Butter Safe Than Sorry

“It’s easy for you to say that times are changing. You’re Amish, for Pete’s sake. Nothing changes for you.”

We’d reached the buggy, and from that vantage point, we had a fabulous view over the picnic area and the little town of Hernia. Straight ahead was Lover’s Leap, over which the Maniacal Mantis had tried to toss me. Fortunately my sturdy Christian underwear had saved that day.

Farther out I could see the rooftops of some of the Victorian homes in the older part of town, and an indentation through the trees that most certainly demarked Main Street. I’d spent a lot of time on Main Street, particularly in the police station-both inside the holding cells as a prisoner, and in my official function as mayor. Across the street from the station is Yoder ’s Corner Market. It was there that I gave birth to Little Jacob, with only the sleazy Sam to act as midwife. Sam! Now he was someone I was going to miss-in the sort of way one misses a splinter that has gradually worked its way out of one’s skin.

“ Magdalena, do you wander off in space again?”

“What?” Freni had surprised me by stopping off on her way home from the cemetery. Her agenda was to make sure that I called Allison.

“Isn’t that what the handsome Dr. Rosen used to say?”

“Something like that. What were you saying, dear?”

“I was saying that even for us Amish there is change.”

“Is that so? Give me an example?”

“The bishop has decreed that we are to change our hemlines by one inch. Maybe this is not such a big change, but it is still a change, yah?”

“An inch? Woo-hoo, Freni, sexy-wexy.” I know, it was dreadfully naughty of me, but sometimes I just can’t help teasing her.

“No, no,” she cried. “We do not make them shorter; we must all make our hemlines longer! The bishop thinks that our church has gotten too liberal from seeing all the tourists in their skrimpy clothes.”

“Skrimpy? Do you mean-” My ringing phone gave me the perfect excuse to take my foot out of my mouth. “Hello?”

“Mom? It’s me.”

“Me who?” I was kidding, of course. The voice belonged to Alison, my ex-pseudo-stepdaughter, and now just plain daughter, one hundred percent, no adjectives needed or wanted.

“It’s Marie Antoinette,” Alison said without missing a beat. “I seem to have lost my head; you haven’t chanced upon a strange one lying about, have you?”

“Hmm, is that what it was? I’m afraid I threw it on the compost heap.”

“Mom, I want to share something with you before you leave on your trip. You’ll be the first to know, but we don’t want you to share it with anyone else right now, because it’s a little early in the game. Can you keep a secret?”

“Is Barbara Hostetler the best daughter- in-law in the whole wide world?”

“Ach,” Freni squawked in my other ear.

“Is Auntie Freni there now?”

“As big as life and twice as ugly.”

“Mom, I hate that expression.”

“Yah, me too,” Freni said.

“Apparently, dear, your auntie Freni has the hearing of a serval cat-you know those big-eared, long-legged beauties one sees in films about Africa? Anyway, do you mind terribly if she listens in on the extension?”

Alison has turned into a genuinely kind young woman, despite the bad example I may have set for her. “Sure, Aunt Freni, you can listen in, but you can’t tell anyone either. So, can you keep a secret?”

“Does your mother bleach her mustache?” Freni said without missing a beat.

“What?” I said. “No fair!”

“That’s okay, Mom,” Alison said kindly, “I’ve been hoping you would for a while now.”

“You have?” I said. “It’s that obvious?”

“Well, just when the light hits it a certain way. Mom, don’t get upset; I read somewhere that lots of women your age have this problem. Have you ever considered using a depilatory?”

Frankly, I was as embarrassed now as I was that time I had the sex talk with Alison. It had been necessitated by a life change in her body that was both exciting and scary-at least for me. It was most definitely an event that called for a celebration. (Incidentally, I believe that in this day and age, when there are so many teenage pregnancies, we should refer to this monthly cycle-at least privately-as “the blessing” and not “the curse.”)

“Freni,” I said, “now would be a good time for you to go pick up the phone in either my bedroom or my office.”

The dear woman padded off, but not before reminding me that Amish women didn’t believe in altering their bodies in any way. What God gave them, that’s what he intended for them to keep- well, sort of; they did trim their nails, didn’t they? I posed this contradiction to Freni over the extension.

“Ach! Must you always argue, Magdalena?”

“It’s my nature to do so,” I said.

“So now I get mushy, yah?” Freni said. “I think that I will miss this nature.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Alison said. “Okay, are you both sitting down?”

“Yah,” Freni said, “your mother ’s bed is very soft.”

I pulled up a hard kitchen stool and plunked my tired patooty down. “Yes, go ahead, dear.”

“One of you is about to be a grandmother,” Alison said.

“Ach du lieber! My Jonathan is with child again?”

“I think that would be Barbara, dear,” I said, losing my patience. “As much as you adore your Jonathan, he isn’t capable of getting pregnant.”

“Uh, Mom, it isn’t Barbara either.”

Sometimes I can be slow on the uptake, and this was one of them. After all, Alison had used the word “grandmother,” a term I had never even associated with myself, not even in my wildest daydreams. After all, I was the mother of an eight-year-old, full of vim and vigor, practically in the prime of my life.

Okay, so perhaps I’d already reached my “sell by” date, but I still had a long way to go before I got to my “expiration” date, and we all know that some things are still good a ways beyond that. A grandma! Moi? But if that was what I was, then grandmothers still had it-whatever “it” was. Being a grandmother just meant that a new baby was coming into my life, that my joy would be multiplied, and that my daughter and her husband were about to be blessed-and sleep deprived-beyond anything that they could have imagined.

“Then it’s you,” I said. “Oh, Alison, I’m so happy!”

“Mazel tov!” Freni said.

We talked for the better part of an hour. When we hung up, I whooped and I hollered. I swooped and I spun in circles, like the crazy woman that I am.

Meanwhile, Freni, who was watching from the safety of the doorway, beamed.

Tamar Myers

Tamar Myers, who is of Amish background, is the author of the Pennsylvania Dutch mysteries and the Den of Antiquity series. She lives in North Carolina with her husband. Visit her online at www.tamarmyers.com.

***

[1] Domestic Blue cheese gives cookies a clean flavor, color, and texture. Use less flour with a Stilton-style cheese and more flour with a French-style Roquefort.

[2] Either lemongrass puree or ground powder can be used. The puree can be found in squeeze tubes in most supermarket produce sections and dry powder can be found in either the spice section or in the Asian food section of the international area.

[3] Candied ginger (also called crystallized ginger) can be found in many supermarket produce or spice sections or in a health or gourmet store.

[4] Hazelnuts, almonds, or other mixed nuts may be substituted.

[5] Fresh or dried lavender flowers can be found in health food stores, herb and spice markets, or through online baking supply retailers.