AMISHCAPADES

Delving into my stint as an amish child

[amishcapades-blog]

Sylvia

This is less of a childhood memory and more of my musings as I look back from my view now....   I have pen to paper. Next to me is a crumpled pile of several false starts with hasty cursive writing scrawled across, crossed out, and then discarded.      Every time I’m writing my grandmother, my thoughts have to go through multiple filters. I censor my sentences and my writing in order to paint a picture of an acceptable grandchild.    I can’t talk about the fact that I don’t believe in the same god I used to. That I don’t subscribe to the angry religion of my youth. That I don't believe I’m going to hell just because I’m wearing pants or brightly colored prints.  I can’t tell her that I’ve etched ink into my skin, or cut my hair and colored it multiple shades depending on how I feel or what I want.

   Instead, I’m writing about the weather. How the cold doesn’t seem to end, but we’re both so excited about planting things in the spring. “Grandma, I miss your gardens.” I write this often. I write it because it’s true. I miss the way she paints with blooms across her land, all the way down to the little creek that she has a deck built across with chairs and a fire place. The perfect spot to listen to the hundreds of birds and rest in the shade as the brook murmurs beside and under you.        “I wish I could watch you paint again.” As I write this, I can picture her sitting in front of her canvas. The way she looked so much more relaxed. As if she didn’t care so much that her house was completely spotless. That there were baked good in the kitchen and all the chores were tended to. Instead, there was a scene, a haven, coming out of her hands onto the canvas. She would tell me how to turn a brush stroke into a fence post, a tree, the sun hitting the river or glancing across the snow.  “What was that game we used to play?” I laugh while writing this part, remembering how we would lay silent and unmoving while some blindfolded relative would be swinging knotted rope, trying to hit you as hard as possible while all your family stood by, laughing until tears were in their eyes. (Amish games. haha!) Every letter I write ends in a sort of sadness. The wish that I could know my Grandma for who she really is, but also wishing that she could know me for who I truly am, and who I have become. The feeling of being worlds apart no matter how close we will be in the physical realm.  Love for family runs deep and it is not a love that I will forget. 

For her I write “may his face shine upon you and keep you”, and for myself I write “I hope with all my heart that I will see you soon.  All my love, - your Granddaughter “

[amishcapades-blog]

Skating The Dam

 It’s easy now, the separation of the lives I have lived and the memories made. It’s become a habit, to keep the phases in separate boxes to unpack as needed or desired.   I think I’m losing parts of them. Parts of the good things that made me laugh, those good parts of my childhood that make up my memories.

So here is the start of a project that delves into the the small treasures that make up my past. The best memories, written as well as I can remember them.

Part 1: Skating the Dam

My memories of these times are patchy at best, so I will attempt to piece together the feelings and pictures that I have in my head.     There was always an excitement that ran through the town once the weather had been cold enough, for long enough, to freeze over the small dam that held water back above our small community. There was at least one big night during the winter where all the families would gather together and make the short trip up to the dam to have a skating night.

  The excitement and anticipation always made it impossible to stand still while bundling up. Long johns into boots, puffy and warm over-all style snow pants, cozy knitted kerchiefs on the head, gloves with a string that went through the sleeves of the home made coat, and cheeks rosy with the cold and the joy of knowing you’d be allowed to play outdoors after dark and stay up late. Hockey skates were tied together and slung over the shoulder, lacings loosened so you could get them on as quickly as possible.

I don’t remember the journey to the dam all that well. We would pull a trailer behind a tractor with it full of adults and children. Were there haybales to sit on? Probably, but I can’t remember.  I only remember the indulgence at not having to walk for once, and the feeling of belonging to a larger family than you ever had.

It would be evening, the light fading quickly in the short winter day,  the generator powered shop lights spilling out over the ice and fading into black toward the tree line. Several of the adults would bring firewood  down to the edge of the ice and start building a bonfire so we could warm our hands and make hot chocolate with mini marshmallows. The children would hurry to get their skates on, fumbling with already cold fingers. Ultimately I would rush to my mother to tighten my laces as quickly as possible so I could be on the ice with everyone else.

 By this time, darkness would have  fallen completely. The stars would be out overhead, the lights casting shadows over the ice, illuminating the small clouds of breath from each individual, weaving in and out among the rest. In the complete silence of the night, our shouts and laughter bounced across the pond, disappearing into the snow blanketed woods that surrounded us. A fire would be blazing at one end with several people gathered, talking and sipping hot drinks.

 It was always a game, to see how far away from the light I could skate. How far into the shadows and darkness I could get before I let fear turn me back around.  There was this adrenaline rush that I would feel from skating to the dark edge of the pond, turning around and seeing all the light in front of me and the darkness so thick behind me that I could feel it. The eyes of a hundred wild things in the woods just watching the spectacle. When I couldn’t stand there anymore, just when I imagined the breath of a beast on the back of my neck, I would skate as fast I could toward the brightest light and the largest group of people.

 We would skate for hours, until our fingers and toes were numb and couldn’t be warmed up by the waning flames anymore. Until our noses were running and our hair was frozen.  A call would go around that it was time to wrap up and head home. I would collapse in the snow on the bank and try my best to untie my now frozen solid laces. I always loved the feeling of putting on shoes again. Like I had been flying for hours and just now returned to the earth. Walking felt strange. A reconnection to the earth once more, instead of gliding across frozen water in our small ring of light in the mountains.

 The journey back down was again something that I never remember.  Half frozen, half asleep, I would get home and run my hands under warm water until I could feel them again; sometimes so close to frost bite that it hurt just to put them into room temperature water.

  Then, wrapped up inside multiple blankets, I would fall fast asleep, too tired to dream about the next time I’d get to put on the skates again and fly for a little while longer.