When I was a young girl growing up in Mennonite country, I visited my grandparents on their farm nearly every weekend. A city(ish) girl, nothing on the farm ever stopped being a novelty. My sister and I spent hours crouched in the barn, coaxing semi-feral cats to come for a sniff and a pat, or teaching new kittens to drink milk from a saucer by dunking their noses in the dish.
I left the farm for the last time when I was thirteen years old, to live with my father in Calgary. In the last years, while reclaiming my Mennonite heritage through writing Mennonites Don’t Dance and reconnecting with a Mennonite Bretheren Church, I’ve begun to understand the depth of what I lost back then, even though, at the time, there was no way to hold onto it. While I returned for visits, the farm was no longer my farm, and the family there no longer knew how to look at me.
What I remember most, even more than the barns and outbuildings, the cats and grasshoppers, is my grandmother’s cooking. Mennonite to the core, her traditional recipes are ones I return to again and again to remember what it felt like to go home. And I remember my grandfather, reading from his Bible every morning, translating into Low German as he went. Although I never learned to speak or read the language, the sound of Scripture, to me, will always be Plautdietsch
This year is my mother’s 65th birthday and I think I have just the thing for it. Not something shiny or decadent, although a 65th birthday deserves both. Lately a woman in my Bible study group mentioned that a Low German Bible is now available. After much searching online, I found and ordered two. One so Mom can read God’s word in the language of her childhood. One for me, to use in my writing. And just to have a little bit of home where I can reach it.
darcie friesen hossack 
Dear Darcie;
My Grandparents were my parents during my earliest years and I have cosseted the memories of that time recalling them and giving them new life in daydreams and sometimes in written micro memoirs.
Bibles and Plautdietsch are a special smile from the past but that’s a story.
I can smell your barn cats, the kittens, the hay and straw and, when the wind is right, your grandma’s cooking from the farmhouse kitchen.
Thanks for sharing these evocative memories.
Your gift is beyond beautiful. I feel that Mother will be very moved.
Peter.
I idealize my Mennonite memories, I know it. But for a time, life there was ideal. There may be no going home again, but there are still the smells and tastes to be rediscovered, and the language. How I would love to hear it spoken again.
Micro memoirs, I am convinced, should be a new genre. If anyone ever lets me publish a Mennonite cookbook, expect me to come looking for yours. All good recipes should come with stories.
Hi Darcie
I’ve found your blog through the Pear Tree (although I have been following your food blog for a while now!). I”m looking forward to the publication of your book and will ask for it at my local book store down here!! I’ll let you know how ti goes!
And I think you know who I am eh? Down here I mean Australia.
snicker. I do know you 😉
Yes yes! Let me know how it goes, tracking down a copy down under. It may not be available there unless my agent lands an Australian publisher and sells them foreign rights. Not sure how everything works.