Jane shivered. She didn’t want to touch on that particular story, not now. What happened to the Native Americans was so shameful that she found it heartbreaking to even think about, although she vividly remembered stories from her childhood that examined the topic in depth. Someday she would need to pass down the story about a particular Potawatomi woman to just the right person.
But she wouldn’t think about that now. She’d concentrate on the story for Arleta, a woman who came to Jane’s quilting circle from time to time.
Arleta had moved back to the area a year ago after marrying a local bachelor. The woman had been a widow and had two children in their teens, who’d grown up in nearby Newbury Township. Arleta’s previous years spent in the Nappanee area hadn’t been happy ones, and although she was trying to stay faithful, she feared the same unhappiness now, for herself and her children.
“The past is never dead” was something Jane had heard from time to time. Jah, the past was always with us. She firmly believed that. But she also believed that nothing ever stayed the same. Sometimes life changed for the better. Sometimes for the worse.
The town of Nappanee wasn’t platted and named until December 1874, when the railroad arrived. By then, Jane’s ancestors had been farming on their land, where she currently sat, for over thirty years. She was a fifth-generation descendant of those original Amish settlers.
The word Indiana meant “land of the Indians” and the word Napanee seemed to be a Native American word too, although the meaning wasn’t clear. The spelling was later changed to Nappanee.
She’d attended an Englisch elementary school as a child, and she remembered learning that Nappanee was the only city name in the United States with four letters of the alphabet that were all repeated twice. She’d always loved saying the word—Nappanee—because of the way it rolled off her tongue.
Jane continued writing, explaining how the land Nappanee now sat on had once been a marsh. She wrote that when the railroad came through, a group of people had a vision for a town, and they built it, structure by structure. The townspeople had cared about education, industry, and shipping crops to a wider market. Good had come, for all of them, from change.
She prayed for the same sort of change to come to Arleta’s life. She prayed that the women in the quilting circle would be a blessing to Arleta and her family too.
Jane prayed extra hard, knowing the woman was married to Vernon Wenger. He was a harsh man with a quick temper. She prayed for Arleta’s teenaged children too. Both were on their Rumschpringe. Running around was a tricky predicament with Vernon as a stepfather.
Jane left her prayers with God and cleared her mind from her present-day thoughts. Then she continued to write as quickly as she could, the keys clicking, one after the other, creating words, sentences, and paragraphs. Sometimes Jane wrote about a place, such as the town of Nappanee. Other times she wrote about a person—a pioneer or another resident of the area from a different time who had made a difference in the community. There was nothing Jane enjoyed more than writing, than piecing the past together. Although quilting was a close second.
Once again, Jane became so caught up in the past that it was as if she was living there. She waited at Locke Station, thankful her family could now ship out their onions, potatoes, and mint to a larger market. She stepped onto the platform and looked down the new train tracks, anticipating all the changes the railroad would bring. Change might not be a typical topic for an Amish woman, but Jane ended the column with that image of change coming to Nappanee anyway.
The clock struck the half hour, and she rolled the second sheet of paper out of the typewriter, stacked the two together, and then slipped them into a manila envelope. She addressed it from memory, put on the correct number of stamps, and left it on the desk as she took off her reading glasses and let them dangle from the string around her neck. Then, she put away the bolts of fabric—mostly solid colors. Maroon and sapphire blue. Black and forest green, though there were a few modest floral prints.
Besides offering her stories for the entire community, she was especially blessed that so many of her customers appreciated her historical knowledge. Not only did it allow her to share her stories verbally, but it also encouraged customers to come to her with ideas for new stories, ones she hadn’t heard of before but was happy to research.
She washed the mugs at the sink at the back of the shop, looking out the window into the darkness as she did. At least she didn’t have far to travel to reach her little home. It was just across the lane.
After she slipped on her warm coat, pulled on her gloves, and secured her bonnet, she picked up the envelope off the desk. As she stepped out into the blast of the icy wind and swirling snow, she held on tightly to the envelope until she reached the mailbox. With another prayer for Arleta and her family, Jane slid the envelope inside the box and raised the flag.
Another story in the mail, ready for her readers.
She’d lived on her family farm her entire life, all sixty-three years. For the last thirty, she’d lived in the Dawdi Haus on the other side of the lane. Her brother had built the large quilt shop four years ago. Before that, she’d run the business from the front room of her house.
She was grateful for the life she had: the column for the paper, the quilt shop, the women who shopped there. Jah, God was good.
As Jane reached her front porch, she turned toward the shop and wondered about
