Old Order Mennonite Memoirs

April didn't wait long to pay for the warm weather that March stole from May. In her very first day she let us have it all. Without respect for the green grass and bright daffodils that March brought into our world, she blew wildly with snowy breath and stinging sleet. The sun never peeped and I was again thankful for row cover protection for the early garden ventures. Staying indoors to organize cupboards and drawers seemed the perfect thing to do on April's first day.

On her second day my daffodils bowed low in the 20 degree wind from the north and I wore my winter shawl for the buggy trip to Piney Creek church's Good Friday services. Shrugging into the same old winter garb to head for barn chores seemed extra tiresome. I wondered where the purple martin was hiding that my husband had seen several days before and what insects he was finding for a snack. The chipping sparrows that had arrived on March's last day were nowhere in sight and the fight among the tree swallows about who gets which house was nonexistent. The trips to the greenhouse to care for tiny plants were done quickly through the cold.

The last Monday in March seemed like a dream in which I walked outside with my daughter and granddaughter Bella, age 2. We were looking at seedlings in the mild sunshine and I saw the first red shoots of the peony roots we dug from my flowerbeds last October.

Was the next day and its streaming sunshine also a dream? My husband was busy sowing alfalfa seeds so I was on my own to take lunch to Dad. My accompanying person was slightly smaller at age 8, but Grandson Logan's smile was like the sunshine of the day and I was thankful for these gifts from God who gives us all things richly to enjoy, even as the effects of increasing age flaunts its evidence before me.

But there is a time for everything, including spring. By Saturday, the north wind abated begrudgingly and temps nudged up reluctantly. To assist my efforts in the weekly house cleaning duties, I interspersed it with time outdoors. With plants and soil and water weaved in with mop and broom and rag, I did not begrudge those basic tasks so much. But it was not until just before supper that I allowed myself to plant the pansies in the planters along the patio wall with the trailing ivy. After chores my evening was taken up in setting a table for 24 people.

Easter Sunday dawned bright and clear. I was pleased to have Lyla, age 3, sit beside me in church. After services we compared the three baby boys close by. One came into my sister's arms, her second grandson. The other two were the twin cousins with sister mothers.

The rest of the day was a blur of cooking and doing dishes, of croquet and tennis games and grandchildren everywhere. Included in the day were Easter songs and 60 candles on a chocolate cake. His grandchildren gladly blew out the rows of little flames and when asked for a bit of sage advice he concluded, "The more I know, the more I know I don't know."

The whole day was flooded in sunshine and the north wind was busy eating its cookie.

'The moon's the north wind's cookie, He bites it day by day,

Until there's but a rim of scraps, That crumble all away.

The south wind is a baker; He needs clouds in his den,

And bakes a crisp new moon that

Greedy north...... wind..... eats....... again.'

– Vachel Lindsay