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.

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.