Family Blessings

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Pleasant stood and began removing plates that had been wiped so clean Jeremiah thought they would need only a minimum of scrubbing. Lydia, Greta and Bettina helped, making short work of clearing the table. Pleasant took small clear plates from an open shelf and handed them to Bettina. “We have Herr Troyer’s ice cream and your favorite pie, Papa.”

“Ah, shoo-fly pie.” Gunther sighed patting his ample stomach.

“We can have both?” Henry asked.

“Ice cream and pie?” Will chorused.

“A taste of ice cream,” Pleasant replied not looking at Jeremiah. “Remember, we are only giving our opinion to Herr Troyer.”

The twins nodded solemnly and waited for their sister to serve each person a dessert of a slice of still-warm, shoo-fly pie topped with a small mound of mango ice cream. Will shoveled the ice cream into his mouth then looked at Henry for his opinion.

“Well?” Jeremiah asked.

“I’m going to need another taste,” Henry announced.

“Me, too,” Will said.

“I agree. Seems to me if we’re to have any hope of coming out even between the pie and the ice cream we’re all going to need more,” Gunther said passing his plate forward.

Jeremiah took some ice cream and pie onto his fork and tasted it. He savored the mix of flavors. The cool subtle vanilla with the sweet bits of mango mingled with the molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger of the pie filling. “This is it,” he murmured, taking a second bite and imagining the flavors mixed with chocolate ice cream or butter pecan or … “This is the cone we need. Shoo-fly cones,” he announced.

It was ludicrous, of course, Pleasant thought later as she washed the last of the dessert plates and paid little attention to her half sisters chattering on about the handsome—and eligible—Jeremiah Troyer. The unique flavor of shoo-fly pie came from the pie filling, not the crust. How did he expect her to turn a pudding-like filling into something sturdy enough to hold ice cream? And yet the challenge had been there in the way his eyes had sought hers across the table.

But this was no game such as the one he had played with the twins to finish their vegetables. This was a business challenge, one that could mean the difference between a substantial increase in business for the bakery and none at all if Jeremiah decided to go elsewhere. She paused in her washing to gaze out the kitchen window. Although the sun had set, she knew that she was facing the fields—the empty barren fields, the fields that would not only yield little if any produce but would surely yield even less income.

The drought that was choking much of the country had not spared Florida and this season’s crops had been sparse indeed even for those who had been wise enough to plan for such contingencies. After the disastrous spring harvest, Moses Yoder had warned her that after paying the field hands there would be little left from the sale of the crops. Then over the unusually hot summer months, strong westerly winds combined with the drought to blow away a good portion of the soil. In fact, dust was so thick in the air that most people in the community had taken to keeping their windows closed in spite of the heat. It was either that or dust furnishings and wash floors daily. Others had managed to eke out a small harvest, but not Pleasant.

“Do you think he left a girlfriend back in Ohio?” Greta asked and it took a moment before Pleasant realized that the question had been directed at her.

“Who?”

Greta rolled her eyes. “Herr Troyer. Who have we been talking about since he and Papa left?”

“I have no idea,” Pleasant replied. And I have no time for girlish fantasies.

“Are you truly going to try and create a shoo-fly ice cream cone?” the more practical Lydia asked as she took the stack of dessert plates from Pleasant and placed them back on the shelf.

“Of course,” she snapped impatiently, exhausted by all the many problems she faced. But then she softened her tone and smiled at her half sister, the schoolmarm. “After all, that’s the assignment.”

Lydia gave her an uncertain smile. “You’ve taken on so much since Merle died, Pleasant. You need some help.”

“She needs a husband,” Greta said with all the certainty of one who was enough of a romantic to believe that any problem could be solved through marriage to the right man.

“Greta!” Lydia admonished, her voice a warning.

“I had a husband,” Pleasant reminded Greta, whose mouth had formed a perfect circle with the realization of what she’d just said.

“Oh, sister, I am so sorry.”

Pleasant accepted the apology with a wave of her hand. “It’s late and the evening was an interesting one. Your mind is on other matters.”

Greta grinned, her good spirits restored. “Like Jeremiah Troyer?” She sighed. “Did you see his eyes?”

Lydia heaved a sigh of resignation and wrapped her arm around her younger sister. “Herr Troyer is too old for you, Greta, so stop daydreaming about his eyes. Besides, what would Josef Bontrager say if he could hear you now?”

“Oh, I’m just having a little fun. Anyone could see that the only one of us Herr Troyer was looking at to-night was Pleasant,” she added with a mischievous smile.

Pleasant laughed. “Go home both of you. It’s late and I still have work to do.”

Long into the night she sat at the kitchen table scribbling notes as she tried to come up with the formula for creating a crisp cookie cone from a recipe for pie filling. When the rooster crowed at four, she startled awake and realized she’d fallen asleep at the table. She stretched and then pumped water into the kitchen sink to splash on her sleep-laden eyelids. She stirred the embers of the fire in the wood stove and set a pot of barley oats on top to simmer.

Bettina would finish making breakfast for her brothers, wash the dishes and get the twins to Hilda’s on her way to school. Meanwhile, Rolf would milk the cow, feed the chickens, collect the eggs and deliver them to the bakery on his way to school. As Pleasant let herself out of the house and started down the road to the silent and dark bakery, she thanked God for the blessing of these children. They might not be hers by birth, but they were hers by circumstance and not a dawn passed that she didn’t plead with God to show her the way to guide them properly.