Day 348 - The Stories We Tell (Part Two)

Mennonite women share a delightful heritage of skilled and elaborate quilting with their Amish sisters, although in subtle conflict with their theological affirmations for asceticism.*

As a child, I, like so many others before me, napped peacefully under a hand-hewn quilting frame with a canopy of colors and fabrics stretched above me. My mother and several other women would quietly pull their chairs up to the frame, their skirts and ankles creating a secure billowing fortress while they went about their work, happily clacking their jaws and thimbles.

The day eventually came when my mother let me and my sisters snip the yarn threads to hand-tie the quilt. After the blocks have been pieced together and the layers joined - top, batting, and backing, one of the final tasks is to hand tie the quilt. Yarn is basted in large stitches through the quilt from one block corner to another or however the designer wishes. Then, the stitches are snipped in the middle and the loose ends are tied together in a knot to bind the quilt securely, ensuring that the layers will always remain in place.

In my last post I suggested that we choose the stories that become our memories. I even made the preposterous claim that we can rewrite the past by choosing to tell different stories. But the art of storytelling is not unlike learning how to tie a quilt.

As a child, I was just learning to quilt, but my beginning was only the finished gathering of a generation before me. The blocks had already been laid out and stitched together, the pattern chosen, the colors selected. The story had already begun long before I was invited in as a little girl, giddy with a pair of scissors. Even the bits of fabric that found themselves collected in this kaleidoscope of memories, had lived other stories of ringing laughter, dismal sobriety, comforting togetherness, and anguished sobs.

So where does 

the story 

begin?

Yes, I'm free to choose which stories I tell.

But my story has also been handed down to me...like a threadbare quilt, used and forgotten as much as loved and frequently patched.

And I think all of these stories need to be told,...even if I am only understanding them from a long-ago child's perspective.

~ ~ ~

Taken shortly before they were married in 1948

These are my grandparents on my dad's side, Marion and Norma Hartman.  As a child I called them simply "Grandpa and Grandma Hartman" since Germans – and especially Mennonites - are very practical and not prone to outward gestures of endearment, verbal or otherwise. 

Grandpa Hartman was a builder and my dad followed in his footsteps. Mennonites are well-known for creating self-sustaining communities as most of them learn and practice trades. The men are often skilled in trades like building, plumbing, electricity, or farming while the women usually keep house, garden, sew, bake bread, and raise babies. The Mennonite culture means that everybody learns, everybody helps, and everybody can do a lot of everything. 

Grandpa Hartman raised his family primarily in Ohio, but they worked as church missionaries for several years in Kentucky. Delbert even took us back to live in the same community in Kentucky and we also worked in the same church. 

Grandpa Hartman died in 1987 from bone marrow cancer. Grandma remarried a couple of years later to Donald Plank and they did more missionary work in Nova Scotia. Grandma has also written several books of her own.

Grandpa and Grandma Hartman had six children.
Delbert, is the second to youngest. He is in the front row on the far left.

Wedding Day 1955

My grandparents on my mom's side are Robert and Cretora Hilty.

Grandpa Hilty was a fix-it, tinkering man. He was handy with anything from a pair of pliers to skidsteers to front end loaders and more. It was rumored that he had always wanted to be a private eye detective when he was a young man, but he could never pursue that line of work due to the Mennonite stance for separation of church and state as well as pacificism.

Grandpa Hilty moved  his family frequently between two states: Wisconsin and Ohio. Mom says that she had moved 18 times by age 18.


Grandpa passed away only a few years ago. Grandma is cared for by one of her daughters and lives in a cute little house on the farm.

Grandpa and Grandma Hilty also had six children.
Jeannette was born as their third child. She is in the back row on the far right.

To be clear, my parents were raised in a particularly conservative branch of the Mennonite church. There are many other churches of widely varying principles all under the same name of "Mennonite."**

My father at 18

A couple of things you should know about my dad:

(Some of this is a repeat from previous posts for those of you who are just tuning in.)

• He wanted us to call him by his first name, so we've always known him as "Delbert."  

• He has often been accused of thinking too much...so, I come by it honestly.

• I also get the "I have 10 million questions" from him. When he was around 15 years old, he began to study everything he had been raised to believe about the Bible and began to challenge many of those ideas, much to the distaste of his church leaders. You see, when it comes to most religions, questions are welcomed only if you eventually submit to the answers predetermined for you. Otherwise, they are not welcomed, not to mention that his persistent questioning disrupted the Mennonite value of conformity.

• I know him as a full-fledged introvert, but surprisingly, Mom tells me that he used to be the life of the party when they were teenagers.

• He is a genius inventor, a builder, and he has the patience of Job. He will think about and work on projects for years! (It would be more accurate to say that he has the patience of Noah.)

• He's a good dad, but he was never very affectionate with his touch or words. He hugs like a 2x4 and rarely says "I love you." Just the other day I had a conversation with him on the phone and was pleasantly surprised that he said it first.

• My academic successes are mostly to his credit. He taught each of us to read before we went into the first grade and he also diligently worked with us to memorize long passages from the Bible.

• He is the most patient, most steady, and most long-suffering man I know. He worked faithfully and tirelessly even when his faith had begun to change and he was truly exhausted. Whatever he wasn't as a father, I still love him deeply for all that he was and is.

My mother at 18

Mom has always been a different duck and she has very early childhood memories of wishing for painted fingernails, jewelry, sleeveless dresses, and cut hair. My parents' eventual decision to leave the Mennonite church was spurred by Delbert and his analytical study of the Bible, but Mom certainly didn't kick up much fuss at the proposal. Even with the difficult family relationships that she endured over the next couple of decades, she simply wasn't a Mennonite at heart, with or without my dad's choosing.

She and my dad were quite efficient at working together, especially with moving all over the country at the drop of a hat, but in many other ways they were complete opposites – for good and for bad.

 

• If Delbert was frugal, Mom was lavish.
• If Delbert was stoic, Mom was dramatic.
• If Delbert cared solely for truth, Mom cared only for relationship.
• If Delbert preferred a particular method, Mom almost always opted for the fun of madness.

Mom has always been a bit of a daredevil and one who likes to be noticed. She doesn't like rules that tell her who she can and can't be, and she always believes in love, giving generously, and making the impossible possible. She is courageous, adventuresome, and open-hearted to being deeply loved and deeply wounded.

She loves to tinker with tools much like her Pop and she knows everything you need to know about birthing and babies...if you care to know. We learned a love of reading from her as we would often sit down for lunch at the table, each one of us girls buried in her own book. She rides motorcycle, collects anything and everything, and shares her family's propensity for a morbid fixation on death and numbers. Oh, and she loves her bed – so much so that she wants those very words engraved on her tombstone. My mom is undeniably a brave and amazing woman.

These two pictures were taken to announce
their engagement, but then were never used.

Unfortunately, it seems that their marriage was meant to be for reasons other than love. Despite my dad's willingness to think outside the box, he tells me that at the time that he still sincerely believed the essence of the church's teaching: 

Marry a Mennonite, stay a Mennonite, and everything will work out. 

Delbert tells me that the church often reassured its young people of this dangerous, self-serving, simplistic truth and evidently, there was little guidance on choosing a life partner beyond that. 

Delbert always liked the west and the pioneer style.

Mom, on the other hand, made her decision for her own reasons warped by the Mennonite teachings and her youthful exuberance. The church essentially reduces the highest Christian duty of women down to becoming a devoted helpmate and raising children. Education after high school is rarely encouraged and even then, the women usually pursue nursing or teaching as the most suitable roles for women within the world. 

After high school, Mom had the opportunity to move to Virginia and work in a nursing home. However, Grandma said that she preferred for her to stay close to home and get married rather than leave and explore a career. And with her ingrained dreams for a family of her own, Mom was content to oblige Grandma's wishes. So she went straight from her father's house to my father's house with no life experience of her own.

Delbert was 21 and Mom, 18,
when they were married November 12, 1977 in the Mennonite faith,
but things would soon begin unraveling and all would not be well.

As for the love, it was usually either expressed as a joke or a duty. Not every moment was heartbreaking, but the struggle to connect was there from the beginning. Mom told me that there were many times in the early years when she wanted to leave the marriage, but with small children and no education or experience, she had no idea how she would do it alone. 

This is the tattered and worn quilt of stories that I was born onto.

Squares cut from worn out farm jeans, cool and soft against my cheek. 
Faded triangles salvaged from an old kitchen apron that smell faintly of mothballs and cedar. 
Tentative hopes that were deferred too long and turned a man's heart sick...
The creak of old wooden staircases, the scent of mechanical grease in Grandpa's shirts,
Damp basements, homemade applesauce, and playing with Amish Raggedy Ann and Andy.
Heavy, angry thumbs squashing harmless dreams for fear of an infestation of change,
But always open doors, warm gingersnaps, overflowing gardens, and rough whisker hugs

My reason for telling these stories is to remember all the pieces of my self,...

...the stories that I hope to let go of,

And the ones I want to hold on to.

Yes, we can choose what we remember

But we also choose to remember.

And this old family quilt deserves 

to be remembered and treasured, 

even as I rip apart the ragged seams 

and painstakingly salvage pieces of my beginnings 

into a new storied quilt for my children someday.

~ ~ ~

*According to Wikipedia...

Asceticism (/əˈsɛtɪsɪzəm/; from the Greek: ἄσκησις áskesis, "exercise" or "training") is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. Ascetics may withdraw from the world for their practices or continue to be part of their society, but typically adopt a frugal lifestyle, characterized by the renunciation of material possessions and physical pleasures, and time spent fasting while concentrating on the practice of religion or reflection upon spiritual matters.^[3]

If you are interested in a more precise history of the Amish and the Mennonites, see this link for an online version of a short pamphlet written in the 1930s by A.M. Aurand, Jr., a local Pennsylvannia writer.



** My cousin and I just had a conversation on Facebook about this.

Because I'm writing this memoir in a blog format and sharing it publicly, I'm already getting feedback.

Honestly, it's okay. I'm glad people are listening.

Specifically, the conversation was about how I'm presenting Mennonites

and that they're not all as stuffy or vigilante as I'm (presumably) making them out to be.

(Please don't forget, my dear readers, that the story is only in the first few chapters.)

Still, the fact remains that a memoir is a narrow perspective.

It's my perspective of my childhood

and my particular version of Mennonite.

Our family roots are quite conservative.

Even today, my grandma's church permits her to use email - only as long as it is not connected to an internet service provider.

Also, the purchase of her van was quite laborious because it had to be one solid color of grey, brown, or blue and no decorative stripes!

But, YES, there are plenty of Mennonites who have Christmas trees, televisions, 
play piano in church, cut their hair, wear pants and makeup, 
have sex standing up, and look just like Baptists. 

And according to some, for all that, they might as well be!