Gathering of Sisters

Gathering of Sisters By Darla Weaver

© 2018 by Herald Press –

Author’s Introduction

Our Tuesdays happened more by accident than by conscious planning.

There were five of us sisters, growing up together with our four little brothers in the white farmhouse our parents built. This house is situated on the rise of a small hill, beneath the sheltering canopy of eight towering silver maples. Five of these trees line up along the front of the house; three more circle to one side.

The nine of us kept this five-bedroom house brimming with life, and crowded with both happiness and some inevitable sadness. We did a lot of living and a lot of learning in that house.

And then we all grew up.

I was the first to leave. On a warm and sunshiny day in September 2000, after the leaves on the lofty silver maples had faded from summer-green and before they wore brightly flaming autumn shades, I was married to Laverne Weaver. It was the first wedding in that mellowing white house we all called home. Four more were to follow in the next years.

We never sat down and planned for Tuesdays. But after I moved six miles away to my own home, I gradually acquired the habit of going back to the old home place and spending a day each week with my family. On Monday I always had laundry to do, and scores of other jobs to tackle after the weekend. And before we had children, I worked part time in a bakery at the end of the week.

That left Tuesdays. Tuesday really was the perfect in-between sort of day to spend with Mom and my sisters.

Regina was married the following year; Ida Mae and Emily were both married in the spring of 2005: Ida Mae in March and Emily in April. And Amanda, the youngest of us five girls, also had a spring wedding in 2009.

In retrospect, it seemed the white house beneath the maples had emptied fast, and even our little brothers were little no longer. One had also gotten married, one was currently living in Alaska, and one was planning a spring 2017 wedding. Except for Christopher, the youngest of the nine of us, Dad and Mom were alone again.

Except for Tuesdays. On Tuesday the five us sisters still come home. We pack up the children— all eighteen of them during summer vacation—and head to the farm. The large house snugged in by the maples is full again, and more than full.

We go early. I drive my spirited little mare, Charlotte, and she trots briskly along the six miles of winding country roads. Regina and Ida Mae live much closer. They married brothers, and their homes are directly across the fields from Dad and Mom’s farm. They usually bike, with children’s noses pressed against the bright mesh of the carts they tow behind their bicycles. Or they walk, pushing strollers over the back fields and up the lane. And Emily and Amanda, who also married brothers and live in neighboring houses about five miles away, come together with everyone crammed into one carriage.

The children love Tuesdays. On warm days they play on the slide and the swings in the cool shade of the silver maples, jump on the trampoline, run through their grandpa’s three greenhouses, ride along on the wagon going to the fields where produce by the bushels and bins is hauled to the packing shed. They build hayhouses in the barn and explore the creek. The boys take poles and hooks and bait and spend hours fishing and playing in the small creek that flows beneath the lane and through the thickets beside the pasture fence. They catch dozens of tiny bluegills and northern creek chubbs, most of which they release back into the waterhole, a deep pool that yawns at the mouth of a large culvert, to be caught again next week. They work too, at mowing lawn, raking, lugging flower pots around, or anything else that Grandma needs them to do, but most often Tuesdays on Grandpa’s farm are play days.

We don’t exactly play, yet Tuesdays for us are also about relaxing. Of course, there is always work to do—just making dinner for such a group is a big job—but the day is more about relaxing, reconnecting, visiting, and sharing. We talk a lot, we laugh a lot, sometimes we cry. Tuesdays is about being sisters, daughters, moms. It’s about learning what is happening in each others’ lives.

Every day is different, yet every Tuesday follows a predictable pattern that varies with the seasons. Winter finds us inside, close to the warmth humming from the woodstove, absorbed in wintertime pursuits which include card-making, crocheting, sewing, puzzles—jigsaw, crossword, soduku—and reading books and magazines. But as soon as spring colors the buds of the maples with a reddish tinge, we spend more time outside. The greenhouses are loaded with plants, the flower beds full of unfurling perennials, and the grass is greening in the yard again.

In summer, while the garden and fields burst with produce, the breezy shade of the front porch calls. It wraps around two sides of the house and is full of Mom’s potted plants and porch furniture. We sit there to shell peas, husk corn, or just sip a cold drink and cool off after a warm stroll through the flowers.

Then autumn echoes through the country, the leaves flame and fall, and we rake them up— millions of leaves. Where we rake one Tuesday is covered again by the next, until at last the towering maples stand disrobed of leaves, their amazing seventy-foot branches a wavering fretwork against a sky that is sullen with winter once more.

The years spin faster now than they used to, and we catch and retain only fleeting memories of the months as they come and go. Once upon a time there were nine of us growing up in the house Dad and Mom built to be our home. We have moved on, but what we learned there is with us still, and those things are alive and well and budding in the hearts of the next generation—the eighteen children who play and work and laugh and cry and generally fill our old home with new noise every Tuesday.

I watch the children at play and marvel at the heritage our parents bequeathed to us, which we in turn are passing on to their grandchildren, and think about the lines of a verse I love in Psalm 16: “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage” (Psalm 16:6).

The years go fast, it is true, but what is written down is never forgotten. These are fleeting memories of fleeting moments of a year of Tuesdays, spent gathered with sisters, children, and Mom.

My Review:
This is a book written by an old order Mennonite woman that shares stories of a year worth of Tuesday with her sisters and mother. Every Tuesday these five sisters along with their children head back home to spend time with each other and their mom. They bring along food and craft ideas to share with each other. The grandchildren get a chance to play with their cousins and always find fun activities to fill their time.
The old order Mennonites live more like the Amish. They have a weekly routine and order of how they do things. The book includes recipes and in the back of the book, the author answers a few questions about old order Mennonites.
I think we all wish at times that we lived their lifestyle that seems so simple and predictable. Most important part is the relationship with Jesus who is our everything and that we center our life around Him.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my review.