The Sunroom Read online

  By Beverly Lewis

  Amish Prayers

  The Beverly Lewis Amish Heritage Cookbook

  The Rose Trilogy

  The Thorn • The Judgment • The Mercy

  Abram’s Daughters

  The Covenant • The Betrayal • The Sacrifice

  The Prodigal • The Revelation

  The Heritage of Lancaster County

  The Shunning • The Confession • The Reckoning

  Annie’s People

  The Preacher’s Daughter • The Englisher • The Brethren

  The Courtship of Nellie Fisher

  The Parting • The Forbidden • The Longing

  Seasons of Grace

  The Secret • The Missing • The Telling

  The Postcard • The Crossroad

  The Redemption of Sarah Cain

  October Song • Sanctuary (with David Lewis) • The Sunroom

  www.beverlylewis.com

  THE

  SUNROOM

  Beverly Lewis

  The Sunroom

  Copyright © 1998

  Beverly Lewis

  Ebook edition created 2010

  Ebook corrections 1.5.2012

  ISBN 978-1-5855-8688-2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  Scripture quotations identified NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1974, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved. The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. www.zondervan.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Minneapolis, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Cover and inside illustrations by Pamela Querin

  Inside designed by Sherry Paavola

  This book is dedicated

  to

  the glory of God.

  To every thing there is a season,

  and a time to every purpose

  under the heaven:

  A time to be born, and a time to die. . . .

  A time to weep, and a time to laugh.

  —Ecclesiastes 3:1, 2, 4 (kjv)

  About the Author

  BEVERLY LEWIS, born in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, is The New York Times bestselling author of more than eighty books. Her stories have been published in nine languages worldwide. A keen interest in her mother’s Plain heritage has inspired Beverly to write many Amish-related novels, beginning with The Shunning, which has sold more than one million copies. The Brethren was honored with a 2007 Christy Award. Beverly lives with her husband, David, in Colorado.

  Reflections

  I’ve spent a lot of time perusing old scrapbooks and childhood diaries of late. The notion that I am coming into my contemplative years is entirely settling, really. Like a warm hug from someone who loves me.

  Perhaps this is why I find myself asking directions of a pediatric nurse on the third floor of the Lancaster General Hospital. “It’s the sunroom I’m after,” I tell her, noting the quizzical look on her young face. “I’ve come two thousand miles to see it again.”

  “The sunroom is being renovated . . . painted and whatnot,” she says, pointing toward the southeast corridor. “Down there, beyond the roped-off area.”

  The nostalgic side of me feels the need to explain. “I’m writing a family history . . . including a section on my mother’s illness. She spent many days in this hospital back in the early fifties.”

  I hesitate, wondering. Dare I share the whole story? I’ve heard it said that if a writer speaks the intended words—shares them verbally prior to the actual writing—it upsets the creative process. Assuming that to be true, I suppress my thoughts.

  “Good luck,” says the nurse, offering a smile. “And watch for wet paint.”

  I thank her and head down the hallway, accompanied by Aunt Audrey, Mother’s youngest sister. We stand outside for a moment, peering in. “Is this how you remember it?” she asks.

  It is. And I make a mental note to reread, as soon as possible, the numerous entries in my old diary describing my first visit here.

  Casting a furtive glance down the hall, I proceed to lift the rope and step inside. “Mother used to call me from this room,” I hear myself saying. “Sometimes I would play the piano for her over the phone.

  The music cheered her—made a difference, she told me.”

  I sigh, remembering the bleak, worry-filled days.

  My aunt nods, her own memories filling up the silence.

  I move closer to the windows, staring out at the altered skyline.So much has changed since my growing-up years here in this historic city.

  My eyes roam across familiar sights—brick row houses, their front stoops and cement steps paving the way to cobblestone sidewalks just a few feet from busy, narrow streets. And stately trees—what abundant varieties—creating a canopy over residential side streets that eventually lead to Penn Square, complete with its white granite 1870s monument to sailors and soldiers, the ornate Watt & Shand building, and Central Market—a gathering place for farmers and merchants since the early 1700s.

  In full view is the hospital parking lot, three stories below. “The nurses used to help Mother stand up at these windows so she could wave to my sister and me,” I remark to my aunt. “Emily and I simply had to see with our own eyes if Mother was still alive.”

  How fresh, how terribly raw the girlhood recollection. Weeks on end, missing Mommy; wondering if she’d ever be well enough to come home.

  Standing here in this place, gazing through the same sun-filled windows as Mother had, I recall the old feelings, the panic-stricken awareness that my mother had only six months to live, yet not knowing how to make the minutes stop ticking. How to keep her alive.

  The actual sequence of events is somewhat vague, like a vast watercolor painting of a distant panorama. My life is filled up with my own family now—my husband, our children, and the activities of our lives. Yet the past beckons me; my mind wanders, and I long to walk the streets of my childhood, talk to the people who remember how things used to be. This is the reason I have come to celebrate a milestone birthday in Pennsylvania Amish country, to research the bygone days, to recapture more than mere details.

  With the aid of my juvenile diary, I wish to sort through tender emotions and get it all down in writing for posterity. And for myself.

  Whatever the truth about those long-ago days, it is a young girl’s path to the heart of the Father—my soul’s search for hope—that I will treasure most.

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Reflections

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18
/>
  Chapter 19

  Reflections

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Lancaster, Pennsylvania—1952

  When I was twelve, I made a naïve, yet desperate pact with God to keep my ailing mother alive. It was the first time I’d ventured something so brazen—making a contract with the Almighty.

  Not a soul knew of it, not even my best friend, Lee Anne Harris, and certainly not my mother. Had either one of them known, my face would’ve stained red with embarrassment, because as bold as I had been with God, the opposite was true of my personality.

  I, Rebekah Mary Owens, was born shy but determined, the first child of a pioneer minister and his wife, on an Easter Sunday morning in the southern end of the Susquehanna Valley, commonly known as Lancaster County.

  Early on, I displayed a keen interest in the piano, creating my first melody at age four, followed by piano lessons under the tutelage of my musical mother. Prior to these events came my earnest prayer for a baby sister, and nine months later, Emily Christine arrived.

  The first indication that I was to be a tenacious child was discovered by my mother as I practiced for a kindergarten recital. Again and again, my tiny hands performed the melody. Spellbound, I was lost in the simple beginner’s song.

  Then to my surprise, the stove timer began to ding repeatedly. “Time’s up,” Mommy called from the kitchen. “You’ve practiced long enough.”

  I slid off the bench and voiced my complaint. “Do I have to stop already?

  ”

  “It’s suppertime, Becky.” Mommy dried her hands on her ruffled apron, blue eyes smiling. “You do love the piano, don’t you, dear?”

  “Can we make the timer go longer tomorrow?” I asked, marching off to wash my hands.

  Along with my passion for music came an equally strong affection for classic children’s literature, followed by an emerging love for letter-writing. Soon after fourth grade, I linked up with a Canadian pen pal, and she and I attempted to outdo each other in the penning of epistle-size letters.

  Next came short story fever, beginning in sixth grade when the teacher taught us to use quotation marks correctly.Delighted at the ability to make story characters “speak,” my nar-ratives became longer, novellalength works, assessed for literary quality by my dear cousin and friend Joanna. I made Joanna my my captive once, reading her a seventy-seven-page story entitled She Shall Have Music.

  It is not clear to me, however, when the fears first began. Perhaps they started when a school friend excluded me from her birthday party. No brightly colored invitation ever arrived in our mailbox, though I waited and hoped.

  Might’ve been a simple oversight; maybe not. Still, I worried too much about it, despising the left-out feeling.

  Shortly after that, I began writing in a secret diary. The diary lay nestled safely inside a lovely wooden case with a gold lock and key.

  There I recorded the disappointments of my young life—some more critical than others, including the entire year I had to exist without piano lessons. After we moved to the country, Daddy could no longer afford them, yet I continued to practice with a passion.

  Not long after my diary-keeping began, Mother and I became even closer, creating delectable “Plain” recipes such as Gooey Shoo-Fly Pie and chicken and dumplings to surprise Daddy, working on sewing projects for Emily and me, and practicing piano duets. Sometimes Mommy sang and I would play the piano accompaniment. Oh, the glorious musical hours we spent together . . . my mother and I.

  Then along about dusk, when the house was still, she’d talk to me about the Lord, trying to redirect my worries. She was usually pretty effective, too, because of her “hotline to heaven,” as she called it. Through my grade-school years she often encouraged me to give my cares over to God, helping me memorize Bible verses . . . teaching me to trust.

  My sister and I had contests to see who could recite an entire chapter from the New Testament by heart. We were doing just that the morning Mommy became ill with flu-like symptoms.

  I wanted to stay home from school to be sure that she was all right, but Mommy urged me on. “I’ll be fine,” she insisted, even getting out of bed to pray a school-day blessing over Emily and me.

  I wasn’t interested in running the usual footrace to the top of the hill that day, where school-age kids gathered to wait for the bus.

  Instead, I hung back, walking alone . . . talking to myself.

  “What’s that you’re saying?”the neighbor boy teased.

  “Nothing much.”

  “It ain’t nothin’,” he insisted. “I heard you talking.”

  I clammed up, shielding myself from the rude, prying world. Eventually, when I’d given the boy no satisfaction of an immediate reply—no hope for a future one, either—he scurried away to catch up with the others.

  Days passed, and Mommy’s “stomach flu” lingered. I would remove my shoes before entering her bedroom, because the slightest jarring sensation caused her pain. It was becoming evident that something hideous was trying to choke the life out of my youthful, rosy-cheeked mother.

  Once, I caught her sitting up in bed, staring at the dresser mirror across the room. “Do I look different?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” A lump flew into my throat. “Do I look gray to you, honey?”

  I surveyed her reflection in the mirror. My grandmother, her mother, had died of cancer when I was only five, yet I remembered clearly the ghastly pallor of her face.

  “You’re going to get well, Mommy,” I said bravely.

  Reclining against her pillow, she let the former question drop and posed another. “What did you do in school today?”

  I sighed. “We had Choral Union, and the music teacher asked me to accompany the Christmas Ensemble.” The class had been the high point of my day. “He picked me over all the other pianists.”

  “I’m not surprised.” She smiled, her rosebud lips pressed together. “You have a God-given gift, you know.”

  Gingerly, I sat at the foot of her bed, wondering how close I should get. What if she had a contagious disease? What if I caught it, too?

  I reached over and stroked the foot-shaped bump under the blanket. “I love you,” I said, almost under my breath.

  “I love you, too, Becky.” She reached for her thin New Testament, worn with use. “I don’t want you to worry about me.” She turned the delicate pages to a passage she’d marked with a hankie. “I’ve been reading a wonderful Scripture this afternoon. Matthew four, verse four.”

  Eagerly I listened. Her smile, no matter how weak, encouraged me.

  “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” She paused, closing the Testament. “I’m going to take that verse literally.”

  So my mother was going to “eat” God’s Word by memorizing and reciting certain Scriptures. Daddy would be all for it.

  But the weeks turned into one long month, and she grew weaker. She had to eat canned baby food because she couldn’t digest regular meals. And she was too frail to walk the short distance to the bathroom, so Daddy carried her back and forth, casting reassuring glances at Emily and me when we poked our heads out of our bedroom. “Mommy’s lighter than a feather,” he’d say, which wasn’t reassuring at all.

  I would rather have heard that she was gaining weight, getting stronger. Feathers, after all, were for cowardly chickens and ancient great-grandmothers’ beds. . . .

  That night I waited for the sounds in the house to fade. Then slowly, I tiptoed into my parents’ room.

  Daddy was snoring his usual repertoire with an occasional extra snuffle thrown in. Mommy, however, lay as still as can be, making no sounds at all.

  In the glimmering moonlight, I knelt beside her, careful not to bump the bed. Quiet yet steady was her breathing, and I knew she was alive because of it.

  I reached out to touch her shoulder-length hair, its gentle waves enticing me. But I hesitated, then cautiously tou
ched her cheek, brushing my fingertips against the sweetest face in the world.

  The melody from my new piano solo fluttered into my head, and I began to hum softly, oh, so softly. I remembered every piano recital, every single audition and festival of my entire life . . . because she had always been there, sharing the music with me.

  I thought of God and His great wisdom, that He had given me a mother so much like myself, and I wondered why my heavenly Father would allow her to suffer so.

  “Dear Lord, don’t let Mommy die,” I prayed. “Please . . .”

  The music in my head and the prayer on my lips pushed against the black fear inside me and at last, at long last, my tears began to flow.

  Chapter 2

  Mommy was admitted to Lancaster General Hospital the next day, September sixteenth. I didn’t have to memorize the date because I recorded it in my diary—along with my apprehension.

  The next day the weather turned balmy, too hot for so late in the summer. Something was brewing. I could see it in the ominous gray bank of clouds looming over Jake Stoltzfus’s barn to the north of us. I stared out the school bus window at the sky, wondering if the coming weather change was God’s way of mourning Mommy’s illness, too.

  Several of my school friends thought I assigned too much importance to the intangible, insignificant things of life—cloud formations over Amish farmland, for instance. So when I told Trudy Croft, who always sat with me on the bus, about my feelings—the way the sky looked and how it tied into my mood regarding my sick mother—she just stared at me. Like I’d flipped my lid.

  “C’mon, Becky, do you really think the weather has anything to do with that?” she asked, blinking her dark eyes.

  “Maybe,” I said in a whisper.