Amish people don't believe in technological advances like we do in New York. They don't have cars or computers, Televisions or cells. They don't ride in planes or go on long trips.
The Amish used to come to my little town in Pennsylvania and sell rotisserie chickens that slowly rotated around a skewer in an oven behind a counter cooking all day. When I was a kid, we would sometimes walk into town and go to the Farmers Market where they worked and buy those chickens. My parents were friendly with the Amish man who owned the little counter, and they paid him to build a swing set and tree house for me and my brother. It's still in my backyard today--the wooden tree house with the ladder and the slide that hasn't been used for years but that we still love.
Amish people also dress differently. They have traditional outfits that they wear: solid, dark pants, suspenders and white shirts for the men; long, solid colored dresses for the women. The men grow their beards long and they wear hats. The women always have their hair up on a low bun with a cloth bonnet on their heads.
When I was younger, I remember watching the Amish children who would come to the Farmers Market and work with their parents. Sometimes the little girls would actually sell the chickens and work the cash register. I remember them being so pretty and untouchable--they were at my eye level, at my age, but completely separated from me. I could never have been friends with an Amish child, but when I would see a little girl, I would understand that she was still like me, and the little boys like my brother. If I had had a dress like that, I could have been her. I remember thinking that they looked just so cute in those dresses.
I've been thinking about those little girls a lot the past few days. How smart and hard-working they were; how adorable and gentle and perfect they seemed to me. Thinking of them is what makes my heart well up into my throat; it terrifies me to think of my 8 year old self in their place now.
My friend is in Lancaster and today she left me a message on my voicemail. She was sitting on a cinderblock watching a horse-and-buggy "klop" by. Yesterday, she said, all the bookers and newscasters from New York were there. Representatives from ABC, NBC, CBS, all standing amongst the grassy fields in Pennsylvania watching a school house where the un-explainable happened. They came in SUVs and planes and helicopters, but it smelled like manure and the beginning of Fall.
That was the paradox of yesterday. And today it seems almost as absurd as the event that brought them there in the first place.
posted by iliza @ 12:13 PM
1 Comments:
As someone who also grew up around the Amish community in PA, I can really relate to what you're describing in this post. I remember having the same feelings as a child. This story breaks my heart.
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