Why I Left the Amish

by Saloma Miller Furlong

  The afternoon passed quickly as people came and went. I had very little time to talk with David and Tim as I continued to visit with many people.

  The Amish people began filing out to Joe's shop for supper. Joe's workshop had been built adjacent to a buggy shed, on the site where our old chicken coop used to stand. It was big enough to set up tables and benches for a large group of people. I could imagine the beehive of women out there, preparing food and serving people as they came in. David nudged me and suggested we go to the local restaurant that serves Amish-style food. I agreed. No one had invited us to come out with them, and I wasn't sure whether they were set up for us to eat separately from the others. Because I had left the community, they shunned me, which meant they couldn't eat with me, accept gifts from me, ride in cars driven by me, or do business with me.

  The enforcement of these rules is a bit arbitrary in my home community. It often depends on what church district one lives in, and sometimes which family within the district, as to how strictly one enforces the shunning. At first after I left the community, when David and I went back to visit, my mother had us eat right with the family, but then she was criticized for that. The next time we visited, she set a separate table for us, but it was only a few inches away from the family table. She was criticized for that, too, so then she stopped eating with us altogether. She still accepted gifts on the sly, and on several occasions she rode in the car with David and me.

  The minute we were in the car, Tim starting firing questions at me. “Mom, if you have so many first cousins, how many second cousins do I have?”

  “Too many to count,” I said. “Think of yourself as Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh, as in Rabbit's friends and relations.”

  Tim laughed. “Now, Mom, that's funny. You don't usually say funny things, but that's actually pretty funny. But do you know how many first cousins you have?”

  “I have 96 on Mom's side of the family, and if I remember correctly, there are 76 on Dad's side.”

  “So you have like 172 first cousins? Oh my God! Mom, are you some kind of celebrity with these people, even though you left?”

  “I wouldn't say that, but I have to say I am surprised by the reception I'm getting. I had no idea people would be this friendly.”

  “How long has it been since you've seen these people?”

  “I've not seen most of them since I left the second time, which was twenty-four years ago.”

  “Do you still remember them?”

  “Oh, Tim, don't ask me that. Everyone is asking me that question. And they seem really disappointed when I don't remember them. Did you see that man with the long, dark beard I was talking to?”

  “You mean the man sitting in the middle of the living room?”

  “Yes. He was a fourth-grade student when I taught school. He is now a father of several children, and he asked me that same question.”

  Tim chuckled. “That's pretty funny. Did he really expect you to remember him?”

  “I don't know. Oh, Tim, I have to tell you something funny. My sister-in-law, Emma, asked me if your curls are natural.”

  “What?”

  “Tim, you do have unusual hair, whether it's inside or outside the Amish.”

  “But why did she ask that?”

  “She said my cousin Mary had asked her that. Her son, Nevin, apparently has hair just like yours.”

  “One of my relations, you mean?”

  “Yes,” I laughed. “That kind of curly hair comes from my grandfather on my mother's side of the family.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, but more often than not, it's red and curly.”

  “I saw some people with hair so red, it was almost orange,” Tim said.

  “Yup, that's it.”

  “Thank God I don't have hair that color.”

  “I rather like it, actually.”

  “Mom, you're kidding me!”

  “No, I'm not. I felt cheated as a young girl that I didn't end up with red hair. Of all Mom's siblings who married and had children, she was the only one who didn't have any children with red hair.”

  “Your brother Simon has a red beard, though.”

  “Oh, yes, you're right.”

  David said, “Tim, you fit right in with your long hair. It's just about as long as an Amish man's.”

  I looked at Tim across the table and realized that my gorgeous child had grown into a handsome young man. His eyes are as blue as David's; his skin is fair, like both David's and mine; and he has fine features, including a characteristic pug nose, also from Mem's side of the family.

  Tim had been a handful ever since he was young child. Now he was testing David's and my limits in all the ways teenagers do, such as smoking marijuana and rebelling against our rules. While I often wanted to hold him responsible for his behavior, David preferred to be Tim's friend instead of parent and enforcer. Our different parenting styles were the main source of our disagreements. Now I saw a different side of Tim, as I watched his keen interest in various aspects of the Amish culture. The depth of his questions concerning his heritage surprised me.

  WHEN WE STEPPED INTO the entrance at Joe's house, someone came forward and shook my hand and asked the stock question, “Meinst mich noch?” that many others had asked before him.

  “Of course,” I answered. “You are Rube's Dave. You are the funeral director. And I remember that I used to come and visit you and Katie when I was a teacher at Meadow Glow School.”

  He had a twinkle in his eye that I could see even in the semidarkness of the entrance. He kept holding onto my hand and looking me in the eye, as if to say, “We understand one another.”

  When we opened the door, the kitchen was filled with people sitting on rows of backless benches. I started shaking hands, but then realized it would take too long to shake everyone's hand, and walked into the living room, where I sat next to Susan and her husband, Bill. Lines of people came by and shook hands with us family members, then went into the bedroom to pay their respects to my father. They exited through the other bedroom door and sat in the kitchen or living room and visited.

  In between lines of people shaking hands, Susan and I visited. Susan is the smallest of all the women in my family. She works hard at not having the “Mose Miller” figure. (My maternal great-grandfather was short and stout, and most of the relatives on Mem's side of the family blame their girth on this branch of the family.) If you lined up the women cousins and aunts on Mem's side of the family and covered their faces, it would be hard to tell one person from another, with their wide hips and protruding stomachs. Except for a few cousins and Susan. She is short and pretty, and because of scoliosis and her own vow to not let herself go, she has carefully controlled her weight. She cleans houses professionally and exercises daily. With her gray-green eyes and full red lips, many would call her beautiful—except for a lingering unhappiness that shows in her face. She and her husband, Bill, have struggled in their marriage for many years. They became born-again Christians and left the Amish many years ago. They are raising five children, ranging in age from six to twenty-two.

  A whole group of Datt's relatives came through the living room. They had just arrived by chartered bus. David watched the line of people move through, shaking hands as they went, then suggested we move outside to make more space. It had gotten dark, and one of the aunts from Wisconsin was walking in the driveway with a flashlight. Tim pointed and said, “Wait a minute, how is it that they can use flashlights? That's using electricity!” My first reaction was to say it wasn't electricity, but then I realized Tim was right and that he was looking at it from an outsider's point of view. I had never questioned why we were allowed to use flashlights, even though we couldn't have electricity. David explained to Tim that by staying off the grid, the Amish were able to pick and choose which technologies they would allow, but if they had electricity coming into the houses, then they could no longer prevent people from having anything they wanted.

  A few minutes later, a buggy rushed pa
st us and out the lane. Tim pointed and said, “What, they have LED lights on that buggy!”

  “Well, Tim, that is a new one on me, too. LEDs were not yet invented by the time I left the community. I am surprised they allow them myself.”

  David whispered to me, “That group that just came through looked like they just stepped out of the Civil War era.”

  “Yeah, they are from Wisconsin, one of the strictest Amish communities I know of. Did you see the size of the men's hat brims and how deep the women's bonnets are?”

  “No, but the men's hands are all so big, mine got lost in theirs when I shook hands. I feel like I just stepped back in time, seeing these people.”

  “Now you know what I feel like,” I said.

  Susan and Bill joined us outside. Bill looked ill at ease. In his heart and mind, Bill is still Amish, but because he isn't part of the community any longer, he is out of his element. Susan told us that we were expected to be there the next morning at eight o'clock, an hour before the service was to begin, and that we would line up to go into the service according to age. We both were surprised at this—we would have thought that the Amish segment of the family would go in first.

  MAURICE MET US AT THE door when we arrived at his and Bernadette's house. He opened the door, then said, “David and Tim can come in,” and closed the door again.

  I said, “Come on, Maurice, you should be nice to me tonight.”

  “Why is that?” he asked.

  “Because my father died,” I said.

  “Oh, okay,” he said, and opened the door with a sheepish smile. He had greeted me in his usual fashion. We had been teasing one another for many years. David usually joined in, and Bernadette would laugh at all of it. Sometimes Maurice and I would turn our duel of wits into a cutthroat Scrabble game.

  Bernadette offered us wine, and we sat on the comfortable chairs in their living room. She wanted to know all about what was happening. Talking about it helped us unwind from the day. When we were relaxed and the four of us were in a round of yawning, Bernadette, David, and Maurice retired for the night.

  Tim had many more questions, and he and I stayed up for another hour, as I tried to answer his questions the best way I could.

  When he asked why they had rules about plain clothes, I explained that from the Amish point of view, fancy clothes promote pride in the individual, and that the Amish stress the importance of community more than individuality.

  “But we are all individuals.” Tim said.

  “But when you think about how we define individuality in mainstream American culture—as having independence and personal freedom—it is the opposite in the Amish community. Their definition of a strong individual is one who blends into the community well. Our idea of blending feels like annihilation of individuality, but the Amish see blending as a virtue and a sign of a strong person.”

  “That's strange. But why do the Amish not believe in technology?”

  “There has always been a strong emphasis on hard work and connection to the earth in the Amish culture, and most technologies are seen as distracting from that emphasis. But you know, the Amish do allow certain technologies. Sometimes it seems like there is no rhyme or reason to these decisions, but that often has to do with who was in charge when the discussion of a particular kind of technology came up. An example of that is when chain saws first became available. My grandfather was advocating for the use of chain saws, but there were others who opposed it. The Amish in my home community allowed chain saws, but I don't know whether all Amish communities allow them or not.”

  “So it's arbitrary?”

  “Yes.” Then I added, “The Amish set of church rules are both arbitrary and absolute.”

  “But isn't that a contradiction?” Tim asked.

  “You could look at it that way. But, someone can make an arbitrary rule and then be absolute about people obeying the rule, whether it makes sense or not.”

  “So are most of their rules based on the Anabaptist rules from Europe, like back in the 1600s?”

  “Yes, but when new technologies come into being, they have to deal with each one, which is something their forefathers didn't need to deal with,” I said.

  “But isn't that the same problem that other fundamentalist religions have? They are trying to live by the rules made in a different time and place, whether or not they are applicable?”

  “Yes. Not only are they not taking into account that times have changed, but they are denying that they have changed, which sometimes makes their way of life so restrictive that it becomes punitive. Much focus is put on punishing wrongdoers, as opposed to finding harmony in the community.”

  “But, the community sure works well together. Look at the way everyone is working together for your Dad's wake and funeral,” Tim said.

  “Absolutely. That is partly because everyone has a fixed place in the community. When people accept their place in the community, a lot can be accomplished. That is something the rest of the world could learn from the Amish. But most of us are not willing to make the sacrifices that it takes to be a part of such a community.”

  “I sure wouldn't!”

  “Really?”

  “Mom! Don't you know me better than that? You were a rebel, too. You ought to understand why I wouldn't have done well here in the community.”

  “I also think you might have done better with a close-knit community. You seem to need more structure in your life than you have.”

  “I need to get to bed,” Tim said, suddenly shifting the focus.

  “Yes, me too,” I said, yawning.

  David was already asleep as I settled into bed. Sleep was slow in coming. I remembered how Datt was happiest during sugaring season. Then my thoughts went back to the year I was ten.

  One afternoon in February when we came home from school, Mem was working in the basement in a cloud of steam. She had heated water in the big iron pot for washing sap buckets. The iron pot sat on a steel jacket that had a door where we could build a fire under the pot, and a stovepipe connected this jacket to the chimney. We called the whole thing a cooker, which we used to heat water for washing clothes, and for washing sap buckets once a year.

  Mem asked us to change our clothes. Usually we dragged out that part. We dreaded doing the work around the house on a typical day. My sisters and I called it drudgery. But, on this day we did it quickly because we liked washing sap buckets.

  The tops of the stacks of buckets were lost in a cloud of steam when I got to the basement. I asked Datt how many there were and he said more than nine hundred.

  Datt separated the buckets. When two of them stuck together, he held them in one hand and tapped the rim of the bottom bucket with a hammer until they came apart. Lizzie, Sarah, and I took turns washing and rinsing. Susan was the youngest, so she carried the buckets to whoever was stacking them in the newer part of the basement. My favorite part was stacking. I liked building the pyramids in rows all along the cellar wall by lining up the buckets upside down on the floor, then placing the next row of buckets on top of that, resting one bucket on top of two underneath. I'd build each pyramid as high as the ceiling, then another one in front of the first one.

  As I counted and stacked, I heard Datt's tap, tap, tapping on the bucket rims, then the hollow bang as the bucket hit the cement floor. I heard the grating of the buckets against the cast iron tub and the swish, swishing of Lizzie's brush. I hummed a tune, and the sound vibrated around the rims of the buckets. I left room for a path through the middle of the basement and filled up the rest with pyramids.

  “Only one more row,” I said to Datt when I came to carry more buckets.

  “How many are there so far?” he asked.

  “Four hundred and seventy,” I said.

  When the last row was stacked, we emptied the tubs, and then we swept the water toward the drain in the floor. Datt and Lizzie went upstairs.

  Sarah, Susan, and I stood in the path between the pyramids and called out vowel sounds, then liste
ned to the sounds bounce around each bucket rim in turn, before it faded into nowhere. We called out “OOOO, EEEE, AAAA!” and waited for the echo.

  Sarah and Susan soon tired of playing the echo game and went upstairs. I listened to my echo by myself, and then I sat on the basement steps and looked at the faint light coming through the little windows over the tops of the pyramids. I thought of all the other years when we had created an echo chamber with the sap buckets. I felt as though I was a little girl again, even though I was ten. I wondered if in another year I would think I was too old, as Lizzie had this time.

  I was sitting in the dark when I got a whiff of Mem's supper and I suddenly realized I was famished. I took off my boots at the landing. When I walked into the kitchen, I blinked in the light of the lantern. Mem was pulling baked beans out of the oven, with rows of sizzling bacon on top. She placed the pan on hot pads in the middle of the table with steaming slices of bread and a big bowl of applesauce.

  After the dishes were done and the floor swept, and everyone was reading, sewing, or playing games, I felt content.

  We finished washing sap buckets the next day after school. Datt scattered the clean buckets throughout the woods the following day. When we came home that afternoon, Mem said Datt was out tapping trees and he wanted us to go and help him as soon as we could. She described which part of the woods he was in. At first when we called out to him he didn't hear us. So we stayed still for a while until we heard a tap, tap, tap.

  Datt had a big toothless grin when he saw us and showed us how fast the sap was running. We followed him around the woods as he drilled holes, one or two in each tree. Lizzie carried the bucket of spouts that we called spiles and stuck them into the drilled holes. I tapped them firmly with a hammer. Sarah and Susan hung the buckets and put on the covers.

  Datt knew where to drill the holes. He changed where he drilled the holes each year, so the old ones could heal. He didn't hang as many buckets on each tree as other farmers; only the biggest trees got three buckets. Other farmers might have put five or six on those same trees, but Datt believed it wasn't good for the trees to put on too many. He had bought the forty acres because of the trees.