The Amish Midwife - By Mindy Starns Clark Page 0,85

but it was quite a ways away from his shop. I asked if her husband’s aunt was available to help her, and she said no, the aunt had died a year ago. I asked what other support she had. “The women in our district.” Her eyes dimmed.

“What is it?” I asked.

Tears filled her eyes. “It’s nothing.”

I patted her hand.

“I miss my mother. I don’t have sisters, but I have cousins back home. Things are so different here for me—even the language.”

I had one of those “aha” moments. Susan and Louise weren’t speaking Pennsylvania Dutch. They were speaking the Swiss Amish dialect Mr. Miller had told me about when he translated the letter from Abraham Sommers.

I asked Susan about Indiana, and her eyes lit up as she spoke. She had grown up in a big brick house in Adams County on a dairy farm. She and her husband were from the same district, and they knew by the time they were fifteen they wanted to marry. And they had, at nineteen.

I asked why they had moved, and she said her husband had grown restless with living in the same place his entire life and wanted to see more of the country. They had come out to visit his aunt and uncle on their wedding trip, and last year his uncle had written, saying he was looking for someone to pass the buggy business on to as he didn’t have any children.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time…” she said, her voice trailing off.

“Does your husband like it here?”

“He likes his work,” she replied, and then she began talking about the buggies in Indiana. They were topless and the seats didn’t have backs. “I like the buggies here much better,” she said. “And,” she pointed to her kitchen, “that the stove runs on propane, and we have indoor plumbing. Back home we had a woodstove and an outside pump and privy.” She was nearly animated as she spoke. She laughed a little and then said, “Those I don’t miss, but I do miss the yodeling back home, straight from the Alps.”

I smiled. That was a sight to imagine, an Amish yodeler. I thought of my ancestor, Elsbeth Sommers, who had left Switzerland in the 1800s and ended up in Indiana. For all I knew, there had been plenty of Amish yodelers back then. I asked how far she had lived from Goshen, Indiana, where the Mennonite school, Goshen College, was.

“Oh, that’s a long ways—on the other side of Fort Wayne. More than two hours by car.” She went on to tell me that she had a Mennonite friend who went to college there, but she had never visited the area.

After the exam I told Susan I wanted to stay a few minutes and fold her laundry.

“No, I can do that.”

I shook my head. “You need to get a nap too while your boys are still asleep. And have Louise lie down with you. All of you need to build up your strength.”

She started to protest but then simply said, “Thank you.” I would talk to Marta about Susan’s needs. She couldn’t take care of herself and sick children and a house all by herself. She needed help.

Twenty minutes later I left the house, wondering if Giselle had kept me and joined the Amish church, or if Mammi had chosen to raise me, would I be living the life Susan was? Except I would have cousins, aunts, and a grandmother nearby. I thought of Peggy and her oldest daughter. I had no reason to believe I wouldn’t have been accepted by the Amish community around me, nor that Giselle wouldn’t have found a husband, meaning I would have eventually had a father. I couldn’t fathom what had happened to change my destiny.

I didn’t have any more appointments for the day and decided to do some more sightseeing. As the sun broke through the gray clouds to the west, I drove north and stopped at the Bird-in-Hand bakery and picked up a loaf of homemade bread and a box of sugar cookies, thinking of Zed and his afternoon snack. As I left I didn’t turn toward Strasburg and then Marta’s, but instead went west toward the city of Lancaster. I drove aimlessly through residential streets, gawking at the houses and yards. Finally I turned south. It wasn’t long until I knew where I was headed.

I scanned the pasture as I turned down the lane. Cows grazed lazily in the field, picking up