A New Stage of Life

To say that the last two weeks have been full of change, transition, stress, action, travel, and people is being very understated with the truth.

So, to go way back to November 26, incidentally my dad's 97th birthday, which he spent in the hospital with his third bladder blockage but recovered from ok...that was the day Amanda arrived.

And the next day Nevin arrived.

Yes, after waiting for years while my children's friends and cousins obligingly grew up, dated, married, and had babies, in which I kept busy with praying, making mental lists, hand-wringing, and the occasional nudge or caution, two of my children, Amy and Ben, are dating.

Or maybe courting. We don't try to fit any particular mold or model here, but suffice it to say that Ben is pursuing a young woman in a determined and Christian manner, and Amy is likewise being pursued by a young man, and things had come to the point where it was time for them to come to the Smuckers for a holiday.
 
Matt flew in from DC for the occasion, but Emily wasn't able to work it out to come home from SMBI, so she was the only one missing, which was very sad.

But, oh, what detailed preparations beforehand, what excitement, what lists, what baking, what scrubbing of bathrooms, what buying of name-brand breakfast cereal, what hauling of embarrassing excess belongings out of the back hallway, what stuffing of them into the unused playhouse outside!

Not wanting awkward early-morning collisions while going to and from our small upstairs bathroom via a narrow hallway, I had my generous friend and next-door neighbor, Anita, over for tea and she agreed to keep all the guys at her house for the duration so the girls could have the upstairs to themselves.

The guests were here for about a week.  Wednesday evening we had our big Thanksgiving dinner, and from Thursday to Saturday we were out at the coast in a cozy rented house a short walk from the beach.  The weather, in answer to Jenny's prayers, was warm and calm, and the days were full of hiking up mountains, walking on the beach, eating, games, and much discussion.

Amanda & Ben in an ice cream shop

I thought this should be Amy & Nevin's official Facebook photo

Well, maybe this would work better.

Which brings me to a very new angle of this very new phase.  My children are used to being written about.  Sometimes they read what I write and often they don't.  They are very blase about it all.  I have a pretty good feel for what's ok to say and what isn't, and if I write something that's not ok, they tell me, and I do a quick edit.  Or I pay a bribe.

I do not have this easy relationship with the significant others, so I find my head full of stories and my writing process going like this:

Oh, it was so interesting how this all came about. . . but I guess that's not for public consumption.

The first day or so. . . oh wait, better not go there.

It was so funny when. . . oops, better not go there either.

I was so impressed by . . . hmmm, probably shouldn't say that.

But then Jenny insisted that. . . oh, never mind.

But when I told Emily about it on the phone, she figured that . . . never mind that either.

Sigh.

I will say this: Amanda and Nevin are both astonishingly nice, Godly, kind, smart, helpful, hardworking, responsible, mature, and a list of other adjectives as well.

And I can't tell you how blessed that makes me feel.

 
Resting in the shelter after the hike up Cape Perpetua: Jenny, Matt, Nevin, Amy, Amanda, Ben, and Steven

Despite the newness of our interactions, the time was surprisingly fun and relaxed, thanks to the admirable adaptability of the visitors.  Amanda worked with me in the kitchen a lot, especially on Wednesday, making Thanksgiving dinner while Ben still had classes, and she slipped into the role like she had done it for years.

Matt left for the airport early on Saturday morning and we came home from the coast later in the day.  While Jenny and Steven and I put coolers and leftovers away, the two couples went off by themselves for the evening, away--no doubt to their vast relief--from watchful parents and teenage siblings who always seemed to be everywhere at once.


On the beach, Paul demonstrated to the young people that you can still be romantic this far into the story.

Hiking on the slick rocks at Alsea Falls

  

 We walked over the long bridge at Waldport, and I may or may not have quietly hummed "Go-o-o-in' to the cha-a-a-pel. . ." as I took these shots.  It was that pretty arched opening, that's all.

 

   
Paul, Steven, and Matt.  If you want to play Settlers of Catan with Smucker men, you have to place your arms and elbows and hands in a certain position.  It's a requirement.

  
Nevin, Amy, and Jenny played Take One.

Sunday morning I woke up at 5:30 and decided to get up to prepare my Sunday school lesson and Sunday dinner and all the other things best done alone and quiet.

My sister Rebecca called me.  My mom had just passed away, back in the nursing home in Minnesota, very swiftly and peacefully and quietly.

And just that quickly can life completely change.

Letter from Harrisburg: Happy Endings

This column was published last Sunday, the day of my mother's passing.  You might well wonder how I feel about "happy endings" in light of this.  She lived a long, full life, she was eager to go be with Jesus, and she had a peaceful passing.  I call that a very happy ending.  The sorrow is all ours, and even that is tempered by the joy of knowing she is where she wanted to be.
Thank you for all the prayers over the past week.

Letter from Harrisburg

All stories should end with ‘happily ever after’

I think every story ought to turn out right in the end. The characters suffer, the plot twists, sharp obstacles rise in the path, but a good story works it all out beautifully by the final page. 

Some of us read “Pride and Prejudice” at least once a year, just to make sure Elizabeth still ends up with Mr. Darcy. I re-read Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books when I’m sick with the flu, thrilled each time that Valancy really leaves her old life behind and acquires her blue castle for keeps.

I love to hear people’s stories, leading family members to agree that I have a sign on my forehead: “Tell me the most intimate details of your life.” It’s fascinating, the invisible threads running through the life stories of everyday people, the strokes of luck, the miraculous connections, the accumulated wisdom.

I enjoy telling stories as well, especially to children, who for some reason prefer ones they’ve already heard. Trevin the young nephew has asked me dozens of times for the Chiclet story, a cautionary tale from my childhood in which I stole one of the pieces of gum my aunt sent my sister for her birthday. I was found out because Mom saw me surreptitiously chewing, and thus I learned that the eyes of both Mom and the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good, and so I never stole again.

That’s why people like me love the Christmas story. The world is dark and God is silent, and then suddenly there are angels singing of good news and a poor young virgin giving birth and “a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

Something deep inside connects to a story, to characters and the forces that affect them, to despair turning to impossible hope, to the good guy showing up at last, and to a resolution that makes us close the book and smile and fall asleep.

We look at our own lives, with all our mistakes and frustrations, and we long for resolution for this story as well, for the loose ends to be tied into a neat bow and for meaning and purpose behind the strange turns in the plot.

I always thought everyone loved stories as much as I did, since even the most oblivious people in church perked up when the pastor’s sermon switched from theory and theology to an illustration or story. At family gatherings, relatives of all ages gather around the storytellers, reliving Aunt Allene’s suspense as the old seed truck with its worn-out fan belt growls up Interstate 5 and then — disaster — the belt snaps near Cottage Grove and Allene climbs the fence and despite many perils finally makes it to Harrisburg with the load of seed.

Some time ago, when a generous benefactor offered to pay for me to take an online course in short story writing from Stanford University’s prestigious Continuing Studies department, I found that not everyone in the world likes stories as I had always defined them.

Happy to learn of dialogue, setting and structure, I signed up, bought the textbooks, and dug in. Most of the required reading was “collected short stories” by highly-recommended authors.

I soon found that I had stepped into a sophisticated literary universe where “stories” consisted of vague, dark, hopeless descriptions of people trapped in creepy situations. Nothing ever really happened, nothing changed, and while the words stopped after a while, the stories were never completed.

In the online discussions, the other students, mostly lawyers and scientists and such, discussed the stories’ complexity and depth in ponderous detail, as though they actually qualified as good stories. Even a rural Mennonite mom doesn’t like to appear naïve and unenlightened, so I used my considerable acting skills and contributed an occasional comment.

However, I soon saw the silliness of such pretensions and decided to be what and who I was, a lover of simple stories from the hearts of ordinary people. I learned what I could from the course and then happily left that alien world to itself.

Life had enough vague and dark qualities. A story, I decided, ought to provide an alternative where joy was good and love was real and every event eventually had meaning.

The Bible, while containing poetry and deep theology, is essentially a story, resonating with believers like me because we relate to its all-too-human characters and its assurance that mysterious and meaningful purposes lie behind every event of our lives. Maybe we’re naïve, but in daily challenges and hard times of grief and pain, we reach for a community of faith that assures us of redemption for the past and hope for better things ahead.

“Now remember what you were, my friends, when God called you,” writes Paul the apostle in First Corinthians. “From the human point of view few of you were wise or powerful or of high social standing. God purposely chose what the world considers nonsense in order to shame the wise.”

So Christmas comes and simple people like me repeat the improbable story of long years of waiting and then a Roman census and a child born and angels announcing peace on Earth. 

Our children act it out in too-large bathrobes under dangling makeshift stars while we weep at its beauty and laugh with its joy. The story rings true in our hearts and so we believe and find, not that seeing is believing but that believing is seeing.

Then we cry harder because our own story includes many wrong turns and dilemmas, but here is forgiveness and peace, and we know we don’t deserve the gift but there it is.  We sing “Joy to the World” because we are full of hope that everything will come out right in the end, just like it ought to.

A Conversation

We are safely home after laying my mom to rest, and there's lots I want to write someday about all that.  But instead I'll write about something else: a conversation I had today that I can't get out of my mind.

I was signed up to sell books from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today at the Lane Library League fundraiser at the fairgrounds.  I wasn't up to spending the day there, between just being back from the funeral and also the snowy roads.  Paul offered to drive me in if I want to go, and there were specific authors I wanted to see, so off we went and I was there for about an hour.

A slender gray-haired woman came up to me.  Here's the conversation as best as I can reconstruct it:

She said, "Oh, I wanted to talk to you.  There's something I just don't understand.  I so enjoy your articles and what you write about the Mennonites.  I'm Unitarian-slash-Buddhist myself, but I'm interested in other religions, so I went to this lecture at the U of O about Mennonites, and it seems there's quite a variety. . .?"

I said, "Yes.  There's a huge variety of churches, all under the Anabaptist umbrella."

She said"Yes.  Well, there was this incident, and I just don't understand it.  We were down at the 5th St. Market one Saturday, and this group of Mennonites was singing.  It was just beautiful.  We just love music like that, even though we're not Christian.  And there was just this sense of community, with families in the group, and just how they sang.  It was lovely and we stood there listening to it.

And then while we were listening, this Mennonite man came up to my husband and began to talk to him and asked him what he believed and began to talk about their beliefs.  My husband said he's not interested, but the man just kept on talking.  And we wanted to listen to the music, but he just wouldn't stop talking.  I've read your books, and it just doesn't seem like something you would do, to be that aggressive."

She paused.  I sensed that she also wanted to say, "or that disgustingly rude," but as a Buddhist she didn't want to let it upset her.

I'm not sure what I said then.

She said, "I didn't realize you folks did that.  I know the Quakers don't proselytize.  I didn't think you did either.  But this man, he just wouldn't leave my husband alone.  And we just wanted to hear the music.  He just wouldn't stop talking."

I finally said, "We do believe in sharing our faith.  But usually we try to do it through how we live our lives and being open to people who ask questions, and being friends."

I sounded pretty lame, really, like I'd get an F in any Personal Evangelism class.

She said, "But how do you explain. . .?"

I said, "Well, in any religion you will have people who are really passionate and really aggressive about trying to persuade others to change their beliefs."

She said, "Yeah, I guess so.  But it just didn't seem like something a Mennonite would do."

Her husband joined her at my table.  She turned to him, "I was just asking her about. . ."  and he nodded and said, "Oh.  Yeah.  That man. . ."

They thanked me and left, still looking troubled and confused.

I am feeling somewhat troubled and confused myself.  On the one hand, any discussion of Witnessing or Personal Evangelism makes me feel like a failure because I am frankly terrible at approaching strangers and explaining the Gospel to them.

Also, if this man's behavior is so not typical of Mennonites, does it mean we've carried the "Stille in die Land" thing way too far?

However, would Jesus have had a choir sing beautifully to draw people into the marketplace and then talked so aggressively to curious listeners that they couldn't listen to the music and left feeling upset and disappointed and a bit violated?

What do you think?

I think she and I are both trying to make sense of that incident.

Mom's Passing

Yesterday morning my mom went to be with Jesus.  She was 93 years old and passed very peacefully.

We leave tomorrow morning for the funeral which will be on Thursday morning.

Your prayers are appreciated.

Books: News, Giveaway, Sale

A few weeks ago I offered Tea and Trouble on Kindle for free, for two days.  The idea is to get more publicity, ratchet up your rankings on Amazon, and just have fun.

The whole thing went a little bit crazy, with friends linking it on Facebook, and then friends of friends, and to my astonishment the ranking on Amazon went up and up and UP, from down in the multi thousands to the hundreds, then into the top 100 free Kindle books, then all the way up to 20.

Just to explain the rankings: the #1 book is the one that's selling the best.  The ranking doesn't tell you how many sold, only how it's doing in relation to other books.

Afterwards I went hunting for actual numbers and found that over 10,000 copies had been downloaded, including 72 in the U.K.

Utterly astonishing, and also a very cool loaves-and-fishes moment for me, that I was able to give away so many copies of something that I really had only one of, if that makes any sense.

The promo also helped with sales of both the ebook and the paper copy, and resulted in a bunch more reviews, so it was all good.

To those of you who helped out: THANK YOU.

Soon after, this accurate peek into my life appeared in the Sunday comics and made my children guffaw:

It's time for the annual book giveaway, something I've come to enjoy a lot.

If you're new here, here's the deal:

You send me an email at dorcassmucker@gmail.com and tell me of someone who needs some love and encouragement in the form of one of my books. Tell me their name and address, a bit of their story, and which book I should send them.

The titles: Ordinary Days, Upstairs the Peasants are Revolting, Downstairs the Queen is Knitting, Tea and Trouble Brewing

I mail them a book for free.

[Disclaimer, just in case: I reserve the right to say no, just in case this somehow gets weird.]

Please don't nominate yourself. . . but that would never occur to you anyway.  Special consideration goes to moms going through a hard time this holiday season due to grief, health issues, financial issues, family troubles, and so on.

Like I said, this has been a lot of fun in the past, so don't be hesitant to nominate someone.

And, lastly, a Christmas special:

I'm offering a set of all four titles for $40, including postage.  (Regular price: $51)  If you pick them up at my door, the price is $35.

This offer is good only in the USA.  And it ends December 11th, since I like to send them by media mail and it can take two weeks to get there.

If you're from outside the USA, you can buy them for $35 plus shipping costs.

To order: send me a note and a check at 31148 Substation Drive, Harrisburg, OR  97446.

All of you have been a blessing to me, and I hope your holiday season is blessed in return.

Quote of the Day:
"Alway curious about the seemingly austere Amish/Mennonite life, Mrs. smucker presentation was a delightful encounter, a glimpse into a life that is rich rather than austere."
--Starla Lago, an Amazon reviewer

Dividing and Conquering

We are facing the prospect of making decisions about my parents' things.  While both Mom and Dad are still living and in surprisingly good health, the time has come to make some changes and this will mean the emptying, selling, distributing, cleaning, and deciding process that so many of you have been through.

Because of two destructive fires in the past, we don't have huge amounts of heirlooms.  However, there are still lots of things some of us will want: quilt tops, pretty dishes, dressers, books, and so on.

And oh so many things none of us will want, which will be a challenge all its own. Let's just say I didn't pull my hoarding tendencies out of thin air.

This is my question for all my experienced, expert friends: What's the most equitable and practical way to divide stuff between six children?  And a bunch of grandchildren?

I've heard of families who used a sticker system, others who assigned values and tried to divide it equally, others who took turns choosing and then turned the grandchildren loose when the children were done.

I'd love to hear from you.  What works?  What doesn't work?  What almost worked for you and would have if you tweaked it a bit?

Leave your ideas in the comments or message me privately at dorcassmucker@gmail.com

Thanks!

Quote of the Day:
Background: Emily is a very cautious driver who likes to stay under the speed limit.  Unlike some others in the family.
Around the dinner table, we discuss near-misses in the past--
Me: Emily, you should tell that story of when you were passing the combine on 99 and didn't look in your mirrors...
Steven: Are you sure the combine didn't pass you?

One More Day!

I'm extending grace and mercy to everyone who's a procrastinator like me:

The Tea and Trouble ebook is free for one more day!

Thursday, Nov. 7.

Right here.

Free Tea & Trouble on Kindle

This Wednesday, November 6th, is a free-promo day for the Kindle version of Tea and Trouble Brewing.

You can find it here.

Here's the whole address:

 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FT9UWUA


You can help in this publicity stunt by downloading it on Wednesday, linking it on your blog or Fb page, tweeting about it, and calling your mom to tell her about it.

Thanks in advance for helping nudge the numbers on Amazon!

Quote of the Day:
We had grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for supper.  As you may have caught on, we are big on random facts.  Hence this conversation:
Jenny: Sandwiches were named after the Earl of Sandwich.
Me: Sideburns were named after Mr. Burnsides.
Jenny: General Burnsides.
Ben: General Ambrose Burnsides.
Jenny: General Ambrose E! Burnsides.
Ben: Now you're just making it up.
Jenny: No, seriously, I'm not.
Me: Oh for goodness sakes, you just can't ever trump anyone else with information in this house.
Ben: Sadly, I wasn't able to pull out his mother's maiden name.

Letter from Harrisburg

A frantic search through the trash turns up nothing but lessons

Maybe, I admitted afterwards, calming my knotted insides with a cup of tea, it wasn’t my job to root, rubber-gloved, through the garbage. Maybe Ben’s college degree and future career did not depend on that missing clear plastic textbook wrapper with its elusive password, after all. Maybe it was up to him to find a way through this little crisis. Maybe it wasn’t mine to fix.

But unfortunately, I didn’t realize that until later.

I used to think that by the time I had four children in their 20s, the house would be mostly quiet. I would have time to make quilts, and we could get by with a single pizza for dinner.

Instead, my independent and adventuresome offspring still go and come in such random patterns that, when people ask how many still live at home, I have to stop and count. Off they go to a few months of Bible school, to a year’s volunteer work in other countries, to college. Then home again for a few months and off on the next quest.

At the moment, five of my six live at home. The best thing about this is their lively company, especially the entertaining repartee, such as:

“You should sing on the radio,” Ben says after hearing Steven sing cheerfully.

“Why?” Steven says.

“So we could change stations,” Ben says.

Or this:

“People with British accents are taken much more seriously than people with Southern accents,” Emily says.

“Yes,” Jenny says. “Unless they’re people with Southern accents and a gun.”

And:

“Somebody, put the ketchup in something attractive,” I say while preparing Sunday dinner.

“Here, Steven, open wide,” Emily says.

I laugh at them and think indulgent motherly thoughts about what astonishingly bright children we’ve been blessed with, so gifted and quick.

And then in the next minute they make me frightened and frantic, because they are all making adult decisions, and they insist on being independent and self-assured in this as well. As opposed to the obvious and wise alternative: asking me what they should do, taking careful notes with a yellow pencil and saying, “Yes, Mom. Absolutely,” as they humbly follow each bulleted point.

I think the boys ought to cut their hair and the girls should eat more nutritious snacks. I want this one to get a better job and that one to send in his Bible school application. I take note of nice, well-behaved, potential future in-laws and make weighted suggestions.

Even though, in reality, none of it is mine to manipulate.

Twenty-year-old Ben spent a year volunteering in the big city of Toronto, and came home in September, just in time to begin another year at Linn-Benton Community College.

As a future engineer, his textbooks are enormous and expensive. Physics for Scientists and Engineers A Strategic Approach Third Edition came in the mail one day and Ben tore the 5-pound book out of its package. The next day, he discovered that the wrapper was supposed to contain a little paper with a password to a corresponding website, crucial to the course.

And he had, of course, ripped off the plastic wrapper and tossed it away. Buying another password would cost more than $60.

What I wonder now is, why did I snatch at this problem as mine to fix and completely obsess about it? Maybe because he is a poor student, fresh off the mission field.

Ben and I pawed through the clean and paper-filled office garbage and the slightly slimy kitchen wastebaskets with no success. I reached around him without asking and scrolled down the Amazon page on his laptop, looking for information, and then insisted that he call his instructor and ask for advice.

Ben calmly said he didn’t think that was necessary and listed his reasons. I thought he was foolish and stubborn, and I hoped savagely that his sweet little girlfriend would see this infuriating side of him before he ever proposed to her.

Then, desperate, we donned protective gloves and dug through the days-old trash in the barrel outside, picking through old meat wrappers and soggy tissues and far worse.

We didn’t find it.

My husband tried to slip an occasional word of advice to me into this frantic quest: “Let it go. Let him worry about it. It isn’t your problem.”

Of course, he was right, which I didn’t admit until the search was over and I saw that I was obsessed beyond all rational reason.

How embarrassing.

I have been teaching a Sunday school class in which we study women of the Bible. The parallels to us, today, are astonishing, especially that recurring resolve: “Nothing is happening here, so I need to take action. This is entirely mine to fix.”

The childless Abraham and Sarah in the book of Genesis were solemnly promised a son but were still infertile, so, after years of waiting, Sarah got the bright and improbable notion that Abraham could have a child with the servant girl and all would be well. The servant did have a son, but all was very much not well, and the generations to follow paid dearly for her manipulation.

Their daughter-in-law, Rebekah, was determined that her second-born son, Jacob, would receive the ceremonial blessing and used trickery, scheming and outright lies to make it happen. She paid for it by sending Jacob away for his own safety, never seeing him again.

“Dear me, can’t you see this would have worked out if you had just trusted God and waited a bit longer?” I say to these long-ago women as I study the lesson at the kitchen table on Sunday mornings.

But Scripture has a way of speaking right back at me. What about trying to rescue Ben from his own carelessness? Or the probing questions I ask the kids who don’t talk enough? Or all the hints, tinged with accusation, that I toss their way, knowing it’s theirs to figure out but also utterly certain that things won’t work out unless I step in.

“Be quiet. Trust me. Wait. Just enjoy them — your gifts from me.” That’s what I hear from God when they’re all asleep and I sit with a pot of tea and my Bible in the early quiet.

All right then. If you say so. After all, Ben figured out a way to get that crucial password without any help from me.

On the way to church, Steven, who is not into arson or smoking, has a match dangling from his mouth. Emily asks, logically, “Why do you have a match in your mouth?”

Steven mumbles, “ I’m gonna set the church on fire. On fire for God.”

After church, the match is still there. I think, “Oh please!” and other admonishing motherly things I want to say, but I don’t say them.

Emily says, “You setting the church on fire?”

“Nope,” Steven says. “Just looking striking.”

I laugh, which is, in the end, the best response to these remarkable young adults of mine — far better than anxious manipulating, endless hinting or digging through garbage for something that was never mine to find.

A Wild Long-Ago Halloween

I don't celebrate Halloween, and never have.  Too dark and evil and full of death for my taste.  I can't even handle a costumed Grim Reaper with a plastic scythe wandering around Costco like I saw today.

However, there was that one Halloween many years ago. . .

I think it was the year I was back home after teaching in Oregon.  My little sister Margaret was probably 14, and I had determined to make it a fun year for her, hopefully undoing some of the damage I inflicted in earlier years [don't ask.]  So we had lots of crazy adventures, like going to see "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" at the college I attended and dragging Mom to "The Sound of Music" at Atwater High School for the one and only musical of her life.

One fall day we were all eating supper together and suddenly realized it was Halloween.  Hey!  one of us said, We should do something!

Margaret and I pondered this.  A prank?  A joke of some kind?  Certainly dressing up.  We loved to dress up in costume.  And surprising someone.  Maybe Marcus and Anna, our brother and his wife, who lived just up the road.

Yes, definitely Marcus and Anna.

We thought some more and then at the same time we looked at each other and said, "AMISH!!"

Instantly we were buzzing with plans while Mom chuckled in spite of herself and said, "Ach, girls."

After supper we raided Mom and Dad's closet for the Old Order outfits they kept on hand to wear to Amish funerals.

Margaret dressed up in Mom's Amish dress and her schatz and hals-duch, a mass of pins and polyester.  She wore jet-black hose and Mom's black shoes and bonnet and as I recall an old pair of cat-eye glasses.  She even found an ancient black purse.

She looked an absolute sight.

I wore Dad's white Sunday shirt and his gray mutza suit and his black church shoes and his black hat.  I was also an absolute sight.

Except I looked too girlish.

So I smeared Vaseline all over my jaw and Margaret helped me press coffee grounds onto it and suddenly I was transformed into a young Amishman with a good start on his beard.

Mom was amazed.  "Du gooksht vee's Chonnys' boova," she said.  "You look like Johnny's boys."  Our cousins.

She also said, "Margaret, don't you hold Lenny on your lap, with all those pins."

We drove down the road to Marcus and Anna's and knocked at the door.  Anna opened it.

Margaret in her big black bonnet opened the big black purse, held it out, and said, "Trick or treat!"

Anna made an exclamation of some kind and then she started laughing.  She laughed and laughed and bent over and laughed some more.  Marcus came up behind her to see what was going on and he simply howled.

They managed to invite us inside, where we sat primly on the couch while Marcus and Anna collapsed into chairs and laughed and laughed like I've never seen them laugh before or since.

Marcus played along and asked us questions and we pretended to be an old married couple with eight children.  Margaret said our oldest son just got a job in town, and I hung my head and said, Dad-like, "Ya, mir gleiches net,"  [Yeah, we don't like it...] and Marcus laughed so hard he nearly passed out.

Little Annette stood around looking bewildered and Lenny sat on someone's lap--not Margaret's--and couldn't figure out what was going on.

We rode this horse as far as it could take us, all with straight faces on our part, and then when Marcus and Anna were exhausted from laughing we got up to go home.

Anna offered to find some candy to put in our black purse.

We went home and even Mom and Dad had to laugh at us, and then we carefully returned our clothes to Mom and Dad's closet and washed the beard off my chin.

Every Halloween, we remember.

This morning I got a text from Margaret: Shall we dress up Amish 2nite?
I responded: Ha ha I was just thinking about that!
She said: And I wd love 2 see u in a coffee beard.

When I was in Minnesota in September I got to see one of "Chonny's boova," Truman, who is a bit older than me.  He was a visiting speaker at the church there and came to see Mom.  I'll let you judge whether or not we still look alike.  These days his beard is more ashes than coffee grounds.

A crazy sister memory is worth more than a sackful of Halloween candy any day.