CHAPTER ONE

 

Marsha Yoder scrubbed the navy child’s dress against the washboard and wished that her twins wouldn’t change dresses as often. “If only they would stay inside more and not jump into mud puddles or roll on the ground,” she quickly uttered, and she didn’t feel guilty about thinking such thoughts.  She’d been super-manager of her home for years, and then the twins came, making double the mess and whacking each other over the head with wooden toys.

Emma and Lily, both bouncing blue-eyed, blonde-haired six year-olds had been unexpected but adored.  Marsha’s energy level and immaculate home had taken a slight nose dive, though she would never admit it.  Her husband, Mark had never seemed to notice the deficient.

Cutting corners was what she was good at since the twins came along, and today was a corner-cutting day.  It was washday, on a gloomy, dull-snow-caped Monday, and her back ached, her fingers needled by the antique washboard.  Spotting the last navy dress, she grabbed it and quickly scrubbed it before easing up her grip on the suds-covered washboard.  The twins had so many navy dresses, so she could skip that part of that dress.   It was turned inside-out, but she was being lazy, wanting to hurry up and get the laundry on the line that extended from the tall, black-walled barn. 

She made her way to the clothesline, sat the wicker basket of laundry down, and pouted.  Where was her afternoon nap? She hadn’t had one on Mondays since the twins were born.  “Gott, please let the twins slow down a bit.  I need my time, too,” she begged, but this time she felt a little remorse for saying such, for if they slowed down that would mean more years of overactive six year-olds.  Her body couldn’t take that, so she repented, “I love the girls.  I just need someone to help me with them.” 

Grabbing up little dress after little dress in her wet hands, she decided that she needed to give her girls a good talking to; they would need to be careful when they played outside and avoid all mud puddles.  Her mouth drew tight, and her brow wriggled as she finally pinned the last little dress. 

Now, it was time to gather the eggs form the chickens, which were in their sheltered area to the left of the house, just ten feet from the house.  As she walked through the snow-caped yard, she felt a cool breeze make her bones shiver.  If only I got that cozy nap in.  Entering the chicken house, she saw that the chickens seemed to be content.  It took not time to gather the eggs into the basket. 

Armed with two baskets of eggs, she trekked through the yard and turned slight right to get to the back porch.  She carefully climbed the back steps, and juggling the baskets, she opened the door and walked inside, setting them on the back foyer table.  She heard one of the children running down the steps.  Mark had gone into town as they were expecting heavy snow overnight. The kinner had kept each other entertained, and she was glad.

She closed the door, turned, and crossed over to the end of the porch, where she leaned down to get the washboard.  Laundry is finally done.  As Marsha was grabbing the washboard from the back porch and sighing with relief, her oldest child, Ben, who was twelve, but husky for his age, came barreling to her, screaming,  “Mamm, come quick! The twins have fallen through the icy pond!”  His eyes were like saucers, and his body was soaked from head to toe. He had jumped in and got them.  Praise Gott!

Marsha yelled, “Where are they?”  She knew that Ben was an excellent swimmer.  His face and hands were frost-reddened, and his chest could be seen pulsating through his blue shirt.  Water ran off his thick black hair and splashed onto his new suspenders before it ran off his trembling body. The pond water had been ice-cold.

He said now, “Upstairs, bundled up as tight as I could get them.”  He took his right hand and cupped the excess dripping ice water off his forehead.  “Praise Gott that I just happened to see them from the milk barn.”  His eyes closed in gratitude as he shook his head, his arms still trembling and frigidly soaked.  “Those girls sure had angels all around them.  They need to tell everyone at the Christmas play.  We sure have a lot to be thankful for, mamm.  Just to think, any child with less vigor would have succumbed; they hung on and survived.”

Marsha’s heart raced, and she skipped breaths as she swung the back door open, ran through the kitchen, and jumped the stairs two at a time until she finally reached the twins’ bedroom.  She leaped onto the parallel beds, her left leg anchored on Emma’s bed, and her right leg firm on Lilly’s bed.  With her left arm, she scooped Emma against her chest, and with her right arm, she swung Lilly onto her chest, adjusting Emma so that both little bundled heads were resting on her chest.  She reached down and kissed the tops of their cold heads and looked up at Ben.  “Your daed is at Levi Miller’s place; Jeremiah’s Levi, that is.  Run to the phone shanty and phone their bakery.  Tell them to send him here with their Mennonite neighbor.” Her whole body trembled as she rocked the girls, and Ben smiled and gave a quick nod before turning and briskly walking out of the room.

******

Ben rushed down the steps, quickly sliding his right hand loosely over the railing on the right. He nearly hit the hardwood floor at the bottom face first.  Be careful! Your schwesters are going to be okay.  Gott protected them.  He stopped short of the front door to recompose himself.  Gott was there, now slow down. Gott had been there, and he knew it.  It was what could have happened that made him tremble.  If he had been in a rush, like he had wanted to, due to the heavy schedule of preparations for the Christmas play and getting ready to have cousins over, he would have bypassed scrubbing the makeshift break table.  The small break table sat against the right barn wall, where the only good-sized window was located.  He had always been very obedient to the scripture, and the scripture tells one to not be in haste, to take your time doing your chores as if you were doing them before the Lord.  Therefore, he had taken his time.

He grabbed his round-brimmed straw hat off the peg next to the door and felt his heart rate slow down.  He was calm enough to go to the shanty.  He opened the door, swung the hat on his head, and leaped down the front snow-covered wooden steps two at a time.  Skipping through the front yard, he made a sharp right turn and willed his legs across the long driveway to get to the shanty. 

Confetti sprinkles of snowflakes met his eye as he glanced up toward heaven.  The long arch of a rainbow streaked down through the slight peeking rays of warm sun.  Gott truly had His hand on Amish Country.  At that time, he knew exactly what his Christmas play story would be: the promise of the rainbow.  Tears streaked down his usually stoic face, and he wiggled his eyes in hesitance.  He wanted to be strong, being one of the men of the familye, but tears would defeat him. 

It was useless to stop the flowing tears.  It was a moment of defeat for him and victory for Gott, who was the ultimate Victor anyway.  Like his schwesters and older female cousins, who would shed tears of happiness when they’d smell the first blossoming lavender or orange-red tulip or yellow Easter Lilly during their first day of opening their soft pedals, he had just had a moment as a softie.  His arms swung freely, his heart tickling with the warmness of Gott’s presence as he ran through the snow-caped field, his black boots being airborne most of the time. Iced rainbows streaked all around as the silvery-sparkling snowflakes thickened to glistening iced gum drops of purple, red, and yellow.  His brown round-brimmed straw hat almost flipped off as he tilted his head toward Gott again. He swung his left hand atop his hat as the cold wind smacked across him.  There was a triple rainbow! It arched up across the whole horizon, with hues of sunny yellow, cinnamon candy red and deep lavender.

He heard his Daed’s voice behind him, yelling, “Ben, I got home earlier than expected.  Did you see the triple-rainbow?  Isn’t Gott awesome!  He gave our little girls the strength to hang on!”  Mark’s salt and pepper beard was now almost iced-over, his eyes wide, in awe of the color-swirled horizon.  Three rainbows, not one, and not two, but three!  The Gott that he prayed to, the Gott that his Old Order Amish community was based on and the Gott that they chose to turn from the world and depend on was making his face known. 

Ben crossed the slick field and made his way to his daed.  Mark swept him up into his arms and twirled him in the air, singing a gratitude song from The Ausbund.  Gott had granted the whole familye with a tale unlike any other for the approaching Christmas play.  He’d already been to the haus, and the twins had now thawed out, and spunky little Emma had already thrown a wooden train at little Lilly. Gott had come down to their place via the colorful, silvery-snowflake-flowing sky instead of a train, and he was glad that he’d chosen the quicker way.