The Amish Midwife's Hope

by Barbara Cameron

  Rachel nodded.

  Rebecca walked her out to her buggy after the exam. She hoped Rachel’s problem would be solved with her suggestions. If not, it was a sign of a more serious problem.

  She returned to her little home office and tidied up before going to the kitchen to fix a quick lunch. Then she went out to the barn to hitch up her buggy for her home visits. She had several patients who were housebound for a variety of reasons, so she went to them to save them from having to come to her. It made for a nice day, having some office hours in the front bedroom Amos had fixed up for her and then getting out of the house for a few hours.

  It was a little cooler this afternoon. She enjoyed the ride and the fresh air, waving to freunds selling goods in stands in front of their farms. Fields lay bare from harvesting and would soon be covered by a blanket of snow. The hard work of farming would slow and the men would have a break to make repairs and do different work like carpentry for some extra money. The women would make repairs of their own to clothing, and spend time sewing and knitting, and do more soup making and baking.

  When she arrived at her first patient’s home, she knocked once on the door, then walked inside. She glanced around to see breakfast dishes still on the kitchen table. There was no sign of her patient, but the sound of a toddler’s fretful crying echoed down the stairs.

  “Martha?”

  “Be right there!” she called down the stairs. The crying went on for several minutes and then stopped.

  Rebecca set her medical bag down and began clearing the table of empty cereal bowls and filling the sink with soapy water. When Martha descended the stairs and walked over to sit in a chair at the table, Rebecca noted how she was walking with the loose, sort of rolling gait that indicated her pelvic bones had softened as they did prior to birth. Her belly had shifted lower. Rebecca had no doubt Martha would be delivering her sixth boppli in the next two weeks.

  “Danki but you don’t need to do those.” Martha yawned.

  “I don’t mind. Your youngest didn’t sound happy.”

  “Didn’t want to take a nap.”

  Rebecca rinsed the last bowl, set it in the drainer, and dried her hands on a dish towel. “Let’s take care of your exam quickly so you can go lie down while he naps. You look like you need some rest.”

  “He kept me up most of the night with his cold. I’m so tired I don’t even mind you saying I look tired.” She yawned again as she got to her feet.

  Chuckling, Rebecca walked with her to the front bedroom and did the exam. “Won’t be much longer,” she said when she finished. “You be schur to call me if you have any problems.”

  “I will.”

  “Now, go lie down and get some rest before the rest of your kinner get home.”

  “I will. And danki for coming today.”

  “My pleasure.”

  They walked back to the kitchen where Rebecca donned her jacket and bonnet, then left the house. She climbed back into her buggy, completed her rounds, and made gut time. Just as she was pulling into her driveway, she saw another buggy approaching. Had she forgotten an appointment?

  As she reached for her medical bag and turned to exit the buggy, Lizzie called to her.

  “Rebecca! Rebecca! Come meet my Aenti Hannah. She’s going to have a boppli!”

  * * *

  Samuel parked his buggy in Rebecca’s drive. Lizzie jumped out and rushed up to Rebecca and threw her arms around the woman’s knees. Rebecca bent to hug her before looking in his direction.

  “Lizzie likes this Rebecca,” Hannah murmured.

  He turned to his schweschder. “Ya.”

  “Is she the only one?” Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “Don’t start matchmaking,” he told her. “I brought you here to meet Rebecca because you’ll need a midwife.”

  “Nothing wrong with killing two birds,” he heard her say.

  “Who’s killing birds?” Seven-year-old Jacob leaned over the seat to ask him.

  Samuel shot Hannah a look. “It’s just an expression.”

  When Rebecca and Lizzie approached them, his daughter announced loudly, “Daedi brought Aenti Hannah here to meet you.”

  Samuel smiled and made introductions. “Rebecca, this is my schweschder, Hannah, and her sohn, Jacob,” Samuel told her. “I mentioned to you before that Hannah will need your services.”

  “Wunderbaar,” Rebecca said. “Nice to meet you. Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea?”

  “We didn’t plan to interrupt your day—” Samuel began.

  “We’d love to,” Hannah said and she was out of the buggy before Samuel could stop her. Resigned, he got out and followed them into Rebecca’s house.

  Inside, Rebecca set her bag aside and invited them to take seats at the kitchen table. She moved swiftly to fill the teakettle and set it on the burner. Then in a subtle, silent message to him and Hannah, she asked if the kinner could have something. When they nodded, she turned to Lizzie and Jacob. “Would you like some hot chocolate?”

  “Yes, please!” Lizzie and Jacob chorused.

  She made them mugs of hot chocolate and delighted them by setting a bowl of marshmallows on the table so they could help themselves.

  “So, who’s the oldest?” she asked Hannah when she served the adults hot tea. “I’m guessing Samuel.”

  Hannah laughed. “You’re being kind. I’m five years older and feeling every minute of it after the move.”

  “When are you due?”

  “First week of January.”

  “You have some time, then. Would you like to see my office while you’re here?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all,” Rebecca reassured her.

  She led them into a bright, comfortable waiting room off the kitchen. The kinner ran to the small table and chairs that she’d set up for little ones and began leafing through the children’s books they found on it.

  “Samuel, there’s a copy of The Budget and some magazines in the waiting room if you want to look at them.”

  “Danki,” he said with some relief, grateful she hadn’t expected him to follow along on the tour of her office. As the women left to go about their business, he settled into one of the adult chairs and watched the kinner leaf through the books.

  Lizzie looked over at him as she paged through one of the books. “I can read this book,” she told him.

  Samuel smiled at her. “I know.” Sometimes she amazed him with how quickly she was picking up new words. Don’t grow up so fast, he wanted to tell her.

  He sat there and found his thoughts drifting back to the times he’d waited for Ruth when she’d had an appointment with her midwife. He hadn’t gone with her often, but he remembered how he’d felt faintly uncomfortable sitting in the waiting room. Rebecca’s room off the kitchen was more comfortable and inviting than the one back in Indiana, less clinical.

  And yet the atmosphere couldn’t keep the memories from flooding back, swirling up on him like a sudden summer storm: Ruth glowing with happiness when she told him they were having another boppli, Lizzie’s excitement to learn she was going to have a bruder or schweschder. Waking in the middle of the night to hear Ruth crying out in pain, the panic in her eyes and the frantic ride in the ambulance.

  He shoved to his feet and walked over to stare out the kitchen window. When would it stop hurting?

  “Samuel?”

  He shook his head and brought himself back to the present. He spun around to find Hannah staring at him with concern. “You allrecht?” she asked him quietly.

  “Schur,” he said quickly. “Just checking the weather. Supposed to rain later today.”

  Hannah gave him a doubtful look and started to speak, but she must have thought better of it. She turned to Rebecca. “I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me. We’ll get out of your way now so you can fix your supper.”

  Rebecca nodded and said, “It was lovely to meet you.”

  Samuel walked over t
o the kinner. “Say danki for the hot chocolate.” They both looked up and thanked Rebecca as they closed their books.

  “Danki for the tea and not minding us dropping by,” he said awkwardly.

  Rebecca looked at him and smiled. “You’re wilkumm.”

  She walked outside with them to the buggy.

  As Hannah climbed inside it, she told Rebecca, “I’ll see you on Thursday.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  “We get to come again on Thursday?” Lizzie asked as she climbed into the back seat.

  “Not this time,” Hannah said. “Maybe next time.”

  Samuel saw Lizzie’s expression turn to a pout and hurried to distract her. “What shall we have for supper, Lizzie? Pollywogs and grass?”

  “Yuck!” Jacob made gagging noises.

  Lizzie giggled. “Daedi’s joking.”

  “Why don’t you have supper with us?” Hannah asked.

  “Ya, Daedi!” Lizzie cried.

  “You have enough to do with unpacking without feeding us.”

  She smiled. “I have to cook for Jacob and me. Two more is no trouble. It’ll be my way of thanking you for taking me to meet Rebecca.” She sighed. “And it’d be nice to have the company while Levi is in Indiana finishing up the sale of our farm.”

  “If you’re schur.”

  She smiled at him. “I’m schur. Danki for bringing me here today to meet Rebecca. I like her.”

  “I like her, too, Aenti Hannah,” Lizzie piped up from the back seat.

  “She makes good hot chocolate,” Jacob said.

  “High praise indeed,” Samuel murmured and shot a grin at Hannah. He saw that she was staring at him. “What?”

  She looked toward the back seat. “Nothing.”

  Samuel had the feeling she had more to say and he’d be hearing it soon. He knew his schweschder all too well. He considered making an excuse and not eating supper with her but one glance at the kinner and he changed his mind. Lizzie was chattering nonstop with Jacob. She’d be too disappointed.

  Besides, Hannah would just bring up whatever was on her mind some other time. Her middle name might’ve been Rose, but it should have been Relentless.

  He managed to avoid her a little longer by offering to feed and water her horses, and when he came in for supper, the kinner were already at the table. So he washed up and had to admit to himself that it was no hardship to eat Hannah’s cooking instead of his own. He’d never tasted a better pie than her apple crumb. He noticed that Lizzie was enjoying the meal as well.

  The nice thing about having the kinner at the table was that Hannah couldn’t interrogate him further about Rebecca. But he felt it would be rude to rush off after the meal, so he found himself offering to help her with the dishes. He knew that she would most definitely take this opportunity to talk more about Rebecca.

  “Jacob, show Lizzie your new room,” Hannah suggested, and the kinner scampered upstairs. She turned to Samuel and handed him a dish to dry. “It was kind of you to take me by and introduce me to Rebecca.”

  “You’ve already thanked me. Twice.” He put the dry dish in the cupboard and sighed inwardly.

  “I know it wasn’t easy for you,” she said quietly. “I could see it when we came back to the waiting room.”

  He shrugged and took another dripping dish from her.

  “Grief still weighs heavy on your heart,” she continued.

  “There are gut days and bad. More gut days lately.”

  “So the move here has helped?”

  He nodded. “There were just too many reminders back in Indiana. It was hard getting past them.” He took another dish from her hands and dried it. “But sometimes I wonder if I was a coward to run away.”

  “Our faith teaches us that God has a plan for our lives. You were meant to move here or you’d still be back in Indiana.”

  So she had come to the same conclusion he had. She handed him the last dish and they both glanced at the stairs when they heard laughter floating down.

  “Lizzie is loving having Jacob here.” He put the dish in the cupboard and turned to her. “And she’s thrilled you’re having a boppli. Maybe this will stop her from asking me when we’ll have one.”

  Hannah grinned. “I hadn’t heard about that. Tell me more.”

  Samuel rolled his eyes. Him and his big mouth. He related the embarrassing conversation he’d had with Lizzie in front of Rebecca at church.

  She chuckled. “Lizzie is something.” Then her smile faded and she laid a hand on his shoulder. “I feel deep inside that the move here will be gut for all of us.”

  “I hope that you’re right.”

  Chapter Six

  One of the things Rebecca loved most about her life was that no two days were the same. Schur, each day usually started and ended with chores in the barn and preparing meals and some basic housekeeping. And she did have two days a week reserved for office appointments and home visits.

  But since bopplin tended to come when they wanted, she never knew what time of day or night she would be called to deliver one. So while she kept to a schedule, she enjoyed each day as it came. She’d come to love ordinary days that allowed her a chance to enjoy a first cup of coffee, to take time feeding Daisy the Standardbred and have her nudge her shoulder to hurry her along, or to simply hang a load of wash on the line. And it was nice to have a friend or family member drop by.

  She went into her office, did an inventory on her supplies, and made a list for her next shopping day. A check of her kitchen cupboards and refrigerator showed she was running low on a few things. She took a basket down to the basement and gathered up jars of vegetables and fruit she’d canned at the end of harvest and brought them upstairs.

  Back in the kitchen she gathered the ingredients to make bread. She measured out the ingredients by memory and turned the dough out onto the floured surface of the counter. As she kneaded it in the warm kitchen, she listened to the rain that had begun falling.

  Because she was a widow, the men of the community had cut and stacked firewood on her back porch so she’d be warm this winter, and the roofs on the house and barn had been checked for leaks and repairs made. She and the women had fed them when they finished. This is what they did as a community—helped each other with no thought of repayment.

  She placed the dough in a greased bowl, covered it with a cloth, and set it near the stove so it could rise. As she washed her hands at the sink, she looked out the window and saw that the rain was coming down harder. A gut day for soup, she mused, and got out vegetables to peel and dice. Actually, every day was a gut day for soup during the fall and winter in Pennsylvania.

  Once she had it simmering on a back burner, she fixed herself a sandwich. When she reached into the cupboard for her tea bags, her hand brushed against the box of hot chocolate mix. It made her remember how she’d fixed cups of it for Lizzie and Jacob and how their smiles and laughter had brightened her afternoon the other day.

  After showing Hannah the office, they had walked in on Samuel brooding out her kitchen window. Had the visit been an uncomfortable reminder of his late fraa? She sighed. Well, he didn’t have to bring Hannah to her appointments in the future…But it would be nice to see Lizzie.

  She turned the bread dough out, gave it another knead, then placed it into bread pans to do a final rise. Lizzie came to mind again as she worked. Sometimes she thought about how nice it would be to have a kind of her own and teach her things like her own mudder did with her. Lizzie was such a sweet kind and it was so pleasant to watch her relationship with her dat.

  Soon the kitchen was filled with delicious scents. Soup simmered and bread baked. She wouldn’t be making do with a sandwich for supper like she did sometimes after a long day seeing patients. While she waited for the bread to finish, she set the kettle on to boil.

  A knock on her kitchen door surprised her. Who was out and about on such a day?

  When she opened the door, she found Abram, the bishop, standing there. “Why, h
ello,” she said, moving out of the way so he could step inside, wipe his feet, and shake the raindrops from his wide-brimmed black hat. “Come in out of the wet. What has you out on such a day?”

  “Just making some home visits, Rebecca. John Huyard isn’t doing well. I sat and prayed with him and his fraa.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll stop in tomorrow. Please, sit. I just heated water for tea. Would you like to have a cup and warm up?”

  “Danki, that would be wilkumm.”

  He settled his ample girth in a chair. Abram was as wide and short as his wife was thin and tall. His eyes always twinkled behind his metal-framed glasses while Ruby had a stern look about her. They made quite an unusual couple but had a long, sturdy marriage.

  She poured the hot water, set the mugs on the table, and added a plate of cookies—Abram loved cookies. Then she waited to see how long it would take for him to bring up The Talk.

  “Gut tea.”

  “Danki.”

  He picked up a brown sugar cookie and took a bite. “Gut cookie.”

  “Danki,” she repeated.

  “So, are you ready for the cold weather?”

  She nodded as she dunked a tea bag in her mug. “I have plenty of firewood. Some of the men from church climbed all over the barn roof and the house roof to do some minor repairs, which I appreciated. I should be snug and warm this winter and not have to worry about any leaks.”

  “That’s gut.”

  She waited. Abram knew everything that went on in his community. He’d even been here one afternoon while the men worked. Everyone helped each other and usually made a day of it and enjoyed a meal together. She waited patiently for him to state the purpose of his visit.

  “Isaac said he thinks you’ll be needing a new roof on the barn soon.”

  She sighed. “Yes, he mentioned that when he was here. Let’s hope the repairs last through the winter and it can be done next year. It would be hard to do now after I just paid the property taxes.”

  Abram nodded. “Just let me know if you need help paying for it when you do it.” He sipped his tea, then changed the subject. “My fraa’s nephew is moving here from Missouri. You remember Michael, don’t you?”