Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [63]
A kerosene lamp flickered low in the kitchen. Back then, at least in Bloomfield, a date was not supposed to unfold in darkness. There must be some sort of lamp, some sort of light, somewhere. Under the lamp’s dim but watchful eye, we sat there on the couch for the next two hours and talked.
The conversation lagged now and then, but I didn’t panic. Neither did she. We’d known each other now for years. We talked of what was going on in the community and in our lives, and soon enough the clock struck midnight. It was time for me to go.
I wanted to ask her for another date. Some guys waited until the actual day, a few weeks later, to ask for the second date, but I didn’t want to wonder, unknowing, for two weeks. I got up and got my hat, and Sarah walked me to the screen door on the porch. Just before stepping out, I asked her.
“Would you consider another date in two weeks?” I felt as if I stammered. The words seemed stuck in my throat, but amazingly, they came out okay. Steady. Confident. I stood there, almost frozen with tension. And she stood there looking up at me and smiled.
“Yes,” she answered. “I think that would be all right.”
I breathed a visible sigh of relief. “Thank you,” I said. “Good night.” And with that, I stepped out, closed the screen door, and walked out to where the Stud stood patiently at the hitching rail. I untied him, got into the buggy, and headed for home.
The roads were dead, except for a few other flashing blinker lights like mine. Other Amish suitors, heading home from their respective courting ventures. The Stud clipped right along, and we were home in about half an hour. And that was my first date with Sarah.
25
The next day, the news flashed through the community like a lightning bolt: Ira and Sarah. Wow, isn’t he robbing the cradle a bit? She’s only seventeen. And so on and on. Most of the guys, at least the single ones, were just envious, I figured.
Besides me—and presumably Sarah—no one was more thrilled about my date than my mother. Sarah’s mom may have had her doubts, and probably did, but not my mom. She literally beamed and beamed the next day, and throughout that whole week. She liked Sarah a lot. But mostly, I think, she was happy for me. Happy that I had now seemed to find myself. And that I had found a woman. Once a guy my age started dating, it was only a matter of time. Historically, it had always been so, and Mom held fast to the belief that it would be no different for her son.
It carried so many implications, that first date. So much was accepted as fact and planted in people’s minds, like seed. So many conclusions. It was a huge step for me. It signaled that at last there was for me a place of calmness and rest. That I would now live the rest of my life as an Amish man. Settle down quietly. All the past, all that wandering, was now as if it had never been.
Sure, people murmured to one another, “You can tell Ira has been around a bit, just from his bearing. The way he carries himself. The way he speaks.” But that just added to the mystique. The wildness, that untamable streak, had now been broken. Sarah would see that it stayed that way.
I walked about that week in a bit of a daze. She had agreed to see me again, in two short weeks. Time flies on wings when you are in love.
Then, late that first week, a letter arrived addressed to me with no name or return address, but written in a polished feminine hand. I tore it open and scanned the end for a signature. It was from Sarah. What now? I quickly read the words.
She was very sorry. She had agreed to see me in two weeks, but she would have to postpone that date. Her father thought she was a bit young yet, so he had decreed that she could see me only once every four weeks—at least until she turned eighteen. She hoped I would understand that’s just how fathers are sometimes.
I sighed, half in frustration and half in relief. A Dear John