Big Decisions Read online

  But she and Stephen did survive the weekend without Mam, although Lizzie struggled every hour, trying mightily not to resort to endless unexplained tears. It was like a summer rainstorm that showed up at the most unexpected moments. Dark clouds threatened to overtake her sense of stability, the well-being and genuine happiness she was accustomed to feeling most of her life.

  The worst part came after Laura finally settled down for the night, tucked into the small wooden crib in the corner of their bedroom, covered cozily with soft pink and white blankets. Lizzie lined up her bottles in the kitchen on the counter top and placed a small saucepan on the stove, ready to heat the formula during the night. Then Lizzie would climb into bed, feeling as if she would melt into the mattress and never be able to get up again. She was so tired, but there she would lie, her eyes open wide, staring at the ceiling. Meanwhile, every snuffle, breath, and whimper from the crib seemed to be amplified 10 times.

  She was completely overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for this tiny, pink human being, who depended on her for her every need. Lizzie was worn out with diapering, bathing, feeding, burping, and deciphering what Laura wanted every time she opened her sturdy little mouth and yelled, which, in Lizzie’s opinion was far, far too often. Lizzie was sure she was doing something wrong.

  So, much like she had done when she was four years old and had gotten Snowball, the kitten, Lizzie lay and worried about her baby. Sometimes babies spit up and choked, or simply died in their cribs. What if that happened to Laura? Or what if Laura cried and cried and cried, and nothing, not one thing Lizzie tried, would stop her?

  Lizzie tried to pray, to ask God to help her, she really did, but that only brought more tears. She only felt more pitiful. Probably God was very kind to young, scared, first-time mothers, so she cried because God was so loving. Stephen’s breathing, slow and steady, was a source of comfort for a reason she couldn’t explain. Probably because he was a rock-solid human being that could help if everything spun out of control, even if she still had to go down the hill for Mam’s advice.

  On Monday morning, Stephen’s sister, Mary, arrived with his mother while Lizzie was sweeping the kitchen floor. They tied their small black horse to the hitching rack and breezed into the house, bringing a whole new world of optimism with them.

  First of all, Stephen’s mother, Annie, grabbed the broom from Lizzie and, in her forthright manner, told her to go sit down. Young mothers should not be sweeping their kitchen when the baby was only a few days old, she said, clucking her tongue while Lizzie sat down, bewildered. No one had told her that, so she smiled to herself and figured it wouldn’t hurt to listen to her mother-in-law.

  “Where is she?” Annie asked, looking around for a crib in the living room.

  “She’s sleeping in her crib,” Lizzie answered.

  “In the bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, you don’t want her in there. You should have a small crib out here, so she’s with you during the day.”

  Bustling into the bedroom, she came out with Laura, clucking and exclaiming about her complexion.

  “Lizzie, she’s really cute!” she said, beaming happily.

  Mary smiled, talking to the baby. Lizzie sat back against the cushions, a real bubble of happiness beginning to well up inside. She was thrilled that they made such a fuss about her baby. Knowing that Mary would stay with them the whole week made everything seem more secure and possible. Actually, there was hardly a reason for her to cry at all. Stephen’s mother continued to fuss and ask questions, and Lizzie completely forgot about herself, or how she felt, as Mary gathered the laundry and tidied the house.

  “You know, you need to keep babies very warm,” Annie chided, as she wrapped the soft, white, thermal, knit blanket securely around Laura again. “They don’t stay warm on their own, the way we do. Maybe that’s part of the reason she’s fussy. Maybe she’s not warm enough. Mary, check the fire. See if there’s more wood.”

  While Mary did the laundry in the basement, Annie made coffee and put away the things she had brought, including shoofly pie and some of the fresh sausage from the hogs they had just butchered. Lizzie felt very cozy, knowing that having a baby was a special event, especially since Laura was Annie’s oldest son Stephen’s baby.

  That day, Lizzie had her first, deeply restful nap since Laura was born. Mary kept Laura in the living room with her while Lizzie slept. Lizzie awoke feeling so refreshed and happy, she couldn’t believe it.

  Mary was holding Laura, who was sucking peacefully on her pacifier, her eyes wide open, when Lizzie walked into the living room. Lizzie was surprised to feel a genuine rush of affection for her little bundle in Mary’s arms. Reaching for her, she bent to kiss the soft little forehead, and held her tightly against herself. Suddenly she realized that she was perfectly normal, and she genuinely liked her baby. What was so bad if she cried? All babies cried.

  Mary proved to be a good maud, cheerfully going about her duties, laughing about everything, which was like a good spring breeze to Lizzie’s battered emotions. Mary did laundry, cleaned, baked cookies, ran errands, folded clothes and put them away, anything Lizzie asked of her. Lizzie felt quite queenly, sitting on the recliner asking her maid to do things for her.

  When Stephen returned from work in the evening, Mary had supper ready for them. Lizzie’s appetite returned with full force. It seemed as if Laura knew exactly the time they sat down for supper, and she would begin crying from her little crib.

  But now, that was all right. Lizzie knew it was something she could handle quite well, in fact. Laura was either hungry or had to be burped or just wanted to be held for a while, which made Lizzie feel very capable and very motherly. Mary thought she cried an awful lot and was most certainly a grouchy baby. One day she peered in over the sides of the small porta-crib in the living room, lifted the blankets, and said, “She even looks grouchy when she sleeps!”

  Lizzie looked over Mary’s shoulder to see why she said that. Indeed, Laura’s eyebrows were drawn down in an expression of displeasure, her little mouth puckered into a pout. Mary giggled and Lizzie laughed softly.

  The glad day arrived when Emma came from Allen County, and Mandy came all the way to the farm in her horse and buggy. Lizzie wore her best everyday dress and bib apron, taking special care in the way she combed her hair and put on her Sunday covering. She felt very thin and pretty that morning, weighing less than she weighed on the day she became Stephen’s wife. She was so excited to see her sisters. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes finally looked the way they were supposed to, now that all the crying had stopped.

  Mary had baked chocolate chip bars, and the coffee was hot, waiting on the back of the gas stove. She bustled about the kitchen, tidying the counter top, while Lizzie watched from her position on the recliner. It was almost uncanny the way Mary resembled Stephen, with the same dark, nut-brown complexion, sun-streaked, dark brown hair, and large heavily-lashed eyes. Today, Mary wore a pale-colored dress which made her appear even tanner. She was thin as a reed and ate more than Lizzie did, which only assured Lizzie that there was a difference in people’s metabolisms. Some people just burned calories faster and more fully than others.

  “Here they come!” Mary said, from her vantage point at the kitchen window.

  “Do they?” Lizzie asked, jumping up, rushing to the window. Sure enough, Mam, Emma, Mandy, Susan, and KatieAnn all came walking up the hill, along the little pathway worn down through the grassy field.

  Mam was carrying one of the twins and Mandy the other. Emma carried her baby while KatieAnn held on to Mark’s hand. Lizzie watched and fairly skipped to the back door to open it for them, exclaiming in delight that they had all come together for a long anticipated visit.

  Emma cried as she hugged and hugged Lizzie, but that was all right. Emma always cried when a baby was born to someone else. She thought, as did Joshua, that babies were the greatest blessing there ever was, and they had always wanted a large family. Mandy laughe
d and looked at Lizzie and told her she looked very skinny—for her—and her face looked nice, and did she have on a new covering?

  Lizzie cried with Emma—only a little bit—then laughed with Mandy while Mam stood by and wiped her tears. Her nose became red the way it always did when she cried. KatieAnn and Susan took off the children’s coats and laid them on the bed in Lizzie’s bedroom, knowing their mother and older sisters would be incapable of thinking about normal things for the next five minutes, at least.

  Then Lizzie walked over to the small, wooden porta-crib and held Laura out for her sisters to see. She had put her in the prettiest sleeper she owned, a pink and white one with two small appliquéd hearts on the shoulder, and wrapped her well in a pink blanket.

  “Oh, oh, oh, my goodness!” Emma exclaimed, fluttering her hands, clearly beside herself. “Lizzie!”

  Mandy, in her self-contained, quiet way, said quite firmly, “Lizzie, she’s the cutest baby I’ve ever seen!”

  Then Mam’s nose became even redder, and she laughed and cried at the exact same time. Lizzie had never felt quite so important to her Mam and sisters as she did at that moment. Not even on the day she got married.

  They all took turns holding Laura, while KatieAnn and Susan entertained the other children with Mary’s help. Everyone chattered and exclaimed and talked all at once, and no one truly listened much to what other persons were saying. After the initial frenzy of seeing the baby and saying the most important things had died down, they had coffee around the kitchen table, savoring the chocolate chip bars, and talking at a much more normal volume and speed.

  Mandy’s twins were walking now and beginning to say whole sentences. They looked just like two little girls exactly the same age, except they were different in every way. One was dark-haired and dark-eyed while the other had blond hair and blue eyes. John and Mandy had been blessed with another little girl, named Sadie, who was nine-months-old and as blond and blue-eyed as the one twin. Mandy was a very busy young mother, very capable and sure of herself, now with three little girls. Joshua and Emma had a third baby, too, a little boy named, Isaac.

  They listened sympathetically as Lizzie recounted the horrors of her hospital stay, her baby’s crying, her own helplessness, the mean nurse, and her roommate who successfully nursed her red-haired baby boy.

  “But, Lizzie, I don’t even know what you mean. I have never once in my life felt that way,” Mandy said.

  “Not even with the twins?” Lizzie asked, incredulous.

  “Never.”

  “Me either,” Emma chimed in.

  “Well, why? Why would I be the one to have those awful blues?” Lizzie asked, becoming anxious all over again, her eyebrows raised in bewilderment.

  “You were always like that, Lizzie. Always.” Mam chimed in.

  “I didn’t cry about stuff, Mam.”

  “No, but you think ahead too much. You worry about things, not taking it a day at a time. Remember how you acted about Snowball, the kitten?”

  “I did think about that, really I did, Mam.”

  “Well, if you’d relax and quit thinking about situations that could happen, but very likely never will, you’d be much better off,” Mam said wisely.

  “But you can’t help the way you are,” Lizzie answered, a bit miffed.

  “You can learn from this, though, Lizzie,” Mam assured her.

  “Well, I won’t have to worry, because I don’t plan to have another baby. Not ever.”

  Lizzie said this quite forcefully, much to Emma’s consternation. Mandy was aghast. Mam’s nostrils got bigger, and her eyes snapped behind her glasses. No one said anything for awhile.

  “Lizzie, you wouldn’t do that,” Mandy said finally.

  “Not just one,” Emma said kindly.

  “Do you have to have a whole pile of babies?” Lizzie asked. “Does it say anything in the Bible about how many babies you should have?”

  Mam shook her head back and forth slowly, swallowing a mouth full of coffee. She raised her hands in the air and brought them back down on her lap, the way she did when she laughed.

  “I don’t know, Lizzie. I just know that babies are a blessing, and ‘blessed is the man who has his quiver full,’—meaning children are the arrows—which is a verse in Proverbs. There’s no real law about how many babies each individual family should have, but among the Amish, especially, we’re expected to have children.”

  “Why?”

  Emma and Mandy looked at each other in their superior, “that poor thing,” kind of way, which made Lizzy cross her arms and stare at them rebelliously.

  “Tell me why one baby isn’t enough.”

  “Lizzie, just wait. You’ll want more children as Laura becomes older.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “What about Stephen?” Emma asked gently.

  “He didn’t say anything about having more children,” Lizzie snapped.

  “Lizzie, there’s another verse in the Bible about women reaching salvation through childbearing,” Mam said flatly.

  “I thought our salvation is through Jesus on the cross. You know, grace, and that we can’t earn it,” Lizzie countered.

  Then Mandy, in that wise, prophetic way she always had, said Lizzie probably didn’t need to think about more babies now. And then Mandy went on, “Did you know that the other day we had a cow with a twisted stomach, and the vet could do nothing, not one thing, and the cow died?” They all returned to the living room, the subject changed to much safer ground. Lizzie’s happiness was restored as she thought about a dead cow instead of having more babies.

  “Wasn’t that quite a loss?” Lizzie asked.

  “Not really. She was not a good milker, and we’re butchering her, so we’ll have ground beef you can buy from us for a good price,” Mandy answered.

  “Oh, goody! Then I can make meat loaf and barbecue sandwiches and vegetable soup and lots of good things for Stephen’s supper,” Lizzie said, smiling.

  The rest of the day passed in a happy glow, with good advice from Mam about being careful not to give Baby Laura more than two ounces of formula before burping her. She also told Lizzie to hold Laura’s head up when she gave her a bottle, although Lizzie still felt inferior watching Emma and Mandy peacefully nursing their babies, relaxed and at ease with the whole deal. Oh, well, sometimes life just was that way, and you had to do the best you could, even if it meant giving your baby formula from a bottle.

  Chapter 19

  IN SPITE OF ALL of Lizzie’s insecurities and her lack of expertise when it came to babies, Laura thrived and grew, although crying lustily much of the time. Lizzie switched to a different formula, but with no success. One evening Stephen’s mother, Annie, persuaded Laura to try goat’s milk, which was natural and she thought as close to mother’s milk as nature could provide. Laura drank well, cried just the same, and smelled exactly like a baby goat. Lizzie switched to a soy-based formula, and Laura smelled exactly like a little soybean.

  But they continued on with the soybean formula, simply because her crying bouts were fewer, her nights were better, and she seemed more relaxed. That, in turn, made Lizzie feel better and calmer about babies in general.

  The winter was a harsh one, with many snowstorms and temperatures hovering around zero degrees many days. The township plows, with their bleary-eyed drivers, did their best, but still some of the less traveled roads remained closed for days with snowdrifts making the roads impassable. Still the snow fell and the wind blew great walls of it to distant places, blowing anything shut that bore even the semblance of a dip. Lizzie loved the snow and the excitement of seeing cars slip and slide, revving their engines as they tried repeatedly to make their way to the top of the small, steep incline below their house.

  On one of those days after yet another snowfall, when the weather turned bitterly cold and a strong, steady, forceful wind began to blow during the night, Lizzie was awakened by the tingling of her nose. She lay shivering beneath the heavy comforter, listening intently to
the steady whine of the wind, ever increasing outside the window.

  That morning, Stephen got up a bit earlier to make sure there was plenty of wood in the box beside the stove in the living room. He had a good strong fire going by the time Lizzie got up to make breakfast and pack his lunch.

  “I’m glad I have work inside today,” he said.

  “Won’t you have a problem getting to your job?” Lizzie asked worriedly, knowing their weekly paycheck had been decreasing during most of the winter months because of the weather, but their mortgage payment was due on the same date every month.

  “I don’t think so, not with Jerry,” he replied, grinning. “He’s not afraid of anything with that four-wheel drive.”

  “Just be careful,” Lizzie said.

  “I want you to be careful, too,” Stephen said seriously. “Don’t let the woodstove get too hot in this wind. Sometimes I don’t really trust the chimney. I don’t think it’s built well enough with just the flue liner and chimney block.”

  “Doesn’t everybody build their chimney that way?” Lizzie asked.

  “Pretty much. But I’d still feel more comfortable if we had built a better one.”

  Lizzie tried to heed Stephen’s advice, but the house would not warm up sufficiently. Laura’s little hands were cold, and shivers went up and down Lizzie’s spine as she sat at the sewing machine. She stopped treadling just to listen to the wind as it wailed and howled around the little house, rattling anything that wasn’t securely nailed down. She felt thankful for their good sturdy home, covered with bricks, white or not. They kept out the cold, increased the strength of the little structure, and helped her feel safer.

  She added a few pieces of wood to the stove and opened the draft in the back, telling herself there was no sense in being chilly all day, especially with Laura shivering. She returned to the sewing machine, quickly becoming engrossed in putting in a difficult sleeve, and forgot about the draft in the back of the woodstove.