“Can I sit in the front row at school?” Chris’s question broke into her thoughts.
“Goodness, you must be itchin’ to start today, ain’t?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “And can I ring the school bell, too?”
“Well, you’d have to get there extra early. And once the cooler days come, you can help build the fire in the wood stove. How’s that?”
“Guess I can just go to bed earlier, like Dawdi,” he said.
Again, Lena Rose smiled. At times she wondered if Chris was trying to make up for lost time with all his talk. She just hoped he wasn’t spending all his time with her instead of seeing his brothers and doing things every Amish boy enjoyed in the summer, like climbing trees, rolling down grassy hills, and helping around the barn. Should she talk with Dawdi Schwartz or Preacher Yoder about getting him more involved with some of the nearby farmers?
It’s one thing for a little boy to shadow his big sister, but as Chris grows up, is it a good idea?
CHAPTER
37
On the last Monday in August, Lena Rose stopped at Dawdi and Mammi’s to get Chris, who still planned to help her before school, even though she’d already spent days getting the classroom ready for this first day.
She had awakened with the knowledge that it was close to the one-year anniversary of her parents’ passing, and for that reason, she was grateful to have so much going on during this first day of school.
At eight-thirty sharp, Chris pulled the rope to ring the bell, which brought the shiny-faced scholars scurrying into the one-room schoolhouse, where they put away their lunches and looked for their names on the wooden desks.
Lena didn’t need to introduce herself, but she did anyway, saying how honored she was to be their teacher this year. Then they started the day with three songs of praise, and afterward, recited the Lord’s Prayer—all in Deitsch—before she read aloud from the Bible the story of baby Moses.
Later, after Lena had gone over the school rules for the benefit of the newest scholars, she assigned the writing of numerals from one to five to the first graders. She then gave the second graders an easy arithmetic assignment. All the while, Chris and her other siblings wore a perpetual smile on their faces, eyes alert as they picked up their pencils and got to work.
When she called the third graders to the front bench to read aloud, the rest of the scholars—the fourth through eighth graders—took a short quiz until it was their turn.
At last, it was time for morning recess. The children filed outside, talking happily amongst themselves. The younger girls had a jump rope, and Lena held one end while the girls chanted their sing-songy rhymes and took turns jumping.
She was relieved to see Chris playing ball with a number of the boys his age—two of them his brothers, and three cousins—but now and then, she noticed he would look her way. It made her wonder if he was still worried to let her out of his sight, as he had been at the start of summer, after their long separation.
Lena was delighted late that afternoon to receive letters from Mimi, Lydia . . . and the first one from Rebekah Petersheim. She began with Mimi’s and was delighted to discover that Tessa was expecting a baby in late January. Mimi sounded so pleased, and she also mentioned that this time of having Tessa work with her had been a blessing in many ways.
Harley and Manny are getting along well, too. They’ve even planned a few hunting trips this fall.
But the biggest change will be our move into Solomon’s current Dawdi Haus, and Solomon into the one that Manny has worked so hard on. It’s all completed, and sometime early this fall, we’ll all begin the move. That will leave time to make some renovations to the main farmhouse for the young newlyweds.
Lena smiled to think of Lydia and Eli moving into the spacious farmhouse, and she wished she could see the fine workmanship of the addition that must have taken Manny and Arden many weeks.
Setting aside Mimi’s letter, Lena picked up Rebekah’s, which primarily focused on the activities she and James Zook were doing during these last warm days of late summer. Lena could picture the older couple taking walks around James’s farmhouse or riding in the enclosed family buggy, James holding the reins. Rebekah had written so fondly of James that Lena wondered if they might indeed be thinking of marriage. Falling in love has evidently perked him up, Lena thought.
Lydia’s letter was the final one. She’d written about tending the market stand with her mother and having run into Arden Mast, who was with one of his sisters. Lydia had talked with Arden, but she didn’t say what about, which struck Lena as rather cryptic. In fact, Lena read the letter a second time to see if she’d missed something.
The mere mention of Arden renewed Lena’s curiosity about him—something that had quieted a bit as she focused on making preparations for the first day of school. I won’t ask her point-blank when I write, but it’d be nice to know what they talked about. Lena set the letters aside, feeling very much like a part of her was still back in Lancaster County.
By the middle of that first week of school, Lena’s energy was flagging, and she realized she needed to make an effort to go to bed earlier at night. Her teaching and her siblings should be her priorities now, even though she sometimes still toyed with writing a short letter to Arden. What would he think of that? she wondered. Would he consider it forward?
Lena contemplated this for a few days until finally, on Labor Day, after a picnic with the entire church district, she sat down and wrote the letter she had been formulating for
