MEN OF LANCASTER COUNTY 01: The Amish Groom

by Mindy Starns Clark

  She also felt bad for how Brady continued to treat me.

  Liz had received an email with Dad’s flight information, and he would be arriving at LAX early Wednesday afternoon, so I freely gave Brady the space he seemed to need all the way until Tuesday evening. I really didn’t want Dad walking into this powder keg of a relationship, especially because it had been his words that had kicked things off in the first place. Liz had spoken to him at length on the phone after the fight, and I felt sure he was already beating himself up about it enough as it was.

  I managed to corner Brady that night, just as he was turning off the TV to head upstairs to bed. Liz had turned in early, and I’d been in Dad’s office for a while, reading through the rest of my mother’s book on Germany. The moment I heard the TV go silent, I set the book aside and leapt up from my chair, heading straight for the living room. Fortunately for me, Brady had paused at the kitchen table to gather up the papers and books from where he’d been studying earlier. I seized the moment and went to the stairs, standing in place at the bottom. As soon as he zipped up his backpack, set it by the door, and headed my way, I spoke.

  “Dad gets home tomorrow, and I think we need to settle this tonight. As men. As brothers.” Startled, he hesitated. Then he crossed his arms over his chest, mouth shut tight, as he waited for me to say what I wanted to say.

  Speaking softly so as not to wake Liz, I told my little brother how very sorry I was for not understanding the impact my decision from twelve years ago had had on him. I tried to describe that whole situation from my point of view, reminding him that I’d only been eleven years old at the time. But I didn’t want to sound like I was making excuses, so I ended my plea by telling him, “Young or not, confused or not, the bottom line is that I rejected a life with my little brother. No wonder you’ve been feeling hurt and angry with me. I promise you, the greater loss was mine.”

  He nodded, his arms relaxing a bit but his expression still distant.

  “Okay,” he said finally, but from the tone of his voice I realized that it wasn’t an apology he wanted. What he wanted, I felt sure, was to understand how I could have chosen the Amish life over a life with him and our father and his mother. He just really needed to get it—especially as I was about to make that same decision again, this time for good. But before I could help him, I realized with a start, I needed a few answers myself from our father.

  I stepped aside and wished him a good night. He took the stairs two at a time.

  This wasn’t over.

  On Wednesday morning I got up well before dawn to pray and ask God’s favor on my remaining few days in Newport Beach. I didn’t want to return to Lancaster County with unfinished business between my dad and my brother and me. It was clear to me now that this was the prime reason God had orchestrated that I come here. My decision to join the Amish church would affect my Englisch family, but it didn’t have to affect them negatively. I had already come up with a few ideas on how to ensure that it didn’t, but I had to deal with the unresolved issues of the past before charting a plan for the future.

  All morning as I finished up the work on detailing my dad’s car, I thought about the questions I wanted to ask him. Liz wasn’t up to the long car ride, so I would be going alone to pick up my father. That meant he and I would have a chance to talk privately. He’d be tired from flying across multiple time zones, of course, but I thought it was important that he and I iron things out as soon as possible. I needed to make things right here, with everyone, so that I could go home and make things right there as well.

  According to Liz, getting to LAX was going to be a much bigger ordeal than going to the John Wayne airport would have been. But this was my dad’s only option, thanks to his point of origin, and so I steeled myself for the forty-mile drive. She’d tried to prepare me about the traffic congestion I would likely run into on the 405, and so I left extra early, hoping not to stress myself more than necessary.

  She’d been right about the traffic. The sheer volume of cars and drivers was staggering. On the other hand, that made for a slower pace overall, which was worth it. In the end, I used the sluggish commute to continue to pray to God for wisdom and discernment.

  With the GPS guiding me, I was able to find the turnoff for LAX and the right parking structure for Dad’s arrival gate. He texted me when his plane landed, just a few minutes late, and again when he collected his bag and entered customs. The plan was to meet in the Ground Transportation area, so I headed there and found a bench along a wall. Forty-five minutes later, he finally emerged, bags in hand and a weary smile on his face.

  I took the suitcase from him, and with his free hand he clapped me on the back. “Man, it’s good to be home.”

  “I’m sorry you had to cut things short, but I’m really glad you’re here too.”

  We headed for the parking structure.

  “How is Liz?” he asked as we walked. “She keeps playing things down on the phone, but I know her well enough to know she’s not giving me the whole truth.”

  “She really is okay, I think. She was in a lot of pain at first, but she seems to have finally figured out that the less she does, the less it hurts.”

  “Good. Glad to hear it.”

  As we neared the car, Dad said he was hungry and wanted to stop off and eat somewhere on the way home. I was relieved, especially because I had a feeling his true intention for the stop was to give the two of us time to talk. We both knew there were things that needed to be said.

  “There’s a coffee and pie place in Huntington Beach where we can eat,” he added. “I’ll drive if you want. Although you must have gotten here okay because you’re still in one piece.”

  I reached into my pocket for the car keys and handed them over. “That would be fine with me.”

  Soon we were on the road, where Dad wove his way through the heavy traffic with ease, telling me all about his trip as we went. Forty minutes later, we were seated at a window table with a cup of coffee each and slices of triple berry pie.

  Once the waitress had delivered our food, Dad finally launched into what was on both of our minds. “Liz told me all about the blowup with Brady on Saturday. I feel terrible about it. I never should have said to him what I did. You have no idea how much I regret it.”

  “I understand.”

  “I know you think you do, but I was so out of line, Tyler. He was accusing me of abandoning you and depriving him of having you for a brother. And I just…I couldn’t let him think that about me. It was bad enough him knowing I had dumped you on your grandparents when you were six and then leaving you there. When he accused me of never going back for you, I lost it. I didn’t stop to think that knowledge might change his relationship with you. Now that I know it did, I wish I could take it back.”

  “It’s okay. It has to be okay. It’s the truth.”

  “But he didn’t have to hear it like that.”

  We were both quiet for a moment.

  “Daadi and Mammi gave me a good life, Dad. I was happy there. I am happy there.”

  He winced slightly. “But you shouldn’t have had to find your happiness outside of what I could provide for you. I’m your father.”

  “But you did provide it for me. You gave me Daadi and Mammi and all my uncles and aunts by letting them raise me.”

  He smiled tenderly. “Is that really how you see it?”

  “Yes. It is. I’m not bitter about the decision you made to send me there. Or keep me there.”

  Dad took a drink of his coffee to let those words of affirmation settle in on him. “I’m glad, of course. But I wish…I wish I had come back for you when I said I would.”

  And there it was, the perfect opening to pose the question I’d been wanting to ask for days—for weeks. For years. “So why didn’t you? Come back sooner, I mean.”

  Dad shook his head. “The truth?”

  I nodded, my heart suddenly pounding in my chest.

  “I was afraid of messing up what she had done in you.”
r />   I stared at him, not understanding, remaining silent until he continued.

  “Your mom was so…she was such a good mother. She knew how to calm you when you were afraid and discipline you when you were ornery and talk to you and teach you things. You weren’t like our friends’ kids at all. They were always having tantrums and meltdowns and screaming at their playmates when they didn’t get their way. But not you. Your mother had this way of dealing with you that was unlike any kind of parenting I had ever seen. Like super firm but super gentle, all at the same time. It’s hard to explain, but I have to think it was how she was brought up. Even though she had left her Amish upbringing, her Amish upbringing never truly left her. I couldn’t begin to measure up to her parenting skills. I still can’t.”

  “You’re not a bad father, Dad. You’ve always made it clear that you loved me, which is huge, especially to a kid.”

  He smiled. “Okay, so I’m not a complete failure. But I’ve never been very confident about it. Like I said, I was afraid of destroying what she had done. That’s why I went on a second remote tour after that first one, because I knew your grandparents were doing a far better job raising you than I ever could. At least that’s what I told myself. When I met Liz, I had another excuse for not coming for you. And then she got pregnant and I had another, and then we had a new baby and an upcoming move back to the States and I had another. I didn’t come back for you until I had run out of excuses. By that point, I knew it was high time for me to take over from your grandparents, whether I was going to botch everything up for you as a father or not.”

  I took a sip of my coffee and swallowed it down. Once again, he’d given me the perfect opening for a question.

  “So why didn’t you just take me that day? You asked me if I wanted to come. Why didn’t you just tell me to come?”

  Dad fooled with the handle on his coffee mug as he considered his answer. “I wanted you to be where you wanted to be. You were turning into just the kind of boy you would have been had your mother lived. She would have been so happy to see you that way and in that environment. Before she died, I think she was torn between the life she had and the one she’d left. I don’t know. I guess it felt like I was honoring her by giving you the choice—a choice she gave up the day she married me.”

  I sighed and looked out the window. “I thought it was because you had Brady and Liz and you didn’t really need me to be a part of your new family. I wanted you to want me to come with you.”

  “And I wanted you to want to come.”

  I turned back to my father. “We didn’t communicate very well, did we?”

  “We were both making it up as we went along, I suppose. When I married your mother I thought it was for life. I didn’t think I’d ever have to make the kinds of decisions I made in the years that followed. I made them on the fly.”

  “I’m sure you did the best you could.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, that’s what Liz tells me. I do know that my intentions were good. I really did want the kind of life for you that your mother could have given you. And Tyler, when I look at you now, I think you have it.”

  A cloak of peace seemed to fall across my shoulders when he said that, as warm as a down blanket. “I think I do too.”

  “You know, when you first told me on the phone that you would be able to stay with Brady while I was gone, I made a list of all the reasons why I was going to try to convince you to stay after I got back. Even to the day I left for the Middle East, I was hoping you would fall in love with the life you could have out here. But the longer I was gone and the more I agonized over it, the more I realized you are right where you belong. I’m not saying I don’t want you close by because I do. But you’ve always seemed like an Amish man to me. And before that, an Amish boy. Even before your mother died, you were an Amish boy. You just didn’t have the straw hat or the suspenders.”

  I smiled at this.

  “I know you’re going to have to decide to join or not join the Amish church, and I just want you to know I will stand behind you whatever decision you make. You will have always have a home with Liz and Brady and me, but I don’t want you to ever think that to choose to be Amish means you’re not one of us. You’ll always be my son, Tyler. No matter where you live or how you worship God or whether or not you drive a car or use electricity or shave your beard. You’ll always be my Amish son.” He smiled, adding, “You always were, you know?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  I felt good about our conversation, but I still had one last request for my father, which I made as soon as we got back in the car and continued on toward Newport Beach. I reminded him of the box of photos in the storage unit that he had promised to me before leaving on his trip and asked if we could stop by there and get them on our way home.

  He looked so exhausted, I felt guilty for even bringing it up, but I was afraid if we didn’t do this now, it might be days before he got around to it.

  “We don’t have the key,” he said.

  “Sure we do. It’s on Liz’s key ring,” I replied.

  He must have sensed how important this was to me because he agreed without further protest. Fifteen minutes later, we were finally pulling into the facility I’d been so drawn to since the moment I’d learned of the photos’ existence.

  Located just a few miles away from the house, the complex was protected by a thick iron fence. Dad pulled up to a little machine and punched in his security code, and then the gate slowly began to slide open. As he drove through and continued on inside, all I could see were rows and rows of separate buildings, each one alike, each one filled with what had to be at least a hundred separate units. The sign at the entrance had said there was no vacancy, but the further we went, the more astounding that fact grew. Every single unit was in use by people who, apparently, didn’t have enough room at their homes to store all their belongings. Incredible. Add that to the list.

  When my dad finally pulled into a parking slot, he said, “Be right back,” and then he quickly climbed from the car.

  “Need help looking for the box?” I asked, reaching for my door handle as well.

  “Nope. You sit tight,” he replied, no doubt preferring to do this alone. As he shut his door and walked off toward the building, I realized that it really would have been an infringement of his privacy to come here without his permission. As difficult as it had been to resist the urge, I was glad I’d waited. If he didn’t even want me in there with him, I couldn’t imagine how he would have felt if I’d gone there without him.

  I thought again of my list and had a sudden realization. There was simply no way I could record all the differences between this world and mine. There were just too many to count.

  My father was back a few minutes later, sliding into the driver’s seat with the highly anticipated box in hand. I’d been expecting something along the lines of a shoebox, but this thing was made of solid metal, not cardboard, and was closer to the size of a boot box. It was also quite heavy for its size, which I commented on as he handed it over.

  “It’s a strongbox,” he replied, sliding the keys into the ignition.

  “A strongbox?”

  He started the car and put it in gear. “You know, fireproof. Most people use them for documents, but they’re good for pictures too.”

  We reached the gate and he again pulled to a stop and typed in the code, this time to let us out.

  “She was always taking photos and getting them developed,” he continued once we were on the road. “Used to make me nuts.”

  “It did? Why?”

  “Oh, not the picture-taking. The part that happened afterward. She would always come back from the store with a packet of pictures, spread them out on the table, and study them for a while, and then end up throwing most of them away. Said she was saving just the good ones. Those she kept in there, where they would be safe.”

  He gestured toward the box in my lap, seeming perplexed at the thought of such waste. I totally understood, though, thanks to my time w
ith Lark. Like her, my mother had approached photography as an art, I felt sure, bracketing each photo the way I’d been taught and then pulling the wheat from the chaff. For a moment I wondered how she might have known to do that. Had she hired a tutor too? Or perhaps researched photography at the library? Regardless, judging by what my father was saying now, she must have learned the technique and used it as well.

  “When was the last time you looked through these?” I asked, holding the box firmly in my lap and gazing out at the houses we were moving past.

  “Probably two years ago, when we moved here and set up the storage unit.”

  I nodded, aware that military families like my dad’s typically took stock of everything in their possession every two to three years when they got orders to move somewhere new. No doubt their unit was neat and methodically organized, just like their garage and attic back at the house.

  Still, with so many moves, unnecessary items were often jettisoned along the way. I asked my father why he’d kept these particular photos for so long.

  He was quiet for a while before he responded.

  “They’re such great pictures. I don’t know. I guess somehow holding on to them allowed me to hold on to the memory of your mom in a way that wasn’t painful or complicated.”

  “Do you want to go through them with me, back at the house?” I asked, almost reluctantly.

  He shook his head, much to my relief. “Nah, you enjoy them on your own,” he replied. “Heaven knows you’ve waited long enough to see them.”

  When we arrived home, Brady had just been dropped off from football practice, and he and Liz and my dad all greeted each other warmly. I felt obligated to stick around, one big happy family and all that, but when Dad finally settled down at the kitchen table with a beer and began sharing with them the same stories from his trip that he’d already told me in the car, I excused myself and headed upstairs, box in hand, hoping they wouldn’t think me rude for slipping away.