Leah threw herself into her new routine.
She got up early. She assisted the women with their work. She helped with laundry and hanging clothes on the line. She learned to strain milk. She aided in making butter. She picked up the finer points of kneading bread. She weeded the garden. She picked strawberries and made preserves. She swept the house and the porches. And she worked—for many hours each day—on the magazine.
In the evening she gathered with the family to listen while Ivan read a chapter or two from the German Bible. While she was able to catch some of the majestic cadence, she learned to follow in the English Bible she’d been lent, as long as she had enough time to find the chapters before he started.
And afterward, she wrote.
“I’m short several articles this issue,” Isaac admitted on that first day she worked on the magazine. “A few people said they would send things, but they either changed their minds or they never got around to it.” He quirked an eyebrow. “So if you’re interested, I would still value your input as a newcomer among the Amish. Your views on how things are tackled would be invaluable.”
So in the evenings, while the adults read or knitted or chatted, while the children played games or read books, she parked herself with a lamp at her elbow and wrote the articles that were forming in her mind as she went through the day’s work.
She also started a diary, figuring the impressions she formed might prove useful one day.
“What are you writing?” Edith asked one evening, her knitting needles clicking.
“This time an article on making cheese,” replied Leah, pausing with her pen in the air. “The first time I saw Rachel making it, I was dumbfounded. I didn’t even know you could make cheese at home.”
“How else is it done?” asked Edith.
“By huge factories who then sell it in stores,” replied Leah. “It all tastes the same.”
“Sad.”
This was another factor Leah discovered as her involvement and understanding of the Amish deepened. The wider world held very little appeal to those who had been baptized and remained in the community. Even Sarah, as lovely as she was, had no interest in further enhancing her appearance with cosmetics or fashions, a subject driven home one day by a conversation Leah had with her. A young woman with an aversion to shopping was so unusual that Leah found it hard to believe.
“Shopping for what?” asked Sarah, when Leah broached the subject. “For clothes? What I’m wearing is always in fashion. Electronics? From what I’ve heard, they do more harm than good.”
The Amish didn’t feel deprived at what they were missing, Leah concluded. They were satisfied with what they had. It was such a different attitude from the normal consumer-driven Englisch culture she had left behind that it took some getting used to.
“Don’t you ever get tired?” she gasped to Edith on the following Saturday night. Her hair felt stringy and dirty, and she’d spent a hot afternoon working over the cookstove.
“Of course.” Edith waddled with her increasing girth to the sink and began washing some early carrots. “But work is an honor. Labor is a gift. It’s not something to avoid, but something to embrace. That way, rest is sweeter.”
That was another attitude Leah had a hard time embracing. Work never ceased.
Yet within that work was skill. In fact, work involved far more skill than appeared on the surface. Leah first approached her stay with the Amish with a mental image of drudgery, of backs eternally bent over their crops, spurning anything modern that might lighten their burdens.
It took some time to realize that while modern technology was absent, it didn’t mean drudgery ruled the day. In fact, she learned life without modern conveniences consisted not of brawn alone but of human wit and ingenuity. She watched the skillful ways Sarah and Rachel applied a hoe to the weeds in the garden, or flipped a sheet for hanging or waited until the dew dried on the lawn before attempting to mow with a push mower. There was unconscious skill in these decisions—and that skill made the job easier.
“It’s also the sense of sharing,” said Rachel during another conversation Leah initiated on the subject. “Have you noticed that very few people work alone? Tasks are almost always shared. Many hands make light work, and that includes conversation to help pass the time.”
Leah was helping Rachel sweep the walkway when she brought up the topic. She was so startled at the obviousness of the concept that she stalled in her task.
“You’re right!” she exclaimed. “I don’t think I realized it before!”
Rachel chuckled. “You’re funny. I think the Englisch believe there’s some magic involved in how industrious we tend to be, but it’s simply because we like working together that we can get so much done. Even Daed has the boys to talk to while he works in his shop, or Isaac when he’s here. It makes everyone’s work easier and faster when the burden can be shared, don’t you think? Isn’t it more fun to sweep this walkway together than it might be alone?”
“Absolutely.” Leah was silent for a few strokes of the broom. “It’s so different,” she said at last. “Different from Englisch society. I grew up thinking independence is the ultimate goal. I shouldn’t need help from anyone, and if I did, I would pay them to help me. But here, it’s like the opposite of independence. It’s dependence. And there again, it shows how different the outside world is. Dependence is considered unhealthy and unnatural.”
“Maybe it’s a factor of who you’re dependent on,” said Rachel. “There’s no shame in asking for help from family or church.”
“The trouble is so many Englisch people have no family or church.”
“Like you.”
“Yes, like me. That’s why this whole community thing is so hard to get used to.”
“Do you find it oppressive?”
Leah worked her broom. “Maybe a little. If you’re used to being alone a lot, then never being alone takes some getting used to. But overall I like it. It seems...it seems joyous somehow.”
Rachel grinned. “Good word,” she replied. “That’s often how I feel. Joyous.”
Joyous. Now that she’d said the word aloud, it seemed very apt for so many situations. The Bylers—and everyone else she met—took joy in their work.
“So many people object to labor, somehow thinking it interferes with better things.” Edith kneaded some bread dough as Leah broached the subject one afternoon. “But this is our job, our career. It’s what we do. We don’t try to hurry through it and get it out of the way so we can get other stuff done. This is the stuff we need to get done.” She swiped her cheek and left a small dusting of flour. “Me, I like what I do. This is my career, I guess you could call it.”
“And you do it well,” replied Leah.
That night Leah lay in bed, her hands under her head, and stared at the dark ceiling. She thought about Isaac.
Since Ivan’s accident, she had seen another side to the man. He was cool under pressure. He didn’t complain about a double workload. He kept his humor and his common sense. Working more closely with him on the magazine, she better understood his vision and his plans.
Altogether he was a very attractive package, both inside and out.
It was difficult to admit she was reacting to Isaac the way she responded to any girlish crush. But she was not a girl, and Isaac was not a boy. They were grown adults and came from wildly different backgrounds. All the gentle warnings she’d received so far weren’t so much because anyone thought she would be a poor match for him; they were simply grounded on the basis that she didn’t share his faith.
Listening to the sounds of frogs and crickets coming through her open bedroom window, she wondered what it would be like to stay here. Always. In some ways she felt as if she was living in a time warp—it was hard not to, reading by oil lamp and canning raspberry jam—but by now she knew the Amish way of life was more than skin-deep. It was built on a foundation of the most profound faith.
Since she’d arrived, the growing possibility that God existed and actually cared about her had started to grow, like a young plant being tenderly nourished by the nightly Bible readings, the quiet faith of those around her and her own biblical explorations. Having never really paid attention to the Bible, it was a revelation to her.
But she believed her future wasn’t here, on this quiet and peaceful farm amid these industrious and welcoming people. Once it was deemed safe, she would return to the English world. She would remove her kapp and apron and don a business suit and...do what?
That was the question that remained unanswered. She supposed she’d stay in journalism somehow, but with a death threat hanging over her, she could have neither her face nor her name associated with anything.
She had no idea how to fill the big gaping void in front of her.