Why I'm Grateful to Mrs. Olson

Someone posted a picture on Facebook the other day that made a memory erupt from the past.



It was my sixth-grade teacher and her husband.  Mr. and Mrs. Olson.  I'm sure they have first names, but you know how it is with teachers--they're always and forever Mr. or Miss or Mrs. 

I am forever grateful to Mrs. Olson.

At that stage of my life there were many things that were wrong.  In my little world, I had no clue how to define a problem and find a solution.  And making a fuss was absolutely not ok.

I was a little Beachy-Amish girl in Minnesota at Grove City School, on the top floor of the old elementary school with its brick walls and high ceilings.  I wore a large white cap and simple dresses among dozens of Lutherans in jeans. [We were known in the community as Mennonites, for some reason, but in truth were much closer to Amish.]

 I was also an avid reader, plowing through shelves of books in the classroom library, from Freddie the Pig to Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Most of the time, I got along fine with everyone, and they were kind.  But I always felt Different.

We would file down the long flights of stairs to the cafeteria for lunch, at which time Mrs. Larson and Mrs Knutson [most Minnesota names end in -son] would take over, watching over the lunchroom and the play time afterwards.  Usually we walked a block or two to the playground, but in really terrible weather by Minnesota standards we played in the "small gym." Usually several games were going at once, circle games or shooting baskets or jumping rope.

One day one of the girls in my grade decided to tease me by grabbing the hem of my dress and yanking it up.  It took me by surprise.  She laughed and laughed.

The other girls started doing the same thing.  There I'd be, waiting on my turn to shoot, and suddenly, WHOOSH, and the more they saw the more they laughed.

Day after day.

Why was it that I didn't have the skills to make them stop, to tell Mrs. Larson, to stand up to them?  Why did I feel like somehow I deserved this treatment just because I existed and was Different? Or that I would ruin any chance of acceptance and friendship if I made a fuss?

I would giggle nervously and try to tuck my skirt between my knees.  I'd go sit on the bleachers between turns, embarrassed and confused.  If I tried to hold my skirt down at the sides, they jerked it up at the back or front.

Nothing worked very well or very long. Yank, laughter, boys turning and looking.

It was awful.

Maybe I could get out of the noon play time somehow.  One day I offered to come back to the classroom after lunch and clean the chalkboard erasers.  Mrs. Olson said yes.  Wonderful.

The next day I came up with another excuse.  I think it was something like coming back to work on my math.

Ummm, ok.

It was about the third time I stayed in the classroom that Mrs. Olson said, just straight out, "Why don't you want to go play over lunch?"

"Uh, well, I don't know..."

She was not ok with that.  What a beautiful thing it was to have someone in my life recognize a problem and ask me about it in straight-out concise words and to insist on an honest answer.

So I told her about the girls pulling up my dress, feeling relieved but also terrible for tattling.

She said, "Who did this?"

I didn't want to tell her.

She got out a pen and paper.  "Tell me the names of everyone who did this to you."

She meant it.

I started listing.  She wrote down name after name.

"Anyone else? Did Vickie?"

"Well, only once I think."

She wrote "Vickie" in a determined hand.

She didn't say much more, but I could tell she was a woman on a mission.

Pretty soon everyone came back up the stairs, grabbed a quick drink at the fountain, and came back in the classroom laughing and wiping their mouths.

I sat waiting, knowing that the earth was about to shift on its axis, or at least that something in my strange little world was changing in ways I had never experienced before. 

Mrs. Olson stood at the front of the classroom.  She held up the paper and said, "Debbie, Vickie, Deanna,. . ." She read off the entire list.  "All of you go to the principal's office.  I want to talk to you."

They got up and left.  Dear God, what had I done?

They came back a few minutes later, grinning a bit sheepishly.

I thought, "I am going to Get It."

None of them looked at me.  Nor did they glance at each other and Look at me.

The next day we went to play in the gym and no one pulled up my dress. No one ever did that again. And no one ever said a word to me about what had happened. 

I still felt different, but mostly people were kind.

At the end of the year, we voted on all kinds of categories, and then Mrs. Olson gave us awards.  I got the Smartest Girl award.  And then to my utter astonishment, Mrs. Olson said I had tied with Tammy Ellingson for "Prettiest Clothes" but she gave Tammy the award since I already had an award and she didn't.

My awful little Amish dresses had tied for Prettiest Clothes!

So that was a nice ending to sixth grade.  But the best thing about sixth grade was the new and glorious experience of having someone notice that I had a problem, insist that I speak it out loud, and advocate for me when I needed it most.

I will always be grateful to Mrs. Olson.

A Newly-Repurposed Book And Other News

I took the long, scenic, and rocky route to publishing my books.  "Ordinary Days" was self-published way back in 2003 when print on demand was a new thing.  Then it was picked up and re-published by Good Books, who went on to also publish Upstairs the Peasants are Revolting and Downstairs the Queen is Knitting.

Good Books decided not to pick up the fourth book, so I self-published the next two.

Then Goods went bankrupt and fell off the face of the Earth for a year before they were bought out by Skyhorse Publishing in New York City.

Recently Skyhorse decided to re-publish my first three titles under one cover.  I think that is an awful lot of Mrs. Smucker's Attempts At Squeezing Profound Meaning From Daily Life to read and digest at one go, but it isn't my decision to make.

And who am I to fuss if they want to get more mileage out of those titles?

So Sunlight Through Dusty Windows should be out this fall. Special thanks to my sister Rebecca who came up with the name.

If you have one or two of the first three titles and want to complete your set, I am in possession of the only remaining copies of them, and when they're gone, they're gone.

You can email me at dorcassmucker@gmail.com for particulars.

I'm also hoping to publish a sixth collection of newspaper columns this year and have many ideas for other new books but no promises or commitments.

Yesterday when I spoke to the Women In Touch at the First Baptist Church in Eugene, one woman told me I really should write a cookbook featuring all the food I write about.  That made me laugh, because me writing a cookbook is kind of like me writing a book on parenting, which I never thought I would do until recently when my young friend Esta suggested it and also about 5 people in a month's time asked me for parenting advice, which always made me want to whirl around to see if they were actually talking to someone behind me.

If those ideas get off the ground, they could both be titled The Cheap Easy Way to Cook/Parent When You Have No Clue What You're Doing And All The Other Cooks/Parents Intimidate You To Death So You Pretend A Lot.

I also keep dropping ideas in my Novel Notes file, but this novel is yet to be written because I am stuck in a Fixed Mindset.  Over on Jenny's blog you can read about that concept.  But I hope to have a Growth Mindset on the novel-writing subject someday, especially since I keep running into these amazing tidbits, like my friend SC who, it turns out, once had a date with an Amish guy and went to the singing in his buggy which involved details that I won't disclose here (watch for them in my novel of course!). And then on our sisters' WhatsApp discussion today there was mention of a squished piece of bread falling out of someone's Bible after communion, which carried Lots of Deeper Implications.

So as you can see there is no lack for morsels to include in that novel when I finally overcome my terror and just write it.

Which brings us to the Sparrow Nest, my writing cabin, which is slowly taking shape but didn't make much progress during the coldest part of the winter because Paul kept finding warmer things to do, and which seems like it will have just the right magic to make a novel come to pass.

So on we march, with giant scoops of gratitude for everyone who has encouraged me and actually read my writings over the last 16 years.

Quote of the Day:

I'll quote myself this time, because I felt so clever.

One night Jenny had fried fish and cooked macaroni & cheese for supper, and being of various schedules, we ate as we showed up in the kitchen.

Paul showed up last, looked around, and said, "Is there anybody left to eat besides me?"

I said, "I didn't realize we were under siege."

Visiting Uncle Johnny

I used to read The Story About Ping to the children.  Ping was a duck who had "two sisters and three brothers and eleven aunts and seven uncles and forty-two cousins."

I had two sisters and three brothers and nine aunts and nine uncles (if you count spouses too) and I think fifty-two cousins.

It's odd.  When you’re little, aunts and uncles are just part of the landscape of your life, drifting in and out of importance, fun to imitate and discuss, and enjoyable to visit, but you only visit them when Mom and Dad take--or drag--you along.  Or they come to visit you, and you observe that your mom and dad are subtly different people when they are with their siblings.

Then you start a family and live far away, and aunts and uncles get old and die, but you are busy with your life so it's sad but you move on.

Suddenly you wake up and realize that you have lots of questions about family history, the past, and who your parents used to be, and the only people with access to this repository of information and stories are your aunts and uncles, and almost all of them are gone.

A few years ago, I resolved that even though I lived in Oregon and had a busy life, I was going to visit my remaining aunt and uncle, Mom's sister Vina in Iowa and Dad's brother Johnny in Kansas.

Two years ago, I spoke at a ladies' retreat in Illinois. Afterwards, Paul and I drove to Iowa and spent a few days with Aunt Vina.  She told stories while I took notes the best I could while laughing til I cried.

I asked her deep and hard questions as well, and left with a new understanding of my mom.

But I still needed to visit Uncle Johnny in Kansas, a difficult assignment when you live in Oregon.

“You’ll probably come see me when I’m in a box,” he told me during one of our phone conversations. Johnny can be a bit melancholy.

And yes, he talks on the phone despite being Amish.  He also zips around during the week on a tractor.  I think he’s New Order, but I’m not sure.  The Amish church in Hutchinson, Kansas, has always played by its own rules.

When we planned this trip, we had events on two consecutive weekends—the INSPIRE ladies’ retreat in Indiana and the BMA Ministers’ Weekend in Delaware.  But what should we do in between?

“Let’s visit Uncle Johnny.”

So we did.

“Now when you come in the driveway, you’ll be coming around the west side of the house,” he told me on the phone.  “There’s a yard light on the north side.  You can park there, right on the grass, it’s ok.  Come in the north garage door and then go in the west door and there’s a door to the basement.  Your room is west of the kitchen.  Ich hap da fridge aw kschtekt fa eich. [I lit the fridge for you.]”

Got it.

The sign on the door said, “Johnny’s Econo Lodge.” He hosts a lot of guests.




I grew up in Minnesota, so I was used to farmers who orient themselves around the four points of the compass rather than right and left.  “Go north on Highway 4 out of Grove City, then west on 3, and north again on 532nd Avenue.” That sort of thing.

But Kansas was even more of a perfect grid than Minnesota, with no lakes to mess up the graph-paper lines, and Johnny was probably the most direction-oriented guy I’ve ever seen.

“The east one!” he said, when I wasn’t sure which of two switches was for the living room light.  “There’s room for that on the west side,” when I was putting the milk in the fridge.

Johnny’s granddaughter Kimmy said it’s not just him—this is how Kansans are.

At 93, Johnny is still Dad’s little brother and his only living sibling.  The two send long letters back and forth, and when they’re together, like at Dad’s 100th birthday party, they can’t hear each other but still communicate just fine.

They both remember names, dates, and events with unbelievable accuracy and detail.  Johnny is more a natural storyteller than Dad, but both of their tales come bubbling from a deep well of memory, spinning off into lists of facts about who moved to Indiana in 1957 and who went to Garnett, Kansas; who was ordained bishop, and when, births and baptisms and marriages and deaths, interspersed with unexpected details. Lydia was a widow who married Levi Knepp. Their daughter Sarah married a Schweitzer named Manual Zehr, and their daughter Lydiann married Joe Helmuth.

Schweitzer??  Is that a “Swiss Amish”? I’m not sure and didn’t have a chance to ask.

Johnny and Dad both have clear memories of their school days in Oklahoma and the odd mixture of cultures—Amish, white American, and Native American—a Cheyenne/Arapaho mix.  “The Dutchman, the White Man, and the True American, we called ourselves,” Johnny told me.  “The Amish and Indian girls were alike because they always wore dresses and wore their hair in long braids.”

When they exchanged names for Christmas, the Amish kids liked it when the Indian kids got their names because they would actually have money to buy gifts, thanks to the government stipends they got. When Johnny was 7 or 8 years old, Richard Tallbull Bearhead had his name and gave him a little cast-iron car.  He still has it.

Cousin Freeman's daughter Kayla modeled the shawl.

Johnny also brought out an embroidered, tasseled shawl he got from an Indian man.  “Maybe he’ll do the Indian dance,” said Kimmy.  “He still knows how.”

To my disappointment, he didn’t indulge us.

Bertha has been gone for a couple of years now, and you can tell that Johnny still grieves deeply for her. He was 18 when he asked Bertha for a date.  She turned him down.

Her dad said,  “What’d you do that for? You’re 16 now!”

Her mom said, “Oh, if he really wants you, he’ll be back.”

He did, and he was.

My dad was away in CPS during that time.  Johnny had gotten the farm deferment, and he and his dad, John A, Senior, worked like horses, doing the work of three or four men.

In addition, John A. had been ordained bishop, which meant he had to travel to other churches to hold communion services.  One weekend he was gone to eastern Oklahoma.  “Meet me at the bus stop in Weatherford at 2:00 Monday morning,” he said.

Johnny and Bertha went on a date which must have gone late, because Johnny didn’t bother going to bed.  He took the horse and buggy to town and tied them up behind the grocery store, then waited out front.  Bill Evans, the policeman, was parked in front of the store.  He was leaned back in his seat, with his hat over his eyes, looking sound asleep.

The bus came and it was full of army boys.  “But no Dad.”

He waited some more.  After a while another bus came.  This one was also full of army boys. And no Dad.

What now?  He asked around.  No, they weren’t expecting a third bus.

So Johnny untied the horse, headed for home, and went to bed.

The next morning he got up at 5:00 to do chores. 

[I can’t see how he could have gotten more than an hour of sleep.]

He came downstairs and there was John A at the kitchen table.  “Where were you?” Johnny said.  “Where were YOU?” said his dad.

A third bus had arrived after Johnny left.  His dad was on it.

Bill Evans, who was somehow aware of everything that had transpired despite seemingly snoozing in his car all night, told John A. that his son had been there, parked behind the store, but he left after the second bus came.

Bill said, “Hop in.  I’ll drive you home.”

Three miles from home, Bill looked at his gas gauge. “I can’t take you any further.  I have just enough gas to get back to town.”

John A said he could give him some gas from the tank at the farm, but Bill refused. “I’m not supposed to do that.”

So Bill went back to town and the tired bishop who had just spend the weekend away at the thankless task of helping a church with communion, and who faced another week of endless physical labor on the farm, gathered his things and walked the three miles home.

“He was all about peace and love,” Johnny says.  Other bishops would lay down the law, but John would give people a chance.  A man in the church who was good at leading singing “had a problem with tobacco. Other people said, ‘He shouldn’t have any responsibilities in church.’ But Dad went and talked to him. ‘We’ll keep you on as song leader, and you see if you can’t do something about that habit in the next year.’ And Dad let ‘em go if they wanted to leave the Amish and go to the Mennonite church.”

Not all bishops are that gracious when people want to leave the church.

Then it was time for a joke.  “I never quit smoking,” Johnny told us, looking serious.

We thought, “WHAT?!”

“I never started either,” he said, and laughed and laughed.

Believing in peace and love carried a higher price then than now.  Mose Yoder—was he Johnny and Dad’s cousin or was he Bertha’s uncle? I can’t remember—was drafted in World War I.  Years later, he would sit at “Bendick Dawdy’s” and tell stories.  Since there were no provisions for conscientious objectors, he was in the camps with the “army boys.”  It was really tough.  Johnny didn’t give details, but I know there were Anabaptist CO’s who died in similar situations.   But then the army boys started getting sick, one after the other, and pretty soon almost all of them were down, but Mose never got sick.  He would go around and take care of the others, bring them water, clean up after them, and even clean up their puke.  And thus he won their respect. Things went much better after that, and he was put in charge of the CO boys.

This is why it’s good to visit elderly aunts and uncles.  You get a glimpse of the “great cloud of witnesses” in your past.  And you start to understand that posting a Peace and Love meme on Facebook is a very different thing than cleaning up your enemies’ vomit.

Like Dad, Johnny is fascinated with how life cycles around and comes full circle. After World War II, Dad worked with MCC, Mennonite Central Committee, helping to settle Mennonite refugees in Paraguay.  Among their many other projects, MCC has a portable meat canner staffed by volunteers who take it around to different farming communities and process meat to be sent to places like tuberculosis hospitals in North Korea.  The canner came to Kansas last year, and the young men in charge of it stayed at Johnny’s Econo Lodge.  Two of the young men were from Paraguay, grandchildren of the Mennonites my dad had helped out in 1947.

How cool is that?

No wonder I’m fascinated with stories, connections, and history.

Uncle Johnny's horses, the Kansas sun and wind, Paul's shadow, and me.

Quote of the Day:
“I look at Kim Jong Un and I think, he’s like five years older than me and he’s dictator of a country! What am I doing with my life?!”
--Johnny’s zippy granddaughter Kimmy Yoder

Kimmy talks with her hands. Like I do. So
it must be a Yoder thing.

Two Indiana Incidents

Two things about Indiana before we fly on to Kansas:

After the retreat on Saturday wound down, Paul took me out to eat at Das Dutchman's Essen Haus which features not only good food and bustling waitresses in kappa but also bottles of Amish peanut butter spread, right at your table.



I had already ordered the buffet before I discovered this.  Had I known, I might have simply ordered a plate of bread or buns and stuffed myself with homemade bread covered with the sticky goodness known as Amish peanut butter, and left happy and satisfied.



Do you not know what I'm talking about, you poor neglected worldly person?

Amish peanut butter spread is a mixture of creamy peanut butter, marshmallow creme, corn syrup, fairy dust, and the sweet nectar of magic flowers grown in the gentle shade of grandmotherly trees. It is served at the noon meal on Sundays, when church is finally over and the backless benches are set on little sawhorsey racks and cleverly transformed into tables spread with plates of bread and pickles and bologna and bowls of peanut butter. All the moms sit around the table.  You are so hungry and you stand behind your mom because she is the mom and you are the kid, just like all kids over toddler age stand behind their moms, and she spreads a slice of bread with Amish peanut butter spread and folds it in half and hands it back to you, and you bite into the sweet softness of it and everything in the world is ok for that moment. Everything.

If you are really young and stupid, you tear off the bread crusts and toss them under the table, thinking your mom will never know it was you.  But she will know. And she will Look at you like Jesus looked at Peter after the rooster crowed.

Like Peter, you will go out and weep bitterly, and repent, and not do that again.

And two moms down, Voll Edna calmly smears peanut butter on bread and places a SLICE OF BOLOGNA on top, plus maybe a few pickles, which is schantlich and dreadful, and she hands it back to her son Robert, who is your age and just so gross, probably because he's a boy.

But even these bumps in the path of the Sunday meal smooth out into joy and satisfaction when your mom hands you a second piece of bread spread with Amish peanut butter.

Because it is just that magical.

You missed out, you poor Englisch child.

Paul went to the Essen Haus gift shop and bought me a bottle to bring home.  In theory I am avoiding simple carbs because they make me gain weight and make my asthma worse, but Amish peanut butter doesn't count.  It makes everything all better. Everything.

The second story is one that someone asked me to tell but I was waiting for permission, which I got.  

Ladies' retreats are like icebergs in that everything you see up above is gleaming in the sunshine and just floating in the ocean, calm and stately, but the truth is that down below, out of sight, a lot is going on--jagged edges and swift currents and pockets of darkness.

As I mentioned in my last post, Judy Beachy had the idea for the retreat and has been one of the main organizers and visionaries for it.  She is a tall and lovely and gregarious woman who set the mood for the entire retreat and put us all at ease.

But I got to see just a bit of the currents under the iceberg, so to speak.

Saturday morning I came downstairs from the blessed little hideaway in a Sunday school room that they had prepared for me.  The first session was to start in five minutes and there was Judy, rushing down the hall with a frantic look on her face.  Have I seen --I think it was Verba-- she asked.

No....is something wrong?

Yes!

"I forgot to wear a slip, and you can see LINES, and I have to be up there in five minutes!"

She was wearing a stretchy knit skirt, and we all know how knit skirts can behave.

I said, "You can wear mine!"

"Don't you need it?"

"I have a corduroy skirt. I just wore a slip to keep it from skritching on my pantyhose. I'm sure it won't show through."

We ducked into a prayer room.  I shimmied out of my half slip and she shimmied into it. 

Three minutes later she strode across the stage, smooth and smiling, and called us all together to worship.

I do love it when I get to see behind the scenes.

Saving the day is nice too.

Indiana and INSPIRE

 This was the plan.

1. Go to Indiana and speak at INSPIRE2017.

2. Go to Kansas and visit Johnny, my one remaining uncle, to fill up the week before we went to the event Paul really wanted to take in, which was:

3. Go to Delaware for a pastors' weekend.

But then an older fellow from our church passed away, so we canceled out of going to Delaware, but we still did the first two.

First we flew to Chicago and drove to Indiana in a pouring rain.  Paul has started traveling with me to these events, thanks to Southwest’s two-for-one Companion Pass, and especially when we have suitcases heavy with books [thanks to Southwest’s free luggage perk], a car to rent, and a long dark rainy drive to Middlebury, I am very happy to have him along.

I discovered he also makes an excellent book table guy.  During breaks, I find it almost impossible to chat, make change, get coffee, and sign books without getting completely confused.

So Paul very capably manned the book table, and women who were too shy to come talk to me would come over and chat with him.

That made me laugh.

INSPIRE was the brainchild of Judy Beachy and Gladys Yoder. Judy was inspired by the Borderland Ladies' Retreat up in International Falls, Minnesota, which drew women from as far away as Iowa and Manitoba.  Borderland was the result of my friend and cousin Kay Knepp's vision.  And Kay was inspired by the --oh what is that retreat called?-- I'll just call it the Charming Southern Ladies' Sweet Tea and Hospitality Festival At Hartwell, Georgia.

So just think about how many women have been blessed by the ladies who originally did something about their dream of a retreat in Georgia.

I believe this was the fifth year for INSPIRE, and 700 women atttended. Most of them were from the conservative end of the Mennonite continuum, including lots of Amish.

The committee in charge knows the power of preparation, welcome, good food, Spirit, and beauty to minister to women. And they know that the name tags and flowers and salads and scheduling all add up to something spiritually embracing that is more than the sum of its parts.

Iced coffee is important too.  The cooks reported that they went through 90 gallons of milk for this purpose alone.

An aged "Queen Esther" told her story.

GraceFul sang and it was beautiful.

Normally I don't get too terrified of speaking at women's retreats but honestly,  700 people!  And it was in a big church auditorium shaped like a 3/4 circle, with stair-stepped pews at the sides rising to the balcony--the kind of place the Knox Brothers sing at.  But there I was, and there was no Arnold over there at the piano to my left.  Which is actually good, because that would have meant I had to sing.

When you speak at an event, there are always predictable Moments.

The Moment when it’s time to print off that document and catch your plane and go, so whatever editing you’ve already done is all you will do, except for last-minute margin notes in pen and ink.

And a Moment of gasping panic when you’re sure you left your notebook and all the speeches on the plane.

And the Moment of relief when you find it after all, under the coat, on the bed.

The Moment when you walk into the church or hotel and heads turn and recognize you as The Speaker, and you can see their eyes measuring and evaluating, and it would be so nice to have a sister around, or a few friends like my old standbys, Rachel and Sharon, who know me too well to take me seriously, and who love to unnerve me by murmuring my name in undertones, just within earshot.

And who make me laugh.

This display of veils for sale in the bathroom made me laugh too.

But then there’s also the Moment when someone in the crowd says my name and their face looks familiar and gradually the memory focuses—Lois from Cristal Lake in 1989! Kendra the former Gospel Echoes volunteer! Leona of the wonderful backrubs from Plain City! Rachel from Virginia who publishes Daughters of Promise! My friend Ilva!

And three hugs later you don’t feel like such a stranger after all.

And of course there’s the Moment before your first talk when you want to turn and run.

But you don’t.

And by the time the weekend is over there have been many Moments of connecting, laughing, discussing, crying, and mutual understanding.

At the end, when you’re exhausted beyond all bearing and your voice is hoarse and you’re hungry and thirsty because you’ve been too busy to eat and drink, there’s a Moment of feeling Finished.  What is said is said, and what is unsaid is unsaid, world without end, Amen.

Then you go home. 

The INSPIRE committee stayed a lot longer than I did, cleaning and dismantling, and I'm guessing they were a lot more exhausted than I was.

May they be greatly blessed.

 Paul and I stayed at Jim and Linda Bontrager’s guest house, a well-appointed retreat with plenty of snacks and coffee and tea.

You know that lady that set up a room for Elisha to stay whenever he came by, with a table, bed, chair, and lamp? Linda is a modern version of her, with that gift for knowing just what will make a guest feel rested and cared for.

I want to be like Linda when I grow up and also when we renovate Amy’s room into a guest room.

We spent the rest of the weekend in Indiana and saw lots of people in a short time.  My cousin Jerry and some of his family when we attended Fair Haven Church on Sunday, former NYP folks at Lowell and Doris Lee’s for Sunday dinner, Tom the former Oregon guy who founded the Acapella Harmony Quartet and traveled with Paul a few times and who now has a charming wife and 5 fun children, and my writer friend Rhonda who filled me up with breakfast and wisdom.

Linda’s family owns a place in Shipshewana called Davis Mercantile, a three-story timbered astonishment with shops and cafes you could spend all day at and an old-fashioned carousel on the top floor.

The staircase winds up around a massive foundation-to-roof log that was trucked in from British Columbia.  I don’t know what inspired them to make a huge Douglas fir the focal point of an emporium in Indiana, except that Linda’s dad, Alvin, used to have a sawmill and no doubt grew familiar with logs from many places.

Northern Indiana is home to some 20,000 Amish people and also many NRA’s, as Tom calls them—Not Really Amish.  I did lots of gazing out the car window and exclaiming or squealing by turns—the square footage of these HOUSES! They are HUGE. Oh there’s a school!!  Oooooooh look!! A pony cart with a bunch of little girls in it!

I also enjoyed watching the Amish folks shopping at Walmart and, even more, listening as a group of Englisch shoppers chatted in Pennsylvania Dutch.

I’ve noticed that the locals don’t squeal about the Amish.

If I were Amish, I think I’d appreciate people who take me for granted.

But I’ve been gone from the culture so long, I act like a tourist.

From Indiana we went to Kansas, but this is enough of a travelogue for one day.

Quote of the Day:

Over lunch at the Davis Mercantile in a culture with a large pool of people and a small pool of names:

Paul: [tells about the seed bins his grandpa built]

Alvin: I made bins like that for someone sixty years ago. Dave Bontrager.

Linda: Big Dave?

Alvin: No...

Linda: Fair Haven Dave? Dump Truck Dave?

[He was eventually identified. I forget how.]

Book Signing in Kansas

Paul and I are in Indiana at the moment and plan to fly to Kansas tomorrow to visit my Uncle Johnny.

You're all invited to come say hello at a book signing on Tuesday.

Glenn's Bulk Foods and Gospel Bookstore
6405 W. Morgan Ave., Hutchinson, KS
620-662-2875
Tuesday, January 24
11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

January's LFH--On Fabric Obsessions and New Years Resolutions

Changing the fabric of my life

  

By Dorcas Smucker

Register-Guard columnist

JAN. 8, 2017

My New Year’s resolution is to get rid of my fabric.

Well, some of it, at least, like the mauve prints from the 1990s. And I won’t throw it away, God forbid, but maybe I can use it up, sell it or give it away if I find a deserving home.

I have been looking the other way and humming distractedly for quite some time now, pretending not to notice as my fabric stash has multiplied like mice in dark totes in the attic and expanded in my sewing room, swallowing cubic feet of space, spare rotary cutters and skirt patterns.

After all, I have plans for every piece. A summer dress, a tote bag, pajamas and many, many quilts when all the kids leave home.

Fabric keeps, you know. My cottons will wait until I’m ready.

When I purchased them, each piece whispered to me, promising vast stretches of time in some vague future, time to plan and pin and cut and stitch something useful and flattering and full of delight. “Take me home,” the fabric said, “and in your busy life I will magically create more time. Time for me.”

We have a deep friendship, my fabric and I, and we share so many sweet memories. These ’90s florals came from that lady who was selling her mother’s estate — a whole house full of fabric and thread, shocking in its magnitude. I promised I would never become such a hoarder even as I filled two WinCo bags with yardage for the church sewing circle. And just a few pieces for me.

This cute elephant print came from a store in Thailand, where the fabric rolls stand in the suffocating heat like clustered forests with tiny paths between, and a little old man follows you around with scissors and a meter stick. Best of all, most of the fabric is only 68 baht — just over $2 — per meter.

To be honest, I’ve tried to get rid of fabric in the past year and even sold a few pieces on eBay and a few more to women in a Mennonite group online. Leftovers from 1998 sold in 15 minutes. “In the big communities in the East, everybody wants a dress that’s not like anyone else’s,” my sister Margaret explained.

So, some lady in Pennsylvania would soon be wearing a dress with big burgundy flowers and ruffly dark green leaves. Bless her heart.

I sewed baby blankets and dresses and tote bags.

For Christmas 2015, I made 38 layered hot pads to use up my scraps. When I finished, I had more scraps than ever. With math like this, surely the only answer was to pick up more fabric in the well-organized craft corner of St. Vinnie’s on Division Avenue.

So I did.

My mother used to say that if you like to sew, fabric finds its way into your life. She seemed to think it had a magnetic force, and she was helpless before it.

She seldom bought new fabric, and in her long life she made innumerable quilts, dolls, dresses and toys, plus countless comforters for the church sewing circle to knot and send to Romania. Yet when she died she still had dressers full of fabric, boxes in the attic labeled “wool for rugs,” bins and barrels and shelves and totes laden with calicoes and knits and plaids.

I am so much like her.

Mom liked to tell the story of when she and Dad were visiting relatives in Kansas, and Aunt Bertha told Mom she’s started piecing quilts.

Mom said, “Oh, that’s wonderful!”

Bertha chuckled a bit guiltily. “I’m starting to collect fabric. I have an awful lot already.”

Mom laughed sympathetically. “Oh, I know how that is!”

Bertha then pulled open a dresser drawer and confessed, “Just look here. I have a whole drawer full already!”

Mom pretended to be amazed.

When she told us the story later, we laughed and laughed.

When did I first suspect I might have a problem?

Was it when I wrenched my back tripping over a milk crate of fabric on the floor, or when I dug through totes and drawers, unable to find the red-checked gingham I needed to finish a Christmas present?

Or was it when I bought another piece of red gingham at MECCA in Eugene — that alluring shop with floor-to-ceiling shelves of colorful donated fabric — and then found the original in the attic, a week later?

Or was it when I stood in my cluttered little sewing room and had a brief panicky sense that I was the miller’s daughter in a room full of straw that I would have to spin into gold, and it couldn’t be done?

Mostly, the message got through on Jan. 2 when I walked into my chilly back pantry, glanced at the shiny aluminum pressure canner on a high shelf, and thought, “Hey! I could store fabric in that! It would be mouse-proof and everything!”

Wait. Really, Mrs. Smucker? The pressure canner?

I had a problem. I was addicted. The fabric had lied to me, and none of my pieces came with a magic coupon on the back for two free hours of uninterrupted time.

How convenient that this revelation came just as the new year was beginning — as everyone knows, the best time to start a new way of life and break free from old patterns.

My friend Pauline isn’t so sure about New Year’s resolutions. “Why not change when you need to change instead of waiting for the first of the year?” she says.

Pauline is an organized person who makes detailed menus every week, so she might not understand how I live life.

Another friend, Debbie, said, “We need strong motivation to actually change.” And Rebekah added, “Like desperation. ‘I can’t go on like this.’ ”

I was more frustrated than desperate, but maybe that would work just as well.

“I tend to put my head down and keep going without thinking about whether or not this is actually working,” I told my family. “And New Year’s is a good time to evaluate.”

They agreed, cautious about appearing too eager to donate at least some of my stash to the Mennonite Relief Sale.

Ben said, “I think resolutions can be good, but they need to be measurable goals.”

Jenny agreed. “It doesn’t work to write down, ‘Be kinder.’ ”

At age 17, she is so disciplined that she writes her New Year’s resolutions in her journal, remembers where they are, finds them at the end of the year, and evaluates her progress.

She did pretty well last year, she reported, adding that she always writes down one resolution that she knows for sure she’ll keep, just in case she doesn’t do so well on the others.

Last year this resolve was “Don’t smoke.”

All right then. Specific but manageable goals.

1. Don’t buy any new fabric this year. Unless I need a new dress for somebody’s wedding. Or backing for a quilt. Or it’s free.

2. Turn all that flannel into baby blankets for the pregnancy center. Well, most of it. Save a piece or two for pajamas for Jenny.

3. Sell fabric on eBay or give it away. At least the pieces I can bear to part with.

4. Don’t start new projects until the old ones are finished. Unless the girls need new dresses for a wedding. Or I need a birthday gift for someone.

And finally, a resolution I can keep for sure:

5. Slip to my sewing room in spare minutes to plan and snip and stitch, to drape my beautiful fabrics over my hands, to coordinate their vibrant colors and to hear their whispered promises of simple happiness and plenty of time and infinite creative possibilities.