Quiet Help for Widows and Elders

Warm greetings from our Amish community here in the Heartland, and a happy Labor Day weekend to you and yours. The heat returned this past week, and so did the hay harvest in full force. Wagons and teams were on the roads before the dew had lifted, and many farms are bringing in a fourth cutting this year, something rarely seen in these parts. All the moisture through late Summer kept the fields far greener than usual, and there is a real gladness in the barns as the extra hay goes up before Fall arrives. A few clouds drifted in late in the week and offered a small respite from the punishing sun, just enough to make the afternoon work a little kinder on everyone. Monday will be a day of rest for many of you, though here the work of the Season carries on much as it does any other week.

This week’s letter continues our series on the Amish way of working together, and the focus turns to the gentlest kind of help there is, the care given to widows and to the elderly. It does not draw a crowd the way a barn raising does. It happens on ordinary days, in ordinary kitchens and woodlots, and often no one beyond the two households ever knows it took place at all.

One woman remembered the first time she helped an elderly neighbor. She was still a girl, and the job was simply cleaning house for her aunt-in-law. There was no ceremony to it. Someone needed a hand, and she had two willing ones. That is how nearly all of this begins. Families come to know that a widow needs something by watching and by talking with one another. A garden that has not been turned, or a woodpile standing lower than it ought to at that time of year. Widows seldom ask for anything, so their neighbors keep a kindly eye out on their behalf.

Woodcutting sits at the top of the list of tasks widows most appreciate. The woodstove is the heart of an Amish home, and a widow cannot easily cut and split enough on her own to see her through a Winter. Plowing the garden each Spring comes close behind, and there are always small fix-up jobs around a house that wait for a pair of strong hands. When the need is a lasting one, the community organizes itself in the quietest way imaginable. At times a note is passed around at church, assigning a certain week to each family, so that help keeps arriving steadily and no single household ever carries the whole of it.

Winter brings a care all its own. A road that turns back a car will often let a horse through without complaint, and neighbors make their rounds by buggy when the weather closes in. The most important work happens well before then, though, when families see to it that a widow has a full and generous supply of firewood stacked and waiting before the cold ever settles in.

The elderly here are never sent away. They stay at home among their own, sometimes in a small dawdy haus built alongside the main farmhouse, and when they grow frail the family takes turns caring for them so that no one is left alone and no one is worn out. Children learn how to treat their elders by example, the same way they learn everything else. They watch their parents step in, and before long they are stepping in themselves. One woman remembered her father and the way he shared the garden harvest each year with a neighbor widow. She never forgot the sight of it.

The lessons from this work stay with a person for life. One woman recalled a recent task she was asked to do for a neighbor. A disabled widow invited her along on a trip, and her job was simply to help the woman in and out of the vehicle at each stop. It was small, and it meant everything to them both. Another woman, after years of keeping house for an older neighbor, came away and decided that she did not want to become a perfectionist herself, a lesson she has been grateful for ever since. And the elderly give back in the telling. They share stories of their childhood and the good old days, and the young ones listening carry those stories along with them for the rest of their lives.

Widows have their own ways of giving back, and they are never at a loss for them. A pan of sweet rolls appears on a table, or a plate of cookies finds its way into the hands of the young men who cut the wood. What a widow may not have in means she gives freely of herself, lending a hand wherever the community needs one and showing up for the work of others long after her own strength has been spent for the day. She stays close to everyone by attending gatherings at other homes when she can no longer host the large groups she once welcomed into her own kitchen. One woman said the most surprising part of helping the elderly is the blessing that travels both directions. The one who comes to help goes home fuller than they arrived. Her lesson from all of it was simple. We need each other.

Stories from Our Amish Basket Weavers

Here are a few of the most notable moments from the families who weave the beautiful baskets featured on AmishBaskets.com , shared with us this week.

The Yoder Family

Excitement has been running high among the families these past few weeks as the scholars gathered their supplies for the start of another school year. The Yoders’ oldest daughter is teaching in a neighboring district’s schoolhouse this term, a larger school where she will have charge of grades one through four. She has helped there in years past, but this year she has company on the road. Her younger sister is coming along to begin her own first year of helping at the school. She has wanted to teach for a long while now, and she could hardly wait for Monday to arrive.

The Borntrager Family

The youngest Borntrager boys drove themselves to school for the first time this year, pony and cart and all. On Monday morning their older brother took his scooter and rode alongside them the whole two miles, keeping an easy pace and calling out at the crossings. They are young yet for the road, but they know that pony as well as they know anything. He has been hitched and driven around the farm since the boys were barely past learning to walk, and he minds them without a fuss. Their mother watched them out of sight from the porch and said the lane felt very quiet afterward.

"Character is not an inheritance.... Each man builds his own."

- Amish Wisdom Overheard in the Community.