Old Order Mennonite Memoirs

The wheels on the van were going round and round on the turnpike one day years ago. The mists of time have hidden the exact date from my memory. I’m not even sure why we were in Lancaster County, but we were on our way home. As the miles grew long, we took to singing to shorten them. Mr. Wagner, our driver, asked us to sing the song “Because He Lives,” but we didn’t know it. Although we came home and learned it, we never again sang songs in Mr. Wagner’s van. But last week my husband and I helped sing that beautiful hymn at his funeral.

The long vigil is over for his faithful wife, Doris. Her gentle hands endured to the end of nine years of caregiving with the help of her great-grandson Anthony and other family members. Like the season of spring, which brings an end to winter, Tuesday, April 2, brought an end to a union of 66 years.

The next day when I was knotting comforters with friends, the wind was really strong. It kicked dust from field lanes into the air. It dried up puddles in the fields and pummeled my husband on the tractor seat when he was disking a field for alfalfa seeds.

On its warm gales, the chipping sparrow came back to his summer home. His song greeted me as I stepped outside with little grandchildren hands nestled in mine.

“The chipping sparrow!” I exclaimed, about the unseen singer, my “warm weather” bird. I heard him sing the next morning, but it was a short song. The rain that fell on Friday was cold enough to include sleet at times.

It wasn’t much warmer in Maryland that evening, but the forsythias were blooming like bushes of sunlight in the dreary spring evening. Mostly I was indoors, however, with others who gathered to watch the school program where granddaughter Cassidy, age 9, and Gerome, age 6, were among the cultivated singers.

Warm weather came in the morning, but again I had to finish my weekly cleaning before I could escape. This time my husband and I took a round to repair, replace and relocate bluebird houses on my trail. Beside the woods we heard the towhee sing about the delightful warmth and the spring peeper chorus rose from wet woodland bottoms before night ever came on.

Upon returning I began the daunting task of cleaning my raspberry patch. As I hacked and pulled at ground ivy and chickweed, a bluebird couple sat close by to cheer me on or perhaps they were saying thanks for the new house. I was so pleased to finish before supper.

For me, it was a raspberry patch to clean, but for the youth, it was Raspberry Lane for an evening singing. It was miles away from New Enterprise but not too far for one young man who took his first walk with a Piney Creek girl that evening.

Robin songs roused me on Sunday morning, but I should have risen earlier since I was expecting 18 guests at our table to celebrate a birthday. I wasn’t all in a dither, but maybe I should have been. I didn’t even double check my menu before we left for Piney Creek church in the buggy with our daughter and her family. Tyson, age 6, sat on my lap while Lyla, age 21 months, sat beside me on her mom’s lap. In the front seat, with his dad and grandfather, was Conner, age 3. But it was Kaitlyn, age 8, who sat beside me in church.

It wasn’t until we were home again and getting out of the buggy that I thought about my meatloaf, safe and sound in the fridge! My daughter helped me make small meat balls and I put them in cast iron pans for broiling in the oven. With some butter and bacon drippings they were ready even before the mashed potatoes and noodles.

After dishes, the girls and I took the babies outside in the warm outdoors where everyone else was either playing in the sandbox, riding on the hill, or playing tennis and Kan Jam.

In the evening another summer sound caught my attention. The warbling song of purple martins matched with the first daffodils which burst into bloom since the delightful warmth and mingled with soft rain drops from the sky.