SHIPSHEWANA, INDIANA
MID-MAY
Emma Hochstetter stepped onto the back porch and pulled in a deep, cleansing breath. The colors of the May afternoon were so bright they almost hurt her eyes. Blue sky spread like an umbrella over her family’s tidy homestead, which was dotted with green grass, three tall red maples, and an entire row of bur oak trees. And the garden—Mary Ann’s garden.
Her mother-in-law could be found out among the garden’s rows every morning and every afternoon. The place was a work of beauty. Emma would be the first to admit it. It was also a lot of work, especially for two old ladies living on their own. Emma wasn’t in denial that she was now officially old. The popping in her knees each time she stood attested to that. Turning fifty the past winter had seemed like a milestone. She now woke each morning grateful to see another day, which might have seemed like an overreaction, but they’d had a hard year.
“Done with the laundry?” Mary Ann called out to Emma from her bench in the garden. She’d recently turned eighty-four, and some days it seemed to Emma that her mother-in-law was shrinking before her eyes. She was now a mere five-one, which meant she reached past Emma’s chin, but barely. Her white hair reminded Emma of the white boneset that bloomed in the fall, and her eyes reflected the blue, bell-shaped flowers of the Jacob’s ladder plant.
“Ya. Just folded and hung the last of it.” Emma walked down the steps and out into the garden.
“Gardens will bless your soul, Emma.”
“I suppose so.”
“They are a place to rest, to draw near, and to heal.”
“At the moment this garden looks like a place to work.” Emma scanned the rows of snap beans, cabbage, and spinach. The weeds seemed to be gaining ground on the vegetables.
“Remember when the children used to follow behind me, carrying a basket and picking up the weeds I’d pulled?”
“I do.” Emma squatted, knees popping, and began to pull at the crabgrass.
“The girls were cute as baby chicks. Edna leading the way with Esther and Eunice following in her steps.”
“All grown now, Mamm.”
“Indeed.”
“We should probably think of cutting back on the size of this garden.”
Mary Ann fell silent as Emma struggled with a particularly well-rooted dandelion. The weed pulled free and dirt splayed from its roots. They both started laughing when two fat worms dropped from the ball of dirt and crawled back toward the warm, moist hole.
“I guess we know what Harold and Henry would do with those.”
“My boys always did prefer fishing to gardening.” Emma brushed at the sweat that was beading on her brow and resumed weeding. The temperature was warm for mid-May, nearly eighty. With the sun making its way west and a slight northern breeze, the late afternoon was a bit more pleasant. Perhaps the heat was why everything in the garden was growing with such enthusiasm.
Summer had barely begun, and already their vegetable plot had become a place of riotous chaos. The flowers tangled into one another in an unruly blend of scents and colors—reds, blues, yellows, oranges, and pinks. Shipshewana had experienced an early spring, bountiful rains, and mild temperatures. Emma struggled to keep up, and the garden became more a place of labor than of healing.
Still, she continued to work on the row of snap beans.
Mary Ann sat on her bench and watched.
“Gardens are a reflection of God’s love for us,” Mary Ann said.
“Ya, indeed they are.”
“You missed a weed, dear. Back near the bean plant.” Mary Ann pointed at the bunch of quack grass with her cane.
Emma smiled and reached for the grass. She no longer thought of Mary Ann as Ben’s mother. After living on the same property for over thirty years, she was just Mamm. Sweet, dear, and at times, more work than an infant.
Emma prayed nightly that she would live forever, that she wouldn’t leave her alone.
“The weeds aren’t easy to find because the plants have grown so large.” She used her apron to wipe the sweat from her forehead. “Everything is running together.”
“Evil can overtake good—”
“I’d hardly call a weed evil.”
“Especially when you don’t spend a little time each day tending to what is important.” Mary Ann’s eyes twinkled in the afternoon sunlight. She might have been referring to Emma’s recent absence.
“I’m glad I went to Middlebury and spent the week with Edna. All three of her children suffering with the flu at the same time? Ach! We had our hands full with laundry and cooking and nursing.”
Mary Ann moved her cane left and then right. She gazed off past the barn, and her voice softened. “Do you remember the year Harold came down with a bad case of the influenza?”
“He was nine.”
“While you were tending him, I spent many an hour out here, praying for that child’s soul and body—that the Lord would see fit to leave him with us a bit longer.”
“Harold would call out, and his blue eyes, they’d stare up at me and nearly break my heart. The fever was dangerously high. I can still recall how hot his skin was to my touch.”
“Difficult times.”
Emma had reached the end of the row. She turned to the next and stifled a sigh. Most afternoons she enjoyed her time in the garden, with Mary Ann sitting on the bench and sometimes dozing in the sun. But today weariness was winning, that and a restlessness that resembled an itch she couldn’t reach. Perhaps her impatience came from comparing her own life to her daughter’s.
The trip to Middlebury should have been a nice reprieve from the work of the farm, but she came back nearly as tired as when she left.
Certainly it had been a delight to spend time with Edna, her husband, and the grandchildren while a neighbor had stayed with Mary Ann. But looking around her daughter’s tidy farm and newer house, she found herself wondering if they should sell the old place. Perhaps it was too much for two old women to maintain. Something smaller would be good. Her daughter’s place was half the size and much more manageable.
“Mamm, this garden is too big.”
“No garden is too big, dear.”
“We can’t possibly eat all of this food.”
“Which is why we share with those in need.”
They’d joined a co-op several years ago. In exchange for the vegetables, they received fresh milk, eggs, and occasionally cheese. Both Emma and Mary Ann were relieved that they didn’t have to look after a cow—Emma had never been good at milking, though she’d done it enough times as a child. And chickens required constant tending. She also didn’t favor the idea of purchasing their dairy products from the local grocer. Fresh was best. Still, what they put into the co-op far exceeded what they received.
“Maybe it’s grown past what we can manage. Instead of adding a little every year, maybe we should hack something back.” Emma stood and scanned right, then left. The garden, which had once been a small vegetable patch, now took up one entire side of the yard. “We could plow up that row of flowers over there, maybe plant some grass instead. And we do not need ten tomato plants.”
“Help arrives when you call.”
“Yes, but—”
“Hello, Danny.”
Emma had turned her attention back to the row of blooming plants and was reaching up to trim back the joe-pye weed, which threatened to take over the Virginia bluebells that were already in bloom. Her hand froze at Danny’s name. Slowly, she brushed the dirt from her fingertips by running her hands across her apron, inadvertently leaving a stain of brown slanting from right to left against the light gray material. She swiped at the hair that had escaped from her kapp, tugged her apron into place, and turned to face the man who had first courted her.