I spent the weekend with my family, enjoying every moment with them as I never had before. For the first time ever, I felt completely comfortable staying in my dad’s house. Except for wanting to get back to Rachel, I wasn’t overly anxious to head home, nor torn about leaving California. I knew where I was headed and that God was directing me there.
On Saturday Dad and Brady and I went to Disneyland, a place no one is ever too old—or too Amish—to enjoy. Then on Sunday, I convinced my family to attend Lark’s church in hopes that a more contemporary style of worship would appeal to their highly contemporary lives. I was happy to see that all three of them appeared to enjoy the music and were intrigued by what the pastor had to say. We found Lark later among some of her friends, and I introduced my family to them so at least they now knew a few people there. My hope was that this would perhaps encourage them to go again. After lunch, we went for a long coastal drive in the muscle car—Dad was very grateful for the cosmetic work I had done on the upholstery—and I even got to drive it for a stretch, my final turn at a wheel before giving up my license for good.
On Sunday evening, before we left for the train station, I hung all of my Englisch pants and shirts Dad and Liz had given me in the closet and changed into the clothes I had worn on the flight out, my Amish clothes. Never had they fit so well. Never had they felt so right. Though I had laundered them before putting them away, I thought I could still smell the fragrance of Lancaster County in the threads of my shirt. Placing my hat on my head, I stood and looked at myself in the mirror, glad my hair had already begun to grow again. Standing there and regarding myself, I remembered a similar moment of mirror-gazing my first day there, when I was wearing my new Englisch clothes and was so eager to blend in. At the time, I wondered whether I was still Amish or not on the inside. Now that I knew the answer to that question, it was a relief to look Amish on the outside again as well.
I picked up my backpack to rearrange its contents and remembered the list I had been compiling. I opened the notebook, glanced at it, and couldn’t help but laugh at what I had written there.
People drive with their windows rolled up, no matter what the weather.
Used clothes are undesirable.
Young people text to communicate.
The number of contacts in your cell phone is too numerous to keep in your memory.
Young women flirt with complete strangers.
Homes with just three people can have a dining table large enough to seat more than ten.
Fires are worked by remote control.
Houses can be kept by little work on your part.
One man can own three cars.
A house can have rooms that are never even used.
Individual cups of hot coffee can be made in a wide variety of flavors with the push of a button.
Dog mess must be picked up.
There are special plastic bags manufactured just for that purpose.
The Pacific Ocean shines like glass.
Some young women tint their hair with colors not found in nature.
Reading and researching simply for knowledge is uncommon, at least once one is no longer in school.
The first—and often only—step in any quest for knowledge is to search the Internet.
Young women ask for rides from near strangers.
People volunteer all sorts of personal information without provocation or invitation.
The generations are all so divided, even in church.
Opportunities for service and involvement abound.
Sometimes, technology really can bring people closer together instead of driving them apart.
People own so much stuff that they have to rent space in which to store it.
It seemed like a very long time ago that I had begun writing down what it meant to be a part of the Englisch world so that I might discover if I was meant to live in it. I didn’t need the list to show me—I never had—and I didn’t need it to prove to myself that I knew where I belonged. I crumpled the page into a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket.