BOOK EXCERPT – This is the final excerpt from my unfinished memoir entitled “Not So Simple: My 25 Years Exploring Amish Communities.” The names have been changed to protect the family’s privacy. Perhaps someday I’ll finish the book!
By Kevin Williams
Over the weeks that followed, Anne and I shared long conversations and frequent laughter as I accompanied her while she went about daily chores. We talked about her life, which was headed in a very different direction than mine. I was preparing to begin college and hoped to launch a career in journalism. Anne spoke of canning, quilting, baking bread, and the prospect of raising a family. Our relationship felt like a mutual, innocent flirtation—comforting because we both knew it could go nowhere. My freshman year was only weeks away and I planned to build on the small journalistic successes I had already had. I recognized the bonnets, the buggies, the kerosene lamps, and the distinct language as powerful symbols of separation, and I tried to respect that barrier. I had my world; Anne had hers. Still, a part of me hesitated to leave the safety of the Adams County hollows and the Bontrager farmstead.
The summer slipped away quickly. I spent many days reviewing notes and stitching together a magazine piece, while the remaining August hours blurred with packing and college preparations. I also returned to the Bontragers for a final visit. In retrospect it was impulsive, perhaps even foolish. Before the visit I wrote a short handwritten note to Anne—teenage ritual in the era before texts—and slipped it into my back pocket.
My attraction to Anne surprised me. My romantic life in high school had been slow to develop. I wasn’t an athlete, and at Middletown High School athletes seemed to receive the most social attention. It would take years before I discovered a love for long-distance running. In the meantime, being a shy features editor obsessed with the Amish didn’t exactly draw a crowd of admirers.
Small Amish-owned businesses dot the hills of Adams County, Ohio.
On that last afternoon, Anne and I stood beside a split-rail fence while she tossed hay to a steer. The distant hills were veiled in a pale, vanilla haze. I wanted to know whether something more could exist between us. The folded note in my pocket felt heavy with the words I hadn’t dared speak. I wanted to set the paper aside and simply tell Anne how I felt, to cast aside my shyness once and for all.
“Anne…” I began, clumsy and unsure.
She paused mid-motion, a fistful of hay in one hand and the other resting on the fence. “Yes?” she asked, accustomed by then to my questions. Her blue eyes reflected the green of the surrounding hills.
“Um… never mind,” I said, unable to press on. She smiled, glanced my way, and returned to her task. A distant dinner bell clanged across the property, its sound bouncing off the hills.
After we ate—homemade bread and hot noodle soup shared around the same octagonal wooden picnic table where I had first seen Anne peeling potatoes—I excused myself and walked the property alone. I cursed my timidity for keeping me from speaking honestly. Unable to confront her, I left the note on a barrel in the barn, hoping she would find it during her evening chores. Then I offered the Bontragers a wistful farewell and went back to my life, uncertain I would ever see Anne again.