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.

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 the 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 to 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.