10 Comments / August 11, 2012
One of the little-known facts about the Amish in general (and I’m sure there are exceptions, given there is such diversity among the Amish) is that they are not demonstrative in their affections. In my home community, hugging and kissing was just never done as a way of greeting people or saying good-bye. Handshakes were allowed and used frequently, and on solemn occasions, such as Communion and Baptismal services, the holy kiss was practiced. David was ready to leave to go back to his sister’s house for the night. I stepped outside with him, and we looked up at the stars. He said he really enjoyed visiting, and he hoped it wouldn’t be long before we would see one another again.
Mothers are very demonstrative with their babies when they nurse them and sing to them as they soothe them to sleep. But they don’t pick up their children to hug and kiss them. There are no rules against such demonstrations of love… it is just not done.
Another interesting fact about affections, is that the Amish don’t have a way of saying “I love you” in their language. “Lieve” is the Amish word for love, but it is only a noun, and not a verb. So you can say, “I have love for you,” but not “I love you.” And they didn’t even say “I have love for you.” Rather they used a term I found odd at the time I lived in the community. They would say, “I think a lot of him.” That seemed such a roundabout or indirect way of letting someone know they are important to me. These last few years, I’ve developed a different take on the subject.
I believe thoughts are powerful.When I think of someone in an affectionate way, that person is occupying my thoughts. And when I think of her often, then “I think a lot of her.” I cannot speak for others, but I feel honored to know people think of me. Especially when I know someone is praying for me, because I believeprayer is the most powerful thought form. When we pray, we articulate our thoughts and direct them to our Creator, from whom all blessings flow. So when someone “thinks a lot of me” I feel loved.
That said, there are times when that is just not saying what I feel. In particular moments with David telling him that I think a lot of him just doesn’t do it. Neither does a handshake suffice for expressing my feelings for him. What comes to mind is a quote from Ingrid Bergman when she wrote, “A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”
There was a time when I was trying hard to “make myself Amish” and that was when I returned to the Amish after being away for four months. David had come to visit me soon after my return, and I wanted him to know that we could only be friends… after all I was Amish and he wasn’t. When he was saying good-bye that night after the visit, my feelings got complicated very quickly. I wrote about this in my second book recently. Here is an excerpt:
That’s when the inner turmoil began. David had conveyed his feelings so naturally by simply stating his desire to see me. If he was thinking of coming back to visit, did that mean he was my boyfriend? Did I want him to be my boyfriend? Would that mean he would join my world, or I would go back to his world? Where did I want to be? The uncertainty of not knowing what my future was or even what I wanted it to be — along with all the “shoulds” of my Amish life — was enough to make my feelings churn inside me. It was so uncomfortable that I didn’t want David to be there anymore, conveying his feelings to me.
David’s voice brought me to the present — standing outside the Benders’ house, under the stars, after having spent an evening with him “as a friend.”
David was asking, “May I kiss you goodbye?”
I said, “No.”
“May I give you a hug?”
“No.”
“Then will you shake my hand?”
“Sure,” I said and put out my hand.
David took my hand in his. Perhaps all those feelings we used to express on the sofa at the Y were channeled through our hands touching that night under the stars, because it was the most loving and the sexiest handshake I’d ever gotten.
I don’t remember David’s parting words, only the feeling in my right hand, later, when I was lying in bed, staring into the white light of the moon out the low windows of the bedroom where I slept. I was glad I was alone and in the dark with the feelings I didn’t want anyone else to know about. I knew if I was going to stay Amish, I could not have any doubts about that choice — the people in my community would soon detect any feelings of ambivalence and then they’d watch every move I made. I had to “show” them I could be trusted before they would.Except I wasn’t sure I trusted myself. All those feelings I had for David that I wanted to tuck into a tidy package labeled “just friends” insisted on spilling out and messing things up. My right hand still felt warm with the love that David had wrapped around it. I brought it up to my face in a soft caress, the way he often had when we were together in his world, and then slowly the tears came.
