D J Swykert

The Amish Woman

D J Swykert

As I drove down Kitter Road to the highway this morning to pick up the newspaper near the intersection, I could make out the old Amish woman that lives in the farm east of me. Her husband died a couple of years ago, and as always, she is walking alone.

My girlfriend and I live on a quarter-section, a hundred-sixty acres. A century ago this was a strawberry farm. At the juncture, where the land runs along the highway, it's overgrown with uncut grass, milkweed, and bushes. Further back off the road is a large irrigation pond that dates back to when this was a working farm. The only thing that grows here any longer is by coincidence, whatever sprouts up among the grasses where once rows of berries existed.

I watch as she stops to pick up something out of the grass along the road. I know what it is--asparagus. It grows wild along the roadside. It will be for her dinner.

She wears the customary long, black dress with the black bonnet. It's eerie to see. She appears a vision out of something ancient, ritualistic, as she strolls toward me from a distance on her way home from church.

As she approaches, I nod my head and say, "Hello."

She nods back and smiles, as it is Amish custom to greet people. But she says nothing.

When I get the mail I often see her standing in the road in front of the driveway to her farm. I sense her loneliness. I imagine the bitter quiet of her farmhouse at night; no electricity, no phone, no voices, no radio, no television, no sounds except out of the darkness. I have compassion for her. Though not dead, she is already more than halfway to God.