Trip Musings

The most astonishing thing was that it actually all worked out. We kept our expectations low, knowing that among my family in Oregon, Rebecca's in Virginia, and Mom and Dad in MN, a hundred things could crop up to make it impossible for us two sisters to get together and take Mom and Dad on a trip to Iowa.

Rebecca and her family are back in the U.S. for a year, living in Virginia, where their oldest son just started classes at the University of Virginia. Both she and I wanted to visit the folks, and we decided to do it at the same time. Then we got the idea to go to Iowa, where Mom and Dad have lots of roots and relatives, when their trip there with Marcus and Anna was cancelled at the end of July when Anna's dad died.

So I flew in to MSP on a Tuesday, rented a car, and drove to Grove City. That evening Rebecca flew in and spent the night with an old college friend in the Cities. The next morning Mom and Dad and I set forth, picked up Rebecca, and were off to Iowa, exclaiming in wonderment that it actually worked out.

We stayed at Aunt Vina's in Kalona, a lovely place filled with Vina's touch and exquisite quilts. In the evenings we got together with friends and family groups, and during the day we drove Mom and Dad around the countryside and visited old friends, most of them Amish.

I am pretty far removed from my Amish roots, so pulling into a driveway and seeing ten little children playing on a swing set--boys in straw hats, girls in organdy coverings--turned me into a gushing tourist wishing I could snap pictures all day. But when we actually got to visiting I clicked right back into Amish mode--talking "Dutch," making connections, discussing freindschaft and gardens and babies.

We went to visit "Cho Hoshbyah" (Joe Hershberger) who is a hundred years old and who was sitting at the kitchen table wearing thick black-rimmed glasses and reading his Bible. The house was plain as all Amish houses are--hardwood or linoleum floors, plain painted walls, plain austere furniture, and just a bit dark even though it was the middle of the day. Partway through the visit Rebecca and I took our leave and slipped over to the fabric store next door, run by Joe's two maiden daughters. There in the semi-darkness we browsed among baby bibs and those strings of plastic beads that all Amish babies play with and racks of solid fabric. Then suddenly a voice said, "Who do I hear out there?" and there was my dear cousin Katie and her husband Harley coming around a rack of fabric, and we had ourselves a fine reunion right there.

Of the many things I exclaimed about, probably the top of the list was how much these Amish ladies get done. Joe's house was the most immaculate, with not a speck of dust or cobweb anywhere on the screened porch or anywhere else, but the other places weren't far behind. The flower beds are lush and colorful, the gardens are huge and healthy, always with a row or two of zinnias and cockscomb, and all around the many outbuildings the grass is trimmed and everything is neat and tidy.

Then they casually mention that they milk 200 goats and grow produce for a co-op, hence the piles of onions in the shed over there. Or they have 5000 chickens and also milk 40 cows and I forget what other business ventures--that was my cousin Perry and his wife Rebecca, who I gathered do all this to keep their family busy. But the family isn't that big--five children I think.

Work, one gathers, is top priority. Well, no, not top priority. That's reserved for guests, since everywhere we went they dropped everything they were doing to visit with us. The barefooted woman with twelve children who was canning meat for a wedding in two weeks. The large clan at Glen and Susan Beachy's who were having a workday for their parents/grandparents and who came out of the woodwork in droves when we arrived--men, women, teenagers, maiden aunts, and lots and lots of children. They all left everything to talk with us. We felt like royalty.

Rebecca and I have a terrible way of giggling like 12-year-olds when we're together, at stuff that isn't necessarily that funny but there's something about the chemistry and the moment that sends us off. Well. One morning Mom and Dad said we're visiting an old widower next--let's see, I'll call him John Miller. So we pull up to his house, with the Iowa mud and gravel in the driveway sucking at the tires. Dad went to the house to see if he was home, since you don't call ahead to Amish homes of course. While we waited in the car, Mom very casually and randomly said, "I used to date John for about six months. 'Eah het mich gaehn vedda.' ['He wanted me pretty bad.]" Rebecca and I reacted with astonishment of course. John turned out to be home, so we went inside, and as Mom and Dad greeted him and we came behind them in the little entry, we took note that poor John was a crippled, stiffened old man in a straight white beard that made Dad look like a healthy young hunk, as Rebecca put it. Rebecca very irreverently whispered in my ear, "Dorcas, that could be your father," and suddenly we were shaking with laughter in that little entry/washroom, trying to compose ourselves back into grownups. Well we finally managed, and Rebecca muttered, "Don't you dare look at me" as we went inside. We had a nice visit and we behaved ourselves very well, but then Mom was the last to leave and we heard John saying, "I hadn't seen you for such a long time, Sara," and that put us right over the edge again, and we held ourselves together until we were about fifty feet down the road and then we cut loose into screams of laughter. It doesn't sound that funny in retrospect I guess but believe me, two sisters discovering their mother's old beau is funny.

Quote of the Day:
"Speiss Gott, trank Gott
alle aumer kinner
de auf Erden sind."
--the prayer Mom and her siblings would say. Rough translation: "God, feed and water all poor children on earth."