasp a much deeper understanding of what grace really is, how deep it flows, and how fully it can heal.

The book’s title. Between 2 Gods: A Memoir of Abuse in the Mennonite Community. My story was going to be written, whether it ever got published as a book or not. I think Trudy’s story is the same. It was going to get told, one way or the other. Like I said, it’s not a pretty read, in a lot of places. But it’s real and it’s raw. I deeply admire my friend for not only having the courage to speak her story, but to walk right back out into the wilderness she came from, searching for all those who are lost and wandering and wounded. And just talking to them. I’ve been where you are. I can show you a better place. Come. This is the path to healing and freedom.

Today, Trudy lives in Elmira, in southern Ontario (just up north of Aylmer an hour or so, actually) with her husband Tim and their five children. Her story of how she got to where she is, from where she comes from, is more than remarkable. It’s amazing.

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March of Darkness…

The best way out is always through.

—Robert Frost

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Well. This is all pretty strange. I guess I’ll try it one more time. It’s not like I didn’t want to post, at least now and then, these last six weeks. It’s just that when the time came to crank out the writing for this blog, it didn’t seem all that important. Because there was nothing worth saying, that I could see. So I didn’t speak.

It’s been strange. The first time, ever, that I’ve been in this specific, silent place. And some of you out there have been getting a little restive. A few emails came trickling in, the last few weeks. What’s up, that you’re not posting, on the blog? Are you OK? One reader even asked, a little dramatically, I thought. Are you still alive? I appreciated those few notes, those few emails. I really did. And I answered every one.

No. I’m not OK. I’m alive, certainly. But not OK. This is March, and March is the month from hell for me. And this year, I just went down, down into the darkness, in my head. I will write again, when I have something to say, when the voice comes right. Otherwise, I’m staying silent, right where I am.

I’m not real sure just how it happened. It’s not something I was expecting. I kind of felt it coming on, I suppose. I always get real moody in March. So I figured some sort of crap was coming. And it was a little strange, the way it all came down. It’s like I was just walking along through life, minding my own business. That’s what I claim, anyway. And the spirit that is darkness kind of sidled up, and walked right along beside me. I glanced over, startled. Go away, I said. I know who you are. And I don’t need you. Leave me alone. But it whispered, as it walked along beside me. Sweetly, caressingly, oh, so invitingly. Come on. Open the door. Let me in. You know you want to. You won’t know how you really feel, if you don’t. You know you wrote that this is a different kind of year, that everything is on the table. You said you’d take it as it comes. Well, let it be. Let me in. I can show you real things, hard things, that most people can’t confront because they don’t have the strength to see. I can do that, I can show you those things. I promise you. Let me in.

And almost, I got it shrugged off. Almost, I got that spirit rebuked. Get out of here, evil darkness. Leave me alone. And I felt it, the cave closing around me, as mid-month slithered in. It’s a harsh and brutal time. I felt it, inside, the darkness of it. I brooded. And slowly sank. And brooded some more. And sank deeper, faster now.

The month of March is the month of March. There’s no use fighting the darkness of what that means. And I finally gave up. I opened up the door and invited it all in. The rage and pain and fear and shame of all of it. All the way down deep, I absorbed it. OK, March, show me what you got. Give me your best shot. Show me what you claimed you could. The black night closed in all around me. And that was all there was.

That’s where I’ve been, in March. In that dark place. And that’s why I haven’t posted a new blog in six straight weeks.

I’ve been fighting it, most of last year. You could call it deep melancholy. Or you could call it depression, I suppose. Whatever you call it, it’s a dark place, where you feel all sad. And now March closed in and descended. And I was, like, God, come on. You know I don’t want this. I’ve been fighting it, all last year. You know I’ve been trying to kick free from this crap. And I thought I had, at least a little bit. And now it’s sweeping in again. What’s up with that? Why can’t I be free? Is it just me, or are you turning your back on me? I mean, come on. I have wept. I have prayed. I have cast out by the spoken word, what shouldn’t be inside me, I have cast it all out in Jesus’ name. And still, here it creeps back in again, all dark and overwhelming. It’s like it never stops. It keeps invading, sweeping in. Why can’t I be free of this bleak and brutal stuff?

Eight years ago, this blog was launched in March. A week or so after Ellen had left our home. From the darkness of that destructive month, my writing voice was born. And since that time, there has never been a span of six weeks between posts. The longest I ever went, even while I was writing the book, was four weeks. Until now. This year. This March. It went six weeks. To me, that is a pretty startling thing.

It always gets real dark, in that month. Mostly, I had learned to fight it off, at least before it got in, all the way down. At least I thought so. But this year, well, last year is still pretty close, pretty fresh. And last year this time was when my heart went all haywire. When I got hauled off to the hospital and had my heart seared, so it would beat right. I don’t know if I ever processed what all triggered what all happened. Probably not. I know I was pretty depressed, when I got out. Not in a deep dark hole all the time, but just a slow steady grind that kind of waved, roared in and receded, week after week and month after month. It got pretty old.

A little side note, here. Right about the time the ambulance was hauling me off to the emergency room with my tripping heart, right at that moment, my brother Joseph was real sick with pneumonia. And he was in intensive care, hovering between life and death. He came that close to not making it. In that moment, no one knew how either of us were gonna end up. The family staggered with the blow. I mean, two brothers in the hospital at the same time? Joseph and Ira? Yeah, we knew Joseph was sick. But what’s up with Ira? And I think about it, from here. We’re Waglers. We’ve always been tough. Proud. Walking tall. Nothing could knock us down. But we weren’t like that, last March. And it’s kind of touching and kind of funny at the same time. When they told Dad about it, up in Aylmer, he looked all stunned. A ninety-two year-old man, absorbing one more blow. He stroked his long gray beard in shock and sorrow. “Well,” he proclaimed. “I feel like Job, in the Bible. My sons are dropping all around me.”

We both made it back, though. And Dad told me all about what he’d said, when I was down in Pinecraft to see him. You look at it, though. That’s how it went, last March. And this March, I felt the blackness of all the ones that came before, seemed like. And in the middle of all the darkness swooshing all around me, I had one simple focus. And yeah, I know. It should have been something like my deep trust in God, or how my faith sustained me right to the end. And how I was all triumphant. It wasn’t any of that. My one focus was to make it through the month. Not that I ever figured I wouldn’t. Mostly, it was a deep, deep sense of desperately wanting the month to be over. When you’re in the middle of the crap I was in, you focus on some pretty strange things, I guess. But that was my goal, looking back. Just slog through. Make it to the end of March. When April gets here, you can release the darkness.

It was all psychological, pretty much in my head. I knew that, all along. That didn’t make any of it any less real. The days crept by, and slowly, so slowly, the weeks. And then the last weekend. And then a new month dawned, just this week. April. And with it, a new day. I felt it when I got up, that morning of the first. It was gone, pretty much. All through March, when I woke up, the first things I thought of were dark things, of loss and pain and rejection. That first morning in April, I guess the brain cells told themselves. It’s a new month. We don’t have to go there anymore. And they didn’t. I almost couldn’t believe it. And that evening after work, for the first time in six weeks or so, I drove my truck on over to the Malibu Gym in New Holland. I figured it was about time to get to working out again.

It had been way, way too long since I parked where I parked that night. I walked in, half tentatively, clutching my workout bag. Lorraine, the owner, smiled and smiled, as she greeted me. “What am I seeing, a stranger?” She asked. I knew my membership had expired. So I stood and filled out the paperwork she brought me to sign. And we talked, right along. “It’s so good to see you, so good to have you back. I thought maybe you moved away,” she told me. I told her a little bit about how it was, what had happened. I did wander off to a far-away land, in my head, for a while, I said. But I’m back now. Or at least working my way back. She smiled and smiled. And then I went and worked out, for the first time in a long time.

That was the first day of April. And it was a beautiful, beautiful day.

I’m not saying it was all magic, what happened, or that I won’t revert into moodiness in April. I’m sure I will. But I can say, the deep darkness is gone. And it’s gone, too, that paralyzing fog that stifled my voice on this blog. I can speak again. And from where I’ve been and from what I’ve seen in March, I have a few things to say about that darkness, about what it is and what it does to you.

The darkness is pain.

I’m not just talking about the intense pain in the moment of the explosion of a marriage. Or a best friend’s brutal betrayal. Or the slicing pain of a phantom relationship you got led along to believe was real when it never was. (And no, the details of all that are not important. And yes, I way, way overreacted. But it just was what it was, in the time and place and moment it happened. And it was a pretty heavy loss, in my heart and head.) The pain of the scorn of it all. It happens to me about every seven years, right along, seems like. I stick my head up out of the sand, all tentative and shy. And it just promptly gets chopped off. Back down under I go again. That’s how strong the pain of rejection is to me. It’s real, and it’s deep. I’m talking quiet pain, that’s there long after those first waves that just make you think you want to die. It settles in, after everything settles down a bit, it settles, buried way down there, pain so subtle that you don’t even think you’re hurting anymore. But you are. And it slips back up on you, softly, softly, and disturbs your heart. And if you don’t figure out what’s going on, if you don’t deal with it, it morphs into a big old roaring lion. A stalking lion that will devour you. I don’t pretend to know how to get rid of pain such as that. Maybe time will take it. I don’t know. I know all the formulas, about how you just take your pain and give it to God. Give it to Jesus. The kind of darkness I was in just didn’t go there. I knew the truth. But I don’t think the pain did. Or maybe I just wasn’t connecting right. The darkness is pain.

The darkness is fear.

And it’s a deep, deep fear. Fear of getting old. Fear of being alone. Fear of the realization that hits you, sometimes. The deep, desperate realization of just how lonely you really are. You have no one, no one that’s there for you. You stutter and stammer along, all brave and confident, when you aren’t. And there’s fear at other levels, too. I saw my parents get real old. Sick and old. We all know how Mom suffered, before she died. And how Dad is getting way up there, and getting all unhandy and cranky. He’s ninety-three. I look at all that, and I fear it. I don’t want to get that old. I have no desire to. I’d have no one there for me, to care for me. I walk alone. I’ve walked alone most of my life. But, ultimately, when you get old, walking alone will turn into a fearful thing. It just will. The darkness is fear.

The darkness is rage.

It’s rage that stirs from way down deep inside. And this March was a month of rage for me. I was down, anyway. And when I got home from work, after not going to the gym, I had me a vodka or six. Alcohol is a depressant. Mix a depressant with a melancholy (some will say depressed) man, and, well, I raged more in March than I have in a long time. On Facebook, I just went off, in the evenings. I got all confrontational about all kinds of things. I mean, I could have said what I said in a different way. And I would have, if I hadn’t been just enraged about a whole lot of darkness going on inside me. On the Facebook Family Page, I raged, too, about stuff that should never be raged against. Well, mostly, anyway. Bottom line is, I was so angry, all through March. Angry enough that I went back eight years, in my heart, and in my memory. And the rage reached back, that far, to my surprise. I thought it had all been worked through, the crap that came down a long time ago. In March, it hadn’t, apparently. The old rage was quiet, but it ran real deep. I was startled, I must say, to feel it in me. But it was there, and it was real. The darkness is rage.

The darkness is shame.

Of all the emotions triggered by the darkness, shame is the most debilitating. It cuts way down there, way deeper than any of the others. Shame, because of rejection. I’m talking, someone rejected who you are, as a person. It’s a brutal, brutal place to be. It saps you of your strength and drains your will to face the world. It’s an intense and brutal thing that will move in and overwhelm your life, if you let it. It builds upon itself. Shame. And in time, you accept it, just how worthless you are. And in time, you invite the shame of it in, right into your heart, when it really has no business there. It’s tough, for me, to even try to express the deep shame I have felt and continue to feel, in waves. Still. It’s a sin, to invite it in the way I did. Shame, in its proper place, is a good thing. But when the darkness closes in and that’s the main thing you feel, it is a really, really destructive thing. And it’s a sinful thing. The darkness is shame.

And that’s how I see it, the darkness I just came out of. I’m sure there are a whole lot of other emotions that could be listed. The darkness is this, and the darkness is that. And they’re all true. And none of it, whatever it is, is a pretty place to be. I can tell you that, from the place I just came walking from.

But I just have to think, from where I am. It’s Good Friday, today. The Passion of the Christ. Maybe it wasn’t coincidence, that I emerged back into the light a few days before Good Friday. Maybe I can grasp it for real this year, what the day really stands for. Always before, it was just rote talk, mostly. Yeah. It’s the day Jesus died for our sins. He suffered on the cross. You can hear those words again and again, and it never really sinks in, what they mean.

Jesus died for my sins. What the heck does that mean, if you think you ain’t a sinner? Trust me. You are. I can tell you that. And I can tell you this, too. Salvation is a gift, all of it. It never was anything you earned, in any way. It’s a gift. And it don’t matter what dark places you revisit after you receive that gift. Don’t matter how dark it gets. I know He’s there, and I know I am His child. I will never not be. The Lord does not divorce His children. He never has. He never will. I know this, but I invited the darkness in anyway. I really have to grasp hard, to get a glimpse of the fact that Jesus died for the very darkness that enveloped me. He took it all upon Himself. All the pain, all the fear, all the rage, all the shame. That’s what Good Friday really is all about. That, right there. I’ve never, ever seen it so clearly before. It’s like a curtain of some kind just got lifted up.

A mustard seed of faith. That’s all it takes. That’s all it ever took. And I’m glad. Because that’s all I’ve ever claimed to have. And I wonder sometimes, if I’ve even got that much.

OK. Winding down, here. On Wednesday, the first day of this month, a good friend of mine came strolling through the door at work. I’ll just call him by his last name. Smucker. I’ve known the man for years. I’ve worked with him, day to day, in the past. And he’s just about the most non-judgmental Christian I’ve ever met. He looks you in the eye. Tells you his stories, and listens to your talk. And I can speak to the man from my heart, like I can to very few others. Because I know he’s not judging me, whatever it is I’m telling him.

And on Wednesday, he strolled in at work. I was on the phone, so he chatted with Rosita and the others for a while. After I got off, I greeted him. He smiled. “Just stopping by to see how it’s going,” he said. “It’s not March anymore.” He had obviously been following my inflammatory rants on Facebook all that month. Well, you know what? I said. It really is different today. Something snapped somewhere, something changed. It’s different. Not saying I won’t get all brooding in April anytime. But I’m out of the worst of it. Must be psychological.

And we just talked a bit. “Did you get people to pray for you, when you were all down like that?” he asked. I just stared at him. It never occurred to me, to do that, and I told him so. When the darkness closes in, I just like to curl up in the fetal position, and face it alone, I said. That’s just the way I’ve always done it. He smiled. He understood, but he wasn’t buying it.

“Well, maybe that’s because you like doing that,” he said. “Next time you feel it coming on, call me. I’ll get some praying going on, on your behalf.” Thanks, I will do that, I said. And I thought about it, after he left. The man had actually stopped by just to see how I was doing. He really had. It made me feel all humble and all good.

The next time the darkness comes walking along beside me, whispering to be let in, I will call Smucker and tell him. And we both know darn well there will be a next time. I’m thinking I might not have to go down so deep, though, what with his prayers and all.

We’ll just see how it goes when the darkness comes calling again.

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Pinecraft and Me; My Father’s Return…

And now, because you have known madness and despair, and

because you will grow desperate again before you come to evening,

…we who have hungered after fame and savored all of life, the tumult,

pain, and frenzy, and now sit quietly by our windows watching all

that henceforth never more shall touch us – we call upon you to

take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass.

—Thomas Wolfe

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He hadn’t been down the past few years, because Mom was too sick to travel. So he stayed up there in Aylmer through those long and brutal winters, by her side. If she couldn’t go, he wasn’t going anywhere. And then Mom passed, last spring. And we all gathered to mourn and honor her. From that point, it didn’t take my father’s eyes very long to take to gazing wistfully to the south, as fall rolled on by and winter approached. He wanted to go real bad. Oh, yes. Dad wanted very much to get back down to Florida again, to hold court in Pinecraft. And he worked real hard, after his sickness and stroke last summer, to get his strength back. He knew he had to be strong enough, or the trip south wouldn’t happen.

And in early January, he went down to Florida. He was strong enough to make the trip. Or maybe it was just simple old determination. Whatever it was, he got down there. His nephew and my cousin, Simon Wagler and his wife accompanied him and stayed with him for the first month or so. Omar Eicher and his wife came along, too, to stay with Dad and Simons. And then, both families, they traveled back home to Aylmer and north. And there were family conference calls going on, right along through all this. It was decreed. All of us should consider taking a turn to go down and stay a week to take care of Dad. It will work, if everyone takes their turn. Ah, I muttered. I figure I’ll just pass, like I always have before, back when you all were taking turns a few years ago, to go when Mom was there with Dad. I never took my turn, back then. And I figured that’s pretty much the way it would be this time, too.

And then, about a month back, I got a text from my sister, Rhoda, one day. She was going down to be with Dad over the last week of February. This month. Marvin wasn’t planning to go down with her. So she figured me and her could use a little brother/sister time, since it’s been so long since we’ve just hung out together and all. And I looked at her text and chuckled. Pretty smooth, she was. And then I thought. Why not? This is the year you vowed to do things different. To lay it all out on the table. So do a thing you wouldn’t have done before, no matter how small that seems. Go down to Pinecraft, and take your turn, taking care of your father. So I messaged Rhoda back. That seems like a pretty good possibility. I’ll see what I can do. Which meant, yeah, I’ll plan on being there.

And so it has been spoken. And so it shall be done. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I’ll be heading on down south in a rental car I just now picked up. Nope. It isn’t a Charger. It’s a brand new Ford Fusion, and from what I can tell, it drives pretty much like a rocket ship. I’ll be arriving in Pinecraft at Dad’s house sometime Sunday, around mid day, probably. And I will stay until the following Saturday, the last day of the month. And then I’ll head back home. Naomi will be there when I get there. Rhoda will take her place a few days in. So I guess I’ll have brother/sister time with two sisters, not just one. That’s a bonus, right there.

And still. I think about it. I’ve mentioned it before, a few years back. It seems so strange. Maybe a little awkward. Maybe not. But definitely a little strange, how things turn out in the long run sometimes. For most of his life, Dad didn’t believe in going down to Pinecraft for the winter. It was a bad place, where wild Amish youth went to hang out and party, when they should have been quiet and content at home. I can tell you all about all that. And it’s a place where some renegade older Amish people go, too, the ones that don’t know any better, the ones that don’t realize or don’t want to know what a bad example they are to the youth. That was Pinecraft’s reputation, way back. It sure wasn’t the popular winter destination it is today. At least it wasn’t, in any world I was in.

And my father was officially against such a thing, as church policy. As well he should have been, I suppose, since he lived in Bloomfield back then. Bloomfield has lots of very sensible things going on. They allowed mechanical milkers, some years back. (When that happened I told Dad I might have stayed on the farm, if only milkers had been allowed back then. But I was forced to milk all those cows by hand, and it was just too much to take. He laughed that little tale off as a joke, which it was.) And LP gas, too. They’ve allowed that, in Bloomfield, for heat and light, and for their refrigerators. But the one hurdle they can’t seem to cross — it’s against the Ordnung, it’s always been against church rules to do such a sensible thing as go south in wintertime. Especially for the older folks, it’s the most sensible and humane policy you can have. Go to Florida, for a few months over winter. Go, and soak in a slice of warmth and light in the midst of an otherwise dull and dreary and depressing season.

But Dad never lived in a place that allowed it, all his life. Well at least not since he left Daviess all those decades ago. And Dad always fully supported the rules in whatever community he happened to live in, so near as we could ever tell, he actually believed it was wrong to go to Florida in winter. Age grinds things down, though. And after He and Mom moved to May’s Lick, Kentucky, back in 2008, things changed. The May’s Lick rules freely allow for people to go on down to Pinecraft in winter, for as long or short a time as they see fit. And next thing you knew, Dad was heading down there for a few months at a time, right over the colder months. We all cheered him on, of course, and Mom enjoyed a few seasons in Pinecraft, too, with what little awareness she had left at that time. And then she couldn’t make it over the past few winters. She wasn’t well enough. And so Dad didn’t make it, either.

And it just seems so strange, when you look back over that long road Dad traveled, how so much of that road was way more rocky than it would have had to be. Simply because of choices he made. And now, here, calmly, here at the end, this is how things stand. Here he is staying, in Florida. In Pinecraft. And here I am, going down to stay with him for a week. For most of my adult life, anything remotely resembling such a scenario has been all but impossible to imagine.

And I think back through the years. I look back at what Pinecraft was to me, during different times of my life. It was a formative place, in some ways. Very formative. Not that I’ve ever felt any particular loyalty or longing for the place. It just seems like when I wandered through, whether my stay was long or short, well, those were usually very important times in my life. For better or for worse. Those were life-changing times.

I haven’t been there that often. Maybe four times, total, if my memory serves me right. One of those times was in summer, for just a few days. I don’t remember a lot about that trip. But the other three times I was down there, well, yeah, the river of memory flows. The river flows on forever, in my mind.

January, 1981. A tense and troubled time, at home. Marvin and I boarded the bus in Bloomfield. We headed south. Before reaching Florida, we stopped off in South Carolina for a few days. My brother Jesse was getting married to Lynda Stoll. And I wanted to be there, for that. We had not been allowed anywhere close to my sister Magdalena’s wedding to Ray Marner, back a few years before. We lived in Aylmer, then. And no one in my family could go to my sister’s wedding in Pennsylvania. And I always knew it instinctively, at twelve years old. I don’t care what they’re telling you. This is so very, very wrong. But what’re you gonna do, at that age? There’s nothing you can do, in a moment like that. Maybe when it ever happens again, maybe you can go then. So that’s why I wanted to attend Jesse’s wedding so badly. And that’s why I did.

I can’t remember much about that day, sadly, other than I recall that I was sick as a dog. Chest pains. It hurt when I breathed. When Lynda’s family realized how sick I was, they sent me to their local doctor, a kindly old man who poked and prodded me and took my temperature. I had double pneumonia, or some such thing, he proclaimed. And he prescribed some pills. I paid the meager fee, fifteen bucks or so. And I remember that Dad called down, somewhere about then. They had heard I was sick, and he told me on no uncertain terms to go see a doctor, to take care of myself. I said I had. And I was getting better about the time we got to Florida the following week.

We arrived in Pinecraft. A sunny Mecca. Problem was, we were pretty close to broke, which wasn’t that unusual, I guess, for two Amish boys who came from where we came from. That was just life, and we totally accepted it. We had some friends, some contacts, who helped us get lodging in some dumpy little travel trailer back along the creek behind Fred Jack’s house. Three of us jammed into that little travel trailer. We didn’t have much choice. We took what we could afford. And we went to work, on Dennis Bontrager’s mason crew. As laborers. Mud boys. Slinging concrete blocks for the masons. All for the princely sum of six bucks an hour.

We scrabbled and scratched and ate from tin cans in the evenings, fretted because we had run out of cigarettes and there wouldn’t be any money until the first paycheck next Friday. And when that paycheck came, we were kings. We were going to make it, make it on our own. We knew that.

It was a good year, looking back, 1981 was. Sure, I was wandering pretty aimlessly. And I had no clue how things would ever turn out, long term. But we just settled into the routine that summer, Marvin and me. Enjoyed life. Got to know a few people, new friends. And when October came that year, we were ready to head on back to Bloomfield. I left Florida that first time, with a lot of uneasiness roiling inside me. There was no plan, other than to make it work back home in Bloomfield, just like we’d seen a lot of others do before us. How little I knew, how naïve I was. And that first time I left Pinecraft, I figured I would probably never see the place again. Where I was going, you weren’t allowed to come back.

It took only five short years for Pinecraft to beckon once again as a place of refuge for me.

January, 1987. Approaching a year since I had fled Bloomfield in shame, leaving behind a whole lot of twisted wreckage, a whole lot of broken promises and shattered dreams. The summer of the wheat harvest out west. A month or so after I got back to Daviess from those wanderings, I meandered on down to Florida in my Drifter truck. Deep down inside, a quiet, desperate panic stirred. But still, I walked forward. And again, I have a lot of good memories of those few months I spent down there, that winter, and early spring. I remember the faces of my friends, the people I hung out with. My brother Nathan was living right in the center of Pinecraft with his friend, Eli Yutzy. And looking back, that winter was a real bonding time for me and Nathan. We were out there on our own, refugees of sorts. And pretty much outlaws, too. Unaffiliated with any church group, anywhere. There was no vestige of any safety net for us anywhere. Not short of surrendering and returning home. Which, by that time, we wouldn’t do. I look back, and, as Waylon sings in Bob Wills is still the King, “In spite of all the hard times, I’d live it all again.” And I would, too.

And I remember how I felt when I left Pinecraft that spring, for Daviess. I planned to head on up to Canada to help Ben Walters plant his wheat crop. After that, well, it was back to the Amish in northern Indiana. And I remember thinking. You can only look forward, to make it work. Not back. Not back to Pinecraft, not back to any of the time I spent there or anywhere else, or the people I got to know. Forward. Only. And deep down, it was a quiet, desperate thing, leaving Pinecraft in 1987.

And this time I did not return for close to two decades.

February, 2007. The last time I was in Pinecraft. Almost exactly eight years ago. A hugely formative moment. I look back on it, and the dark drumbeats roll in my head. This was when things happened, that finally proclaimed to all the world the fact that my marriage was in shambles, a hopeless wreck. That, and a whole lot more, all of it affecting a whole lot of lives. The Florida Nightmare. Eight years ago, right this moment, I was entering one of the darkest places I have ever seen on this earth. Those were hard days, and those were long days. It seemed that they would never end.

And yet, from the heat of all that unfolded, all that was triggered there in Pinecraft, from the white-hot forge of utter devastation, from that came the genesis of my writing voice. From the vast pressures and from the deepest shame, I wrote. Right here, like I never had before in my life. And I look back over all of it, and none of it is a single thing I would willingly have chosen. So what the heck sense did any of it make? Well, there is a price, I suppose, on every good and noble thing in life, on every dream and vision of the heart. A very steep cost of suffering, sometimes. And when that price is being extracted, you might as well go ahead and make use of whatever the heck it’s paying for.

And now it’s February, 2015. And now I’m heading down to Pinecraft again, for the first time since those brutal days back in 2007. It’s not that I’ve been avoiding the place, or anything like that. It’s just that it never has seemed all that important, for me to get down there again.

And now, at this moment, it is important to go. It’s important to go, and hang out with my Dad. And no, I’m not expecting any great revelations, or anything like that. But I think I won’t quit wrestling, I won’t let go of the angel until I extract at least some small blessing of some kind. That much I think I can say. However small and quiet that blessing is.

I look forward, to just chatting with my Dad. Visiting. There, in a nice warm place, away from this brutal winter cold at home. We have a few things in common, I think. He was known to his generation. I am known to mine. We both got a little something accomplished with our writing. And for a short time, at least, our voices will remain on this earth after we pass on. It’s a beautiful thing, to talk face to face and eye to eye with your father on such a matter as that. At least, that’s how I’ve found it so far.

So this time, in Pinecraft, I look for a nice warm place where I can rest a bit from the weary road, and just relax with my Dad. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m looking forward to the journey.

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Flawed Legend of a Proud Clan…

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin

of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted

by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung.

Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-

winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment

is a window on all time.

—Thomas Wolfe

________________

I suppose every family has them. Well, as tiny as the modern family is these days, maybe not so much. But still, they have to be sprinkled in there, somewhere. The tales handed down and told and retold, tales that grow more fantastic with each telling. And then, of course, there are the legends, the things that happened generations ago. The difference between a tale and a legend? A tale will shift and grow and change, almost at the whim of the teller. The details of a legend remain pretty much set in stone. The basic story is carefully guarded and passed along from one generation to the next.

And the one legend in my family that stood out above all the rest, well, that was a pride thing, one of those legends that got told to us from the time we were old enough to understand the basic concepts of what we were hearing. It was as natural as the passing of the seasons, the telling of the story. We heard the voices speaking, and we listened with innocent ears and wondering hearts. And to me, it was the same as gospel truth, the story, because it was so real, and so unquestioned. We Waglers are different, at least the ones in my immediate family are. We’re different, because we got special blood flowing through our veins. It’s Indian blood. American warrior blood. Sure, we come from the Amish. But we got us some native connections, too. Connections to this land, before it ever was the country it is today.

I can’t tell you how casually and how solemnly that story was passed down. I remember it from my earliest years. Not really as a special thing. I mean, any family story you hear as a child, you just absorb it. You accept it as the truth. And you don’t really consider it as anything other than what was. And what is. Later, as you grow the legend in your mind, that’s when you get a little proud of the blood in you. At least, that’s how it all came down for me.

The details of the legend were all a bit vague, but always told the same. Never much variation at all, in the telling. Way back whenever, a young unmarried woman boarded a ship from Germany with maybe her father and a sibling or two. I forget who else exactly came along from her immediate family. Anyway, this young woman had a young daughter. She was unmarried, the young woman. Maybe widowed. We don’t know. Those details never made it. And supposedly, the young woman hooked up with an Indian on the ship on the way over. It was whispered that she may have been of somewhat dubious moral fiber. I mean, how slatternly was that, hooking up with some dark stranger on a ship? Especially in those days. Anyway, some months after they landed, another little baby girl was born to Veronica Stuckey. Yep. That was her name. Veronica Stuckey. Such a surname has long disappeared from the rolls of any current Amish group anywhere.

The young daughter that was born here in this country was supposedly my maternal great-great-great grandmother, or some such thing. It goes way back. And she was dark-skinned, being half Indian. And that’s where we come from, my brand of Waglers. That was the legend. And it wasn’t just a loose story. Oh, no. It was always pointed out, in the telling. Look at us. Look at our high-boned faces. That’s Indian. American Indian. We got the blood flowing in us, through us.

And details like that made it all fit, when you look at my immediate family. You look at our faces. Mostly high-boned cheeks. Coal black hair, pretty much across the board. And we have dark complexions. That’s who my family is. I can sit in the sun for ten minutes a day, and have a deep and healthy tan in less than a week. And when I work in the sun, well, I get real dark. Back in the days of my youth when I worked construction, lean and shirtless under the summer skies, I very much resembled an Indian. Except for one thing. My curly hair. But that was from all the non-Indian blood in me, is what I always figured. Except for that unruly hair, I could have passed as a native son of this land, from way back.

A little aside here, about my curly hair. I hated those curls, as a child. Despised them with all the intensity any child is capable of. And I remember when I got particularly irritated, I remember going and dunking my head under the water tap in the sink. Get those curls wet. Plaster them back. Now, I got nice flat hair, just like everyone else. Of course, mere minutes later, after my hair had dried, the curls went completely haywire. There was no way to win, seemed like, looking back.

Well, maybe there was one small victory. I’ve always remembered this little incident, because it was just such an aberration. It was a summer evening, when I was probably four years old. I was playing out in the yard north of the house, beside the road, with my siblings. A car pulled up on the gravel road, and stopped by the mailbox. Stephen and Titus and my sister Rachel, I think, walked up to see what was going on. There were two couples in that car, out on a date. Young kids, teenagers. Maybe the boys were twenty. And they wanted to know how to get to somewhere. My siblings just stood around and they were all chatting amiably with each other. About that time I pushed myself through the crowd, up beside the car. A little curly-haired four-year-old Amish boy with large brown eyes. Galluses holding up my denim pants. Barefooted and dirt-stained. And dark as any Indian.

I remember the two beautiful English girls in the car, and how they suddenly squealed in unison. “Oh! Isn’t he cute? Oh, couldn’t you just hold and hug him?” And they kept gushing. “Oh, isn’t he cute?” I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. And then I realized it was me they were fussing about. The two girls kept pestering their boyfriends. “Isn’t he cute?” And the boyfriends mumbled half-heartedly. “Yeah, yeah. He’s cute.” They probably wanted to throttle me. But I was blissfully unaware of any of that. We stepped back, then, from the road, my siblings and me. And the car crunched off to the east on the gravel.

And that was just a bunny trail about my curly hair. Despite those curls, though, I never, never doubted the original story. We have Indian blood in us, we Waglers of the David and Ida Mae lineage. We’re pretty unique. The ancient warrior strain, that stirs in us. And yes. We are proud.

And I always made sure to slide it in there, in a lot of conversations with people along the way over the years, although in later years not so much. A casual observation that just kind of came out on its own. I have Indian blood in me. I’m one/thirty-second Indian. That’s how closely they had calculated it all out, those ahead of me. And I told people wherever I went. I wouldn’t remember this specifically, but my sister-in-law, Wilma, Steve’s wife, told me recently. “That first summer, when a load of you came to Bloomfield to build your barn, I remember the first time you walked into our house. There was a picture on the wall, of an Indian on a horse. You pointed up to that picture and said, ‘There goes one of my relatives. I’m part Indian.’”

I have no memory at all, of that particular instance. But I’m sure it happened. Because I remember how proudly I carried it on me as a badge of honor back in those years, and beyond, my Indian blood. Like I said, not so much in later years, and never, since I started writing. But I still believed it. And I’m sure I bored many people to tears with it all, way too often, back then. To all such people, I apologize. I believed what I was telling you, and somehow, I just thought you’d be interested in hearing it. I wouldn’t be that presumptuous again.

And so it was all firmly settled in our minds for all these years, for me and my siblings. We have Indian blood in us. That makes us different. Special, somehow. Well, I think my brother Steve was the only one who didn’t really embrace the legend. “Nah,” he’d proclaim. “I don’t think we have any Indian blood at all.” But he dutifully passed the story on to his children. We all dutifully passed it on down to the next generation. Those who had children, to their children. Those who didn’t have children, like me and Nathan, well, we spoke it to our nieces and nephews. As dramatically as we could intone it, we spoke it. Walk tall. Walk proud. You have a very rich, mixed heritage. You have warrior blood.

And it probably would have receded into the mists of time as the truth we all believed, our Indian heritage. It would have happened. Except for two little factors that somehow just came rumbling right down the pike when no one like me was looking for them.

The first factor is that the younger generation tends to be a little skeptical about some things. Even family legends. My nieces and nephews somehow didn’t just buy into the Indian blood legend. Well, I’m sure they all believed the story when it was told to them as children. I’m sure they listened, all wide-eyed, and drank it all in. But somehow, they became skeptics, some few of them, later, as adults.

And the second factor is because they, those in the younger generation, they have a tool in hand that we never had. The internet. And if you know your way around, even just a little, in that world, you can research a lot of stuff, very thoroughly. And it all started out innocently enough last fall. My niece Dorothy (Abby’s Mom) decided she was going to check out Ancestry.com. A grief diversion for her, I think. Dorothy told us all about it on the family Facebook page. She was fixing to do a little family research, to see if she could find that young single lady who came over on that ship. And we all blessed her and cheered her on.

And within days, she was posting some pretty astounding stuff. At some point, there, my nephew Reuben Wagler joined her. Reuben actually subscribed to the service, and the two of them were off and running. And it didn’t take them long to dig up all kinds of fascinating facts and figures. They even posted a picture of young Veronica Stuckey. A rather buxom woman, with high cheek bones. Not looking any too happy, either, in my opinion. Or maybe that’s just how people posed for photographs back then. And she didn’t look Amish at all. I don’t know. Maybe she wasn’t. Anyway, Dorothy and Reuben dug and dug around to find the father or fathers of Veronica’s children, her two little daughters. And they dredged and dredged and sifted some more. They could find nothing. No mention at all, of any man anywhere in her life.

Well, what do you expect, at least when it comes to the second child? We older ones asked, all confident and smug. It was that Indian on that ship, of course. And I think that would have settled the matter in everyone’s minds. Except the younger generation is very restless. And except the people at Ancestry.com offer more than just research services. For a fee, they will take your DNA test, and match it with everything in their vast data bank. And they’ll tell you where you come from. And they’ll tell you if you got any Indian blood in you or not.

And now, enter another nephew. Ira Lee Wagler. My namesake, Steve’s son. Married, with a little son named Desmond Ira. (Lancaster County now has three Ira Waglers, which is probably about as many as any county, anywhere, could be expected to put up with.) A month or so ago, this man, this nephew, my namesake, suddenly got a very bright idea. He’d get that DNA test done. So he sent off his hundred bucks for the kit. And duly spit into the little tube and sent in his sample of saliva. All this he did, without telling any of his aunts and uncles. And maybe no one else, for that matter. Whoever he told, it wasn’t many people. He kept it pretty quiet.

And one day, a few weeks later, which was just a few weeks back, the results were emailed to him. He read the stats eagerly. And a few evenings after that, we were all at Steve’s house for supper. And as we visited after the meal, Ira Lee brought it up. He told me what he’d done. The results were in. And a big old family legend was just about to be put to rest, once and for all. And boom, just like that it was flung at me, right out of the blue. I recoiled.

Oh my, I said, dismayed. Why in the world would you do such a thing as to take that DNA test? Is there no respect in you, for family legends? Especially for such a foundational legend as that. I mean, it’s part of the essence of who we are, as Waglers. We have Indian blood. That’s just how it’s always been told. Do you realize what you’re doing, when you set out to disprove something so entrenched as that? How could you? I really, really wish you wouldn’t have.

But he had. And we sat there, and he told me the results. Native Americans (Indians) have a very unique strand of DNA. And the test had shown not a shred of that specific, unique type. It’s impossible, that we have Indian blood in us. Boom. Again. We are mostly Caucasian, from France and Switzerland. But there is a thirteen percent slice of Greek/Italian. So that’s maybe where the dark features come from. The facial features, too, some.

There was nothing I could do but absorb what he was telling me. But I grumbled pretty savagely at my nephew. You’re just gonna believe what they tell you? I mean, I think that DNA test is just wrong. If it’s not, then maybe that was an Italian on the ship, and people just mistook him for an Indian. I’m trying to protect the legend, here. Ira Lee seemed a little apologetic, but still, not repentant. He was gonna do what he was gonna do. And he had done what he had done. He has since actually produced a very flashy little video, recording every step of his heretical journey.

But I’ve thought about it all a good bit, since then. I can’t be too mad at Ira Lee. If it wouldn’t have been him, it would have been someone else in the family lineage. It’s impossible, that the legend wouldn’t have been shattered as the myth it was, at some point. It would have happened, sometime, somewhere. It was all just a matter of time. And who can control the timing of such a thing?

Still, it would have been OK if the legend-busting bloodhounds had held off for a while. Like, maybe, another generation or so. Because it knocks you around a bit, when something you have firmly known all your life just gets yanked out from under you like that. It’s disconcerting. What else out there isn’t true, that we’ve always been told?

It all is what it is, I guess. But still, it makes me wonder, a little bit. Where does a formerly proud man of “warrior blood” go to turn in those false credentials he has claimed all his life?

**************************

And this past week, another milestone quietly came and went. February 3rd. Which would have been my parent’s seventy-third wedding anniversary. And I thought about it, on that day. Thought about that long, hard journey they traveled together through all those years of life.

In 1942, my parents got married in a simple Amish wedding ceremony in Daviess County, Indiana. Through all that came at them, for better or for worse, they held that marriage together for seventy-two years. Mom left us last April. Except for a few years early on when Dad was serving in a WWII work camp, this was the first time since their wedding day that they had been separated on February 3rd.

Still, I thought it. Happy Anniversary, Dad. I know you miss her. She never will come back to you here, but one day you will go to where she is. And then the two of you can celebrate this date together again.

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Love in a Winter of Discontent…

Love is a burning thing

And it makes a fiery ring

—Johnny Cash, lyrics

_________________

I’ve been in a pretty brooding mood, all this year. Well, which is pretty much the last two weeks or so. Not that unusual a state of mind for me. And I thought I had something outlined, reflecting that, something that would come. But still. As the third Friday approached since my last blog post, there wasn’t a whole lot of inspiration going on inside me. Maybe I’ll just skip again, I thought, as the week arrived and passed right along.

But then I thought. Well, write a few words. You’ve always claimed to write from where you are. So write, from where you are. And here a is a compact version of what I figured to say about what all was going on inside and around me at that point along the road.

******************************************************

As short as the New Year has been, a few things have become very clear to me. I’m not quite sure how to approach all of it. And I’m not quite sure how to write it. So I guess I won’t, not until it all comes down around me.

This is a different year, from any other. And I’m not even exactly sure what that means. It’s just something I can feel inside me, deep down. There will be some major changes in my life. And no, I’m can’t tell you what those changes all will be, because I don’t know, myself. It’s all on the table, as far as I’m concerned, in my head. All I am or have. Yeah, I need to face and deal with some personal demons, some habits and addictions. That’s a given. But I’m talking about more than just that.

I’m talking about my life as I’ve known it, including where I live and what I do. My home. My job. There’s nothing that’s not on the line, when it comes to what changes the year may bring. Nothing. I’m not saying those changes will happen. I’m saying I’m totally open to whatever happens.

There are some hard doors ahead, to walk through. I sense that. I know it. I’ve already walked through one I never planned to see, and another hard door looms. Strangely, I’m kind of excited and eager about it all, even though I can feel the fear stirring deep inside. You don’t really plan for things like this. You just walk into them, when they come at you.

And there are relationships, too, out there, that need mending. I’m not even sure where to go with all that, what it looks like, to mend such a thing, especially where memories of deep and slicing pain remain so fresh. I mean, how do you ever talk to such a person again? It’s possible, I guess. Even probable, if you’re willing to face what was. Whatever. I figure those doors will open, too, when they’re supposed to. If they’re ever supposed to, that is. Maybe that one fearful door will be just like the ones I’m walking through right now that I never planned to walk through. You never can tell. So you just keep walking.

I guess what I’m leading up to is this. I’m not sure what things will look like, in the months ahead. And right now, I just don’t feel like writing what I think they will look like. I have no idea. You always keep walking, in life. But sometimes, you don’t just keep writing. Sometimes, you pull back, when the voice to speak is silent.

Maybe this will be the most productive year you’ll ever see, on my blog, and elsewhere. And maybe it won’t. I just don’t know, right now. Like I said, right this moment, I don’t feel like writing at all. I’m thinking some spigots are gonna open, just a little bit down the road. I don’t know that. This is a different year, when everything I am or have is on the table, to be changed or not. Everything. Maybe the changes will have to happen first, before the writing comes. I just don’t know.

I got no plans as to when I’ll post again. It might be in two weeks, or it might be in two months. I won’t force it. You can’t force real writing. I’ll speak it when it speaks itself. I can promise this, though. Sooner or later, in its own time, all of the journey will be told right here. All of it, including the moment I’m in right now. And that’s about the only promise I can make, when it comes to my writing.

**********************************************************

And that right there was me, pretty much all brooding. Saying what was in me to say, this week. A short blog, signing off until I felt like writing again. And when you’re in a self-focused brooding state of mind like that, right about then is when something real will come and smack you up ‘side the head. And that something slipped up on me yesterday afternoon.

It was close to closing time, around four or so. An Amish contractor walked in. He had a sample piece of special order trim he wanted made. Let’s take it out to Eli, and see what he says, I told the guy. I think he can make that profile. It looks a little tight right here, but I think he can make it. We walked out. Eli greeted us. I showed him the sample of trim. Can you make this? “Yeah,” he said. “I can make that.”

We stood around and just talked for a few minutes. Eli asked the man. “Do you want to pick the trim up tomorrow, I guess?” A simple question. Normally that would of course have been the case. But not this time. The Amish contractor shook his head.

“No, not tomorrow. Monday morning,” he said. “I have a funeral tomorrow.” And he went right on and told us a little bit about it.

“It’s a young bride who just got married in November,” he said. “Last August, she came down with a real bad type of cancer. She went backward pretty fast, and she was barely strong enough to go through with the wedding. But they both wanted to do it, so they went ahead and got married anyway.”

And I could only shake my head in amazement. Wow, I said. That’s pretty brutal. There sure was nothing wrong with what they did, though, getting married when there was so little time. He looked at me and nodded. “No,” he said. “There was nothing wrong with that.”

And I couldn’t shake it, after the Amish contractor had left. Here I was, all focused on how tough life was for me right now. Focused on my own demons. Focused on my own problems. Alcohol, and how hard it is to cut back. How I’m dreading it, to quit drinking, even for a month. How wimpy is that? And I choose to get all brooding still, to invite the darkness in, off and on, about a pretend relationship that blew up in my face last year. And there are stressors in my life right now, about my job. Boo, hoo, on all of it. Cry me a river. Look, how tortured it is, my “writer’s soul.” Look, how I’m struggling along so bravely under such a heavy load.

Meanwhile, just a few miles away, across the county, there’s a young Amish husband who chose to marry his wife, even when they both knew she had only weeks of life to live. That’s brutal stuff. And it’s powerfully, powerfully beautiful, that any kind of love on this earth could be as strong as that.

And I think about it, their wedding day, back in November. Probably two months ago, or less. How her family and her community closed in around her. How they worked hard, to give her that special day she always dreamed of. And how, above all, there stood a man by her side, a man who loved her unconditionally, even as the cancer devoured all she ever was as a healthy, glowing woman. It was day of real joy, their wedding day, I think. A day of real celebration. A day of gratitude for the moment.

And I feel a little ashamed, looking at that scenario, and what could have been mine, way back in my Amish world. I couldn’t stay for a beautiful girl who actually loved me, a healthy girl, with no looming threat of death. Nah. I was too focused on what I wanted. Didn’t matter, the people I hurt, breaking away. I just wanted out. And from where I am right now, I would do it all over again, the getting out. But I sure would do some things a whole lot differently, when it comes to breaking away.

Back to today, the very day this blog was posted. A young Amish husband just buried his wife, the woman he married when he knew this day was coming, and was real close. There’s something so strong about their story, that couple. Something haunting, something real. They lived their lives for each other. And the foundation of all they were? That was a simple little thing called love.

There is no comparison between all that crap I was fretting about, and what really matters in life. Love. Just plain old simple love. Love of God. Love for all I meet, regardless of who they are or where they come from or what they did. Love is what matters, in the end.

So, yeah, I’m still thinking this will be a year of pretty substantial changes. Yeah, I can still feel it, deep down. But I’m not all tore up, like I was back there, about how tortuous it all is, about not knowing when the writing of it will come. I still don’t know. But I’m a little more relaxed about it all.

Because I reckon all those doors will open when they open. And I reckon I’ll just write it when the writing gets here.

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A Year of Hard Roads…

For have you not retrieved from exile the desperate lives

of men who never found their home? Have you not opened

your dark door for us who never yet found doors to enter?

—Thomas Wolfe

_______________

Well, it’s that time again. Seems like not that long ago, when I last posted that last blog of the year. When one looks back and takes stock a bit. I guess that’s what one is expected to do. It’s what I’ve done, mostly, in the past. Look back, recount and reflect. And tab it out, all the stuff that happened. Good, bad, ugly. And I was figuring to do just that. But when I sat down to pound it out, there was one thing that kept surfacing in my head. One new realization, one new thing of wonder, that stood out above all the rest.

That right there was the opening paragraph for my last blog of 2012, almost exactly two years ago. And I went back, and looked at that opening paragraph. And decided to copy it over, word for word, to open this last blog of 2014. Back then, that “new thing of wonder” I discovered was how much I am like my Dad. And it was a big deal to me to figure all that out. This year, that new thing of wonder is way out there in left field, in a totally different dimension. But still, those opening words are every bit as true as they were two years ago. Just in a different way.

2014. It’s been one rough and hellish year. I won’t beat around the bush about any of all that. It was a year of real hard roads. A dark year, when pretty much anything that could go wrong went wrong. Almost from the first day, it was that way. Well, at least since last March. March has been kind of an evil, skittish month to me, in the past. That’s when Ellen left our home, in March, seven years ago, after seven years of marriage. It all was what it was, timing wise, and I’m sure the month of March would protest, if it could, that I hold it in such low esteem. And yeah, maybe I have a little chip on my shoulder, at it. But still. Just look at the record. This past March was when my heart went all whacked out and crazy on me. It was pretty brutal stuff, and it came down in a real dark place. I wrote it all out when it happened.

I remember talking to a friend, soon after I got out of the hospital last March. When I was on all that poisonous Coumadin they sentenced me to take every day. I was pretty depressed about it all, and told him so. He told me. If you get your heart worked on, especially if you’re a man, you will go into real depression at some point, soon after you get out. My friend was talking about the more serious heart procedures, like the one he went through, more than ten years back. Mine was just a flutter, that they went up and seared.

And I told my friend. Yeah. I hear that. I wasn’t in a good place emotionally, when my heart went all crazy. And I remember how vivid all of life was to me, right after I got out of the hospital. All of it, the colors, the feelings, the intensity of it all. I guess that happened because you get a real sense of your own mortality, when you get your heart worked on. And yeah, I sank down into a real dark place, right soon after I got out, too. It was all pretty brutal. And I stayed there in that darkness, off and on, for way too long in 2014.

One thing I did, though, this past year. I wrote it as it came. I wrote from where I was, from all the dark places that came at me right out of nowhere. And I gotta say this. I look back at my production on the blog this year, and I feel pretty satisfied. Some of that writing is the best I’ve ever done. The best that ever came out of me, including the book. And I don’t need anyone’s permission to say that. I can just say it, because that’s what I think. That was one bright spot, looking back over the bleakness that was this year. The writing that came was first class stuff. Not all of it. But some of it. And, yeah, sure, I know. It’s all free, right here, that writing. It just doesn’t matter to me, that little point. That’s how I produce. This blog is the norm, the place I speak from, the place where my writing voice was born. The book was an aberration that may or may not happen again.

After March, here came April. That’s when Mom left us, after a brutal week-long struggle with the flu. They told me, the ones who were there at the end. It was not a pretty, peaceful passing. It was the ugliness of death, the ugliness of life slowly seeping from a frail and wasted body, when there was nothing left to hold on to. There was no dignity, there at the end, for Mom. It was a cruel death. Dark and senseless and brutal. The family gathered from all over, and we grieved the matriarch of our clan. And then we buried her. It was an intense and bonding thing.

Somewhere in there, soon after Mom’s funeral, I kicked the medical people out of my life. Got off all the pharmaceuticals they had me on. It was all pretty strange, in a lot of ways, how that all happened. And from somewhere it came to me, about right then. Sit down and write. Write your next book. So I boldly stated on my blog, soon after March. Some serious writing’s coming. I don’t know for sure what it is. But I’m feeling it. And I’m fixing to invite it all in, real soon. I don’t give a hoot about a sequel. I really don’t. If it doesn’t come right, it’ll never get told. And I’m totally fine with that. I’d rather be remembered as a “one hit wonder” than to ever crank out another book that’s not coming from my heart, simply for the money.

And now, as 2015 comes at me, I’m fixing to poke around a bit, to see if a second book can come right. I have a pretty good idea of the parameters of that book, at least how I saw it when I was getting ready to go in and relive it. It’ll open, with me driving up to Aylmer to see Dad, like I wrote in July of last year. It’ll open with the opening scenes of The Lion in Winter. And it’ll close with the two most wayward sons stooping to place roses on the soft earth above their mother. Between those two scenes, I figure, there’s a flashback book in there somewhere, about what all happened, and how it all got to where it did. In 2015, I plan to play around with all that. I most definitely plan to. I have no idea if it’ll take off or not, the writing of it. If it comes, I’ll speak it. If it doesn’t come, I’ll wait until it does. But I feel it coming, the next chapter of my story. It’s close. Soon, it will come. It’s close.

And this is just how it went, last summer. I was figuring to work a bit, on the sequel. I had the outline in my head. And just about when I was ready to walk into that opening room, here came more of the pure hell that was this year. Little Abby drowned. That pretty much took the sails out of anything I had, other than walking into life and writing what I saw from where I was. It was a brutal, brutal loss, the death of Abby. I’m not sure if the extended family has fully grasped what just was taken from us, as a clan. Well. I mean, I’m not sure any close or extended family can ever fully grasp the depth of such a loss. It all made me want to rend my clothes and curse the heavens in despair, back when it happened. But I didn’t curse, and I didn’t rend my clothes. I just wrote the story, instead, from where I was. Abby’s blog and Mom’s funeral blog. Those two narratives are among the very best of anything I’ve ever written.

And then Dad almost left us. I mean, it was that close, he was gone. Somehow, the man pulled back. He is one tough, tough, old guy. And I went up to see him, just a month or so back. He was excited to see me. And now, he’s all excited to be going down to Pine Craft, the first of the year. It’s what keeps him going, the excitement of all that. The anticipation. That, and he’s still got another three volumes to write, for his memoirs. He just came out with the second. My Stretch in the Service. He sent me a signed copy, and I’ve been perusing it. It’s much better writing than his first book was. I think the man is finding his stride, when it comes to telling his story. I’m reading stuff I never, never knew before.

And I kind of looked forward to it, the last blog of this year. It should be pretty simple, to get riled into a real rant about it all. That’s what I figured, and that was my full intention, when I started writing this. To get all riled up. To grumble and seethe at God. To just tell Him how it is. To rage at Him like I raged, back when Mom was just hanging on for no reason, except He wouldn’t call her home to Him. And yeah, I’m still a little pissed about how that all went, with Mom. Moving on up to now, though.

My life has been nothing but pain, lately. That’s what I figured to tell the Lord. Come on. You can do better than that. Give me some blessings, once in a while. Not that You haven’t. Like the Bible Study. That came out of nowhere. But lately, those sure have been sparse. I’ve seen nothing but bullshit, most of this year. And yeah, I’ll use that word when I’m talking to You. You know full well what I mean. It’s been crap, and You know it. I’ve been self-medicating, in ways I do not like. I need to get a grip. I’m just waiting here, to get all healed and speaking praises. Come on. Work your magic. Heal me from this year.

Those are the things I figured to say to God. Without any shame. You speak from your heart, that’s what I’ve said before. That’s what Pastor Mark always preaches. If you’re brooding and wounded, speak from that place. Well. It’s not turning out quite the way I thought it would, the writing of it from that place. And I’m not quite sure how to describe it all. So I guess I’ll just turn to a story that I feel like telling right this moment, for some reason. It’s a story I heard many times as a child. Mostly I heard it told in church, as a tiny little sliver in some otherwise long and droning sermon. In rough memory form, the story goes like this, right here.

There was a prophet, back there in the Old Testament. A prophet from God, living out there in the wilderness. In the land of a heathen king. The king knew the prophet, knew that he was a man of God, a man who had some special powers. And the king came to the prophet one day to call in a favor. Or maybe he was courting, for the first time. I don’t remember. But the king wanted help. There were some people passing through the kingdom, a great tribe of warriors. And the king was very scared of that tribe of warriors. So he came to the prophet with gifts of great finery, gifts of gold and linen and fine clothes. “Come with me to a high place,” the king said. “I want you to curse the invaders. I want you to curse them in the name of your God.”

The prophet was a bit of a shyster, I’ve always thought, from hearing the story. Not saying that I would have reacted any different, had I been him. I’m not judging his heart. He was flattered that the king came to him for help. He was flattered, to be so important. And he agreed, quite cheerfully, from what I heard told. So off they went, the two of them, and the king’s large entourage. The king took the prophet to a high place, and they looked down on the great tribe of warriors, camped out in the valley below. “OK,” the king said. “Now curse those people for me. I’ve paid you good money, to do this. So curse them, in the name of your God.”

The prophet stepped up to speak his curse, just like he’d been paid to do. But strangely, when the words flowed from him, those words weren’t curses. It was all blessings, that came out of his mouth. They would be victorious, wherever they marched, those warriors down there in the valley. They would be victorious. And the king, the very king who was paying the prophet to speak, that king would be their servant.

I imagine the king was pretty speechless, right off, after the prophet quit speaking. But not for long. You can bet he hollered at the prophet. “What? I hired you to curse the children of Israel. You took my money. And you just went out and blessed them. Are you insane?” And the prophet was all greasy, being the shyster he was. Pay me again. I’ll curse your enemies, this time. I think the prophet had every intention, to go through with his promise. He figured he’d deliver a curse on the king’s enemies, this time. And the king bought it. He paid the prophet again. And again, the two of them went to a high place, from where the prophet would spit out all the curses he was paid to speak. They would be cursed, those invaders.

Again, the prophet opened his mouth to curse. And again, only blessings rolled out. The king about had a stroke. And he yelled at the prophet again. “What in the world do you think you’re doing? I’m paying you, here.” And the prophet could only shrug his shoulders helplessly. He could only speak the words the Lord allowed him to speak. That’s what he told the king. And in the end, the king gave up, trying to tell the prophet to curse his enemies. It obviously wasn’t working. I figure the king actually feared the prophet as a man of God. Otherwise, he would just have had his head chopped off. I figure there was fear, there, in the king’s heart. Because that didn’t happen, no matter how mad he was at the shyster prophet.

And what does that little tale have to do with anything? You might ask. You might, indeed. I’m in a very strange place, here. A place I’ve never seen before. I mean, I want to rage against all the crap that this year was. I want to seethe, and I want to vent against God for all the BS that came at me in 2014. I really, really want to. Just as much as Balaam wanted to curse King Balaak’s enemies. I really want to speak all that darkness, cry to the heavens, call out in despair and grief and gloom. But I just can’t. It’s so clear to see, from here, when I’m trying to write it. I can’t speak curses. I can’t grumble against that which God does not want me to speak. I just can’t do it. It’s like my hands are tied.

I can only speak words of blessing, looking back over the year that was. And I can only speak those words from a grateful heart. Because all of life is a gift. And all of life is a precious and beautiful thing. That’s what I’ve always claimed to believe, when things were pretty much going my way. It’s either all of life, or it’s not, what I believe. And I have only words of blessing, for all this past year hit me with. Words of blessing, because it all was what it was, for reasons I will never understand. The Lord does that. Brings stuff into your life, to forge and shape you. Oh, yes. There was all kinds of forging and shaping going on that I wasn’t seeing, back when I was focused on all the crap raining down around me. Oh, yes, there was.

Funny thing is, though, when it comes right down to it, I’m not even sure what real words of blessing sound like when you speak them. I’ve never been here before, in a place as strange as this, where I’m called to speak when I don’t know for sure what the words I’m supposed to speak sound like. But I’m committed to speaking them. I’m not quite sure how this will all turn out. I’m in a new place, and I’m just telling you what I see and feel, walking through that new door. Just give me a little time. I think I’ll figure it all out.

I have no idea what 2015 may bring. I have so looked forward to this year being over. Just to move on, to leave behind all those hard and ugly things. And I simply don’t know. Maybe that new place will bring even worse stuff than what I saw this year. It doesn’t matter, though, whether it’s worse or better, what the New Year will bring.

All that matters is this. I’m looking forward to it. And it will be a year of blessings.

Happy New Year to all my readers.

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