Family Blessings. Anna Schmidt

I was thirteen. My brothers and sisters and I were raised by our uncle.”

      “I see.” Another thing that he and Rolf had in common. She looked up at him.

      “And that’s probably a good deal more than you need or want to know of my childhood,” he said with a wry smile.

      Pleasant pocketed the recipe and turned to open the bakery door. “I’ll give this to my father when he returns and let him know that you stopped by.” For reasons she didn’t fully understand, she hesitated. “Good day, Herr Troyer,” she said softly.

      “And to you,” he replied and he headed down the steps and on to the empty building he’d purchased to turn into an ice cream shop.

      Almost as soon as Pleasant had entered the bakery, Hilda was back, her brow knitted into a frown of disapproval. “What was that paper he gave you?” she asked as she ran one finger over the display case and clucked her tongue at the dust she found there.

      “A recipe for me to give Papa,” Pleasant replied. “And now if you’ll excuse me, Hilda, I have …”

      “That man is trouble,” Hilda muttered as she followed Pleasant into the kitchen. “He has this habit of laughing and smiling far too easily. In these hard times what does he find to be so happy about? You’ll want to stay clear of him,” she warned.

      Pleasant decided to ignore this last remark. Ever since Merle’s death, Hilda seemed to have assumed the need to speak for him. Pleasant could almost hear her late husband issuing the same warning to keep her distance. It occurred to her that Merle would not have liked Jeremiah Troyer. Pleasant could not say how she knew that or what the basis for Merle’s dislike might have been. But she knew beyond a doubt that he would have offered her the same warning that his sister offered now. And as Hilda prattled on about the foolishness of even thinking of opening an ice cream shop in the middle of a depression, Pleasant could not help but think that perhaps she would be wise to take heed of such signs.

      Amish communities around the country had long ago established the habit of holding their biweekly Sunday services in private homes or barns around the district. In fact, many districts were composed of no more than twenty-six households, making sure that each family would host services at least once during the year. In Celery Fields, they still had a way to go to reach twenty-six families. The community was still growing and for the second time that year, the service was to be held at Pleasant’s house. The simple wooden benches stored on a special wagon and moved from house to house as the services did had arrived on Saturday and now stood lined up in the two large front rooms of the house.

      In the two years that had followed her husband’s death, Pleasant had made a number of changes that most everyone in the small community applauded.

      For one thing, the citizens of Celery Fields no longer dreaded gathering in the house that Merle had always kept cloistered and shuttered even in the stifling summer heat. On the day of Merle’s funeral, friends and neighbors had arrived to find the windows and doors of the house thrown open, exposing the somber and shadowy interior of the house to the light. Pleasant had stood together with Merle’s four children on the wide front porch, greeting each new arrival. Further, when time came for setting up the benches—usually all crowded into the small front room at Merle’s insistence—Pleasant had suggested spreading them into the adjoining dining room and giving people more room.

      Then there was the matter of how she had handled the children—three boys and one girl. It was well-known that she had married Merle more because he was her one chance at ever finding a husband than because of any deep love for the man. For his part, Merle had made it clear that he had chosen her for equally practical reasons. She had managed her father’s house after the deaths of her mother and her father’s second wife. She had practically raised her two half sisters, and even now she continued to help her father in the family’s bakery business. Merle had needed a mother for his four children and someone to manage the impressive house he’d built on the edge of the acres of celery fields he farmed. Theirs had been more of a business arrangement than a marriage. And that had suited them both.

      Pleasant thought on all of these matters as she listened to the service, trying hard to keep her focus on the children and the responsibilities God had given her rather than the broad back of Jeremiah Troyer seated just two rows in front of her. When the service finally ended she hurried off to make sure that her oldest son, Rolf, had put out hay for the horses waiting to take the churchgoers home later, and then headed around the side of the house toward the kitchen.

      On her way, she was struck by what a truly beautiful day God had given them. She took a minute to pause and close her eyes as she drew in a breath of the sweet warm October air. She could smell the herbs thriving in flowerbeds she’d planted herself all around the perimeter of the house. She almost felt as if she could smell the sun itself as the warmth of its rays bathed her face. She silently offered up a prayer of thanks for all of the blessings that God had seen fit to bestow on her as well as a plea for forgiveness for all the times she had complained about the life she’d been given. If she opened her eyes and turned away from the house and the bounty of its herbs and flowers, she knew that she would find herself looking out to the fields that stretched out for acres beyond the house. Merle’s legacy for his children that had once thrived lay fallow now, the furrows parched and cracked. Still, the land and house were paid for so she thanked God that she and the children had food and shelter and, in these hard times, she felt truly blessed.

      In the kitchen Hilda and several women were working in an easy and familiar rhythm. While the men reset the benches, the women prepared platters of fried chicken, mixed up a variety of salads and cut up pies still warm from the morning’s baking. Pleasant joined her good friend, Hannah Harnisher, to help slice the heavy loaves of bread she’d baked the day before and lined up on one counter.

      Hannah had once been married to Pleasant’s brother, but after he died she had married Levi Harnisher. The couple had met a few years earlier after Hannah’s son had run away with the circus—a circus then owned by Levi. Pleasant and Gunther had gone with Hannah to Wisconsin to retrieve the boy and the journey had forged a lifelong friendship between the two women—one they had not shared before that journey.

      Pleasant had been different in those days. Life had dealt her a number of disappointments early on—her mother’s death, her father’s remarriage bringing two new siblings into the household. And then her brother had married the beautiful Hannah and the two of them had been so very happy. In those days, Pleasant had viewed each event as further evidence that she had been abandoned by those she loved. Then she had gone to Wisconsin with Hannah and along the way had gotten to know a group of women—circus folk—changing her outlook forever. With these new and unlikely friends she had discovered humor in the face of hardship and kindness in the face of the prejudice that is born of ignorance.

      “Who was that man Gunther was sitting with?” Hannah asked.

      “That’s Bishop Troyer’s great-nephew from Ohio.”

      “He’s visiting then?”

      “No, apparently he’s come here to go into business.” She could see that several other women—especially those who lived some distance from town and were eager to learn more about the handsome stranger they’d seen for the first time that morning—had leaned in closer to hear what she was saying. “An ice cream shop,” she added, setting off a chain reaction of whispers as the news was repeated from one group to the next. The women were soon occupied speculating about the addition of an ice cream parlor and whether or not that was a good thing or something far too frivolous for an Amish community.

      “Yes,” Hilda added, “it seems that the bishop’s nephew—great-nephew that is—has purchased the empty building next to the bakery and the storehouse behind.”

      As this new bit of information set off a wave of speculation among the others about whether or not the newcomer would also live in the building, Pleasant moved closer to Hannah and lowered her voice. “He has asked me—well, Father, really—to provide him with the baked cones he will use to serve his ice cream,” she confided. “He expects to be in need of a steady supply.”