Belated update

[naomikritzer]

So, we went on vacation. We actually got back a week ago, but with one thing or another I haven't gotten around to posting about it until now.

We flew out to Pennsylvania; my childhood friend (since second grade!) May was getting married in Lancaster, and we went to the wedding. Driving to Lancaster was a monumental pain in the ass -- we got lost repeatedly -- but the wedding was lovely, held outdoors at a B&B with a dinner reception. May was beautiful and looked extremely happy. Her sister April, who is getting married later this summer, also seemed to be doing really well. (Yes, their names are really May and April. And May's the older one. There's no June in the family. And they've already heard alllllllllll the jokes.)

The Sunday after the wedding, we were going to drive up to visit some of Ed's cousins who live near Allentown, but we had a few extra hours to get there so we went and had a buggy ride. This particular buggy ride place talks on their website about having drivers who are Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren, and can answer questions about the various communities -- however, it was a Sunday, so I was not surprised that our driver did not appear particularly Amish. She had multiply pierced ears, sneakers, and a sundress with a loud Hawaiian print.

Miriam explained as we rattled down the road that she had grown up Brethren and had attended the local Amish school. Amish, Brethren, and Mennonite teenagers all have a formal period of time called rumspringa, or the running-around period, where they're allowed to experiment with the modern lifestyle. This can last basically as long as they want -- in order to get married in the faith, you have to get baptized and accept the restrictions of adult life.

Miriam had told her parents that she wasn't getting married for at least ten years, and that therefore she needed to come up with something to do in the meantime -- so she was attending college, Seton Hall to be specific, and majoring in International Relations and Asian Studies. She cheerfully answered questions about Amish life and school and so on but I felt like it would be a bit unfair to ask her the questions I was really wondering, as they were a bit personal. Did she really intend to go back and rejoin the community, or was this a tactful way of easing her way out into the modern world without alienating her parents? Was she dating non-Brethren boys at her college? What was it like, adjusting to a college dormitory and college life after growing up in a group like this? Did she tell her freshman year roommate about her background?

There was a swingset and play cottage between the buggy rides place and a "country store" with the most horrifyingly tacky set of Amish-themed merchandise that you can possibly imagine, and the girls played there for another hour before we hit the road. I liked the back roads of Pennsylvania a lot more than I liked the turnpike; we saw tons of buggies and farms that were farmed with horses, though we couldn't stop to buy farm-fresh eggs or browse Amish quilts/furniture/crafts/wood toys, because none of them, of course, were open on Sundays.

We visited with Ed's cousins for a couple of days, then drove up to Boston to visit Ed's father and other cousins. Molly and Kiera got to ride Major, Ed's late mother's horse, who is stabled near Ed's father's house. And we saw Nancy Drew, which I found really fun, though in part this was because I knew that Molly was loving it. (Molly is a big Nancy Drew fan -- gravitating heavily towards the early ones rather than the recent additions, and good for her, the old ones were better. Molly wants to dress up as a detective for Halloween -- she'd be most recognizable as Sherlock Holmes, but she wants to dress as a GIRL detective, so I will probably try to put together a costume for her based on the movie Nancy Drew.)

This past weekend Ed took the girls camping and I stayed home and worked. I'd been trying to get the beta edits done on Holy Week, and got repeatedly sidetracked, but I FINALLY got them done this weekend and have sent the revised manuscript off to my agent. Who is, naturally, on vacation, but she'll have a nice fresh I'm-actually-happy-with-it-now manuscript waiting for her when she gets back.

Comments

[jmartin2.livejournal.com]

Wow, you were right in our neck of the woods -- we occasionally will go to Lancaster for a long weekend, though I admit I spend more time in the outlet stores than with the Amish. How ironic that we were in Northfield that weekend, so sorry we missed you!