Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [40]
One night during the first week after their return, I hitched up my horse and buggy after supper and rattled over the five miles of gravel roads to my friend Marvin Yutzy’s place. He emerged from the house, grinning. We shook hands and then sat on the buggy and talked.
“We’ve been pretty calm since we got back, me and Mervin,” I said. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I think Mervin will probably join the church next spring. He seems to be heading in that direction.”
Neither Marvin nor I were particularly inclined to join church quite yet. I had just turned eighteen. And he was about to, in December. In the end, we both thought it would be best to wait another year and see what developed.
Nevertheless, we were back—the six of us. Back safely in the fold. But somehow, after the Valentine experience, we never quite connected like before. Sure, we still hung out. Rehashed our experiences. Told war stories. Got together with the other youth on Sunday nights, and one night a week we played hockey out on the iced-over ponds. But it just wasn’t the same.
January passed.
February.
Then March arrived. And with it came a huge event. The wedding of my sister Rachel. She had been dating Lester Yutzy, Rudy’s older brother, for a couple of years, and they had made plans to marry that month—March 6, 1980. The wedding was to be held at our home.
The last time we had held a wedding at our house was my sister Naomi’s wedding to Alvin Yutzy, an intense man a few years her junior, in the spring of 1978.
And I faintly remember my oldest sister, Rosemary’s, wedding in Aylmer. I was four or five years old. I recall much commotion about the house, nothing at all of the service itself, and boxes and boxes of hot dogs Dad had bought for the noon meal. Red boxes, with a picture of a chef waving a spatula. Hot dogs were a rare treat, entirely suitable for a wedding feast.
There weren’t many weddings in Aylmer when we lived there, because the church fathers had dictated some very stringent rules on dating. For example, when a couple started dating, they could see each other only once a month, or every four weeks. Then, when things got really serious (expressions of love, talk of marriage, and so on) and they were “going steady,” they could increase that schedule to one date every two weeks. (Love made the days fly, I’m sure.)
And the couple had better not get caught sneaking around or even looking at each other between dates. Anyone caught in such verboten activity could expect a prompt visit from the deacon, a grizzled, imposing man. And he wouldn’t be there to chat about the weather, either. At least not for long.
I don’t know if the Aylmer church fathers thought the end of the world was imminent and procreation was therefore unnecessary, or what. But that’s the way it was. Talk about regressive conservatism.
After we moved to Bloomfield, we discovered that dating couples there could see each other every week. We felt very liberated. Or at least my siblings did. Within a span of about six or seven years, five of them got married.
Needless to say, over the years I took part in many weddings. My favorite job was waiting on tables for the noon meal. As a table waiter, you got to putz around getting ready in the morning, and you could leave the wedding service immediately after the vows to go and prepare to serve the meal. All told, a table waiter might have to sit for maybe an hour as opposed to the full three or four hours the regular guests had to sit quietly on those backless benches.
Being a witness attendant, or “Nava Hocca,” was the least favorite job. The wedding couple had two sets of such attendants with them all day. It was considered the higher honor, to be Nava Hocca, but it was vastly more tiresome and boring. More than once I fell sound asleep sitting straight up with no support to lean against. (Try it sometime. It’s hard to do.)
Anyway, an Amish wedding is an all-day affair. The morning service begins at nine or nine thirty. A good preacher can make the time pass relatively unnoticed, but chances