“Just so you know,” I called out as Jake and I paused in the mudroom to remove our hats, jackets, and boots, “changing out the diffuser in the pond was a lot messier job than I’d expected.”
“Oh, Tyler, no,” she replied from the kitchen. “You didn’t fall in, did you? Your grossdaadi told you not to trust that old rowboat.”
“No, nothing like that.”
I stepped around the corner to see her at the counter, spooning out scrambled eggs from the pan. The aroma of coffee and peach strudel wafted past my nose, and I realized I was starving. I’d fed Timber before going to the pond but hadn’t eaten a thing yet myself.
She didn’t even look up to see me, so Jake let out a low whistle as he pushed past to go to the table. “Wow, Tyler. Nice going on your clothes there! Did you leave any mud in the pond?” He whistled again, dramatically.
Of course, at that Mammi’s head snapped up. She took in the sight of me, her eyes narrowing.
“Just for that, no strudel,” she said. When Jake burst out in a victorious laugh, she gave him a sharp, “I’m talking to you, young man. No strudel for troublemakers.”
Lucky for me, she hated tattling even more than she hated extra work on laundry day. I grinned, though I didn’t dare make a sound in return lest she come down on me as well.
“I’ll rinse everything out as soon as I take it off,” I told her.
“See that you do,” she replied, returning her attention to the food preparations in front of her.
I flashed Jake a “gotcha” look. He snagged a corner of the strudel when Mammi’s head was turned and tossed it into his mouth with a smirk that said “gotcha back.”
Ten minutes later, I had returned to the kitchen, cleaned up and ready for the day, relieved that the mud had rinsed right out. I spotted Mammi still standing at the counter and Jake sitting at the table. He was sipping coffee but otherwise waiting to dig in until everyone else had convened here too. I heard Daadi come in the back door as I was taking my seat, and once he’d hung up his hat and jacket, he joined us in the kitchen and crossed the floor toward his wife.
Daadi always greeted my grandmother the same way when the morning’s first chores were done and it was time for breakfast and devotions: kissing her cheek and speaking in the softest words, meant just for her, saying, “Gud mariye, meiner Aldi.” Good morning, my wife.
Mammi smiled the way she always did. “Gud mariye, Joel.”
I loved how tender my grandparents were with each other in these first few moments of the day. Like most Amish, Daadi didn’t give Mammi kisses in front of people, or fuss over her in a personal kind of way, especially not in public. But their morning custom made me feel good about the start of the day, and it always had. It was strange and wonderful to think my mother probably saw them do this same thing every morning of her life too.
Daadi brought a mug of coffee to the table and took his seat at the end. “Beautiful sunrise over the pond this morning?” he asked, letting me know in his gentle way he’d seen me heading to the place I always went when there was much on my mind.
“Sure was,” I replied, adding nothing else, not even about the diffuser repair. He knew as well as I did that that wasn’t really why I’d gone out there.
I avoided his gaze, watching as Mammi brought a plate of sausages to the table. We bowed our heads for a silent prayer, and the topic of the pond was dropped. That was fine with me. I had always felt free to share even my most troubling thoughts with my grandfather. But I wasn’t ready to have that conversation.
Not yet, anyway—and especially not with him.
TWO
After breakfast Jake and I drove the wagon a short distance over to my aunt Sarah and uncle Jonah’s farm to deliver the extra seating we’d constructed for the wedding. We’d helped to get everything set up the day before—clearing out some of the furniture from the main room of the house and filling the space with all of the benches from our district’s bench wagon. The Bowmans still lacked a few more rows, though, and as none of our neighboring districts had benches to spare thanks to weddings of their own, last night Jake and I had ended up doing some quick carpentry work in the buggy shop, making the extra benches ourselves. Today we were back to deliver them, with just two and half hours to go before the festivities would start. When we arrived, we greeted Anna and then went right to work with the help of her brothers, Sam and Gideon, carrying the supplementary benches inside and setting them up.