So what is my friendship with Moise really about?

I’ve never been good at friendship, making friends, keeping them, or staying in touch. I had too many problems of my own; I was just too damaged. I don’t know how to do it; it’s not natural for me.

I expect every friendship I have to end one way or another, and it usually does.

Tomorrow, I’m getting up early to bring a carload of ice to the Millers to serve cold water to their many guests. In the afternoon, I’m going to a bus station to pick up workers coming to raise their barn.

In Amish terms, they call it a ride. In most cities, they call it a taxi.

Is that too much? Is that what five-time New York Times Bestselling authors usually do when they get older? Pick up people at the bus station, deliver ice cubes to large gatherings?

In between, I’ll be getting more ice and looking for the right ice cooler for them – they are about to get between 75 and a hundred hungry and thirsty visitors, and they need to give them something cool to drink.

For the Amish, nothing but riding a horse is really simple or easy to do. They can’t just go on Amazon and order things; everything they want is a horse ride away, sometimes for hours.

If someone offered to hire me to do that work, I’d turn nasty. As a part of being Moise’s friend, I love it. I refuse any payment except pennies for my Amish pennies jar, which is filling up quickly.

So what’s the difference between a hired hand and me? More than one person has asked me the same question.

I’ve committed myself to help my friend and his family and am happy for the chance. It feels perfect for me to be supporting this remarkable coming together of faith and community.

There is a lot for me to learn.

But I can’t really know where my friendship with Moise is going, how long it will last, or what it means to him or his family. How can I know that? I’m not sure what the boundaries are in this new kind of relationship; it is not familiar to me, there are no precedents to learn from in my life.

The Amish are not like me or us.

My friendship with Moise is never going to change. It can never grow. It can just be, which is just right for me. It’s in a very good place.

They don’t talk about their emotions. They aren’t into drama.  They never fully trust the English; they keep much of their faith secret.

I can’t imagine a discussion with Moise about our friendship that would make both of us uncomfortable. If it ended tomorrow, it would have been worth every second; I would never regret it.

We don’t tell each other too much personally, but we show each other what we feel all the time. By what we do, how we act, how we make ourselves available to one another.

They trust one another, and they trust most people, especially fellow Amish. They don’t judge other people.

Let me first speak selfishly.

Moise is getting a lot of support from me. But I am getting a lot of things from him. We give to each other.

First off, he has made it possible to get close to this extraordinary community, about which little is known.

That is a  remarkable gift for a writer. The highest gift a writer can get or a compliment he can be paid is to be given entry to a culture, place, or story that few people have seen and many people are curious about.

I will never write a book about the Amish or profit from the friendship somehow; that is not a complicated issue for me.

But Moise can’t really know what my intentions are? Am I going to write a book? Make money off the relationship? Disappear when I get tired of writing about him and his family? Publish close-up photos of him? I can’t know what he is really thinking, or fearing, or wonder.

He can’t know what I am really thinking. That is where trust comes in; our friendship was born in the trust of two people who don’t give real trust away easily.

Moise is always teaching me things: soil, plants, trees, horses, dogs, irrigation, crops, benign but firm bargaining, innovations like gravity pumps, growing things, selling things. He doesn’t mind that I am hopeless.

He has faith in my ability to learn.

We have decided to trust one another.  We did it almost immediately. And both of us are determined to keep our word.

And what is friendship anyway? It is a safe port, a nourishing place, another way to love.

That is Moise’s second gift to me. He teaches me how to trust, even loves, someone who is so different from me that friendship is a leap of faith. He teaches me acceptance, not judgment.

How can a renegade Jew turned Quaker turned secular (mostly) share a friendship with a fundamentalist Christian who doesn’t drive, use electricity, practice 500-year-old traditions of farming and family, who has 14 children,  rejects new technology, has no cellphones or other phones, watches any news, speaks Pennsylvania dutch most of the time, go to a dentist or a vet, wear different clothes, doesn’t accept Social Security card, have a license, or health care, or vote or pay his own mortgage? And is a patriarch to boot, a dirty word in divided America.

We are also at very different points in life.

He just turned 51; he has small children and grandchildren running all over the place. I am about to turn 74. My daughter lives hundreds of miles away, and I love speaking with his children.

When they grow up and my granddaughter grows up, I will be 80 and beyond. My story is being written now.

Amish families indeed need to get help from neighbors and “English” friends. They are independent, yet they can’t fully function without outside help.

But that is how someone likes me gets close, gets inside. It begins with a need.

So what is the friendship about? I don’t really know yet. I may never know. Some things need to be accepted.

I admire Moise, have come to love him. We have a connection that comes from deep inside of us, not the obvious exterior. I enjoy his company.

He has taught me a great deal about how to live, not from preaching, arguing, or lecturing, but simply from living.

He is honest and without guile. He is content and sees his life as meaningful. He pays his debts and treats people fairly. He treats his animals well. He loves his wife and children, and they very clearly love him.

If he can befriend someone like me, someone who is so different, why can’t I befriend him?

Since I’m not going to be plowing fields or climbing on a ladder to build his barn, our friendship must be different. I help him when he is busy and do things he cannot do but needs to do –  drive, search for things online, make telephone calls.

This is our equivalent of going out for a drink, or watching football games on Sunday or driving to big cities to see sporting events, have a drink, or even sit and have lunch in a restaurant.

What began as a practical relationship grew into something else. I appreciate it when he comes walking up to me and says: “Johhny, can you pick up my stepmother tomorrow at the bus station? She’ll be arriving at 2.”

I love it when I ride up the hill past his bleating goats and around his three-egged dog and past his beautiful horses waiting to pull their cars and past little Verna in her bonnet and chain and towards the smoke coming from the sweet-smelling kitchens.

There is always someone rushing out of the farmhouse to welcome me, help me, ask to see the pictures I’ve taken.

Normally, I only agree to drive Moise and his family; I don’t wish to be a taxi driver, but I know how important his stepmother is to him, and he is trusting me with her car. I said yes.

We are different. I can’t even curse in his presence, and I have a potty mouth.

In many ways, Moise and I see the world and our moral obligations much the same way. We love our families. We don’t speak cruelly of others. We don’t lie. We are not greedy and ambitious for money or corporate power.

We are both pacifists. We both are drawn to the teachings of Jesus Christ, even though I am not a Christian.

Once a week or so, Moise asks me a question about my life and where I came from. What were my parents like? How did I make a living? Why did I get a divorce? What is Maria like?

Once a week or so, I ask him the same things. Was he close to his parents? How did he come to love plowing? How did he learn so much about soil and animals, and crops?

I have the sense that we fill some of the holes in each other. When I come to see the barn raising, we rarely speak; he has so little time.

But every time I visit, he waves at me or smiles, or calls out my name, or wears the tool belt I got him for a birthday present.

Today, he had been working from dawn to the end of a blazing sun day, right to dusk.

He put down his saw at one point, walked over to me, gave me the biggest smile I have seen him give, and put his hand on my shoulder the first time I remember him touching me. “Tomorrow, Johnny, we build the wall.”

Then he turned back and went to work.

The trolls and others tried to belittle this as a “bromance,” the new tool creepy people use to ridicule men who dare to care for one another.

They suggested I was too naive to know I was being used.

But they seem long gone to me now; the spell is broken. Like ghost noises in a haunted house, I have trouble remembering their voices at all.

I am going on 74; we are rarely naive,  us older people. We have seen too much and learned too much.

I don’t need slaps and stories and guffaws; I don’t need declarations of loyalty and love or to be called “bro.”

I need honesty and authenticity; at long last, I have found some in a world where both seem sometimes to be falling from the sky.

In Moise’s busy life of work, he doesn’t really have the opportunity to talk openly about what he feels and what he wants.

But he feels like a brother to me, even though that could never be true.

He and I have those conversations in the car when I’m driving him. And they are deep and authentic; perhaps that is a hole I fill. They are not the conversations I would want to share.

Moise’s family and I are also close, and I find that I needed that and want it up here. Another hole to fill.

When you get older and are no longer an engaged father, people are opening doors and carrying bags for you rather than talk to you; being needed matters.

Hugs from little girls matter. Being called “Grandpops” and made fun of matters. Thumb wrestling matters. And mattering matters. Reading stories to young kids matters. Getting things they can’t get matters; it means something.

I joked last week about ordering the wrong pie pans online, I told Lena that perhaps she might want to fire me, and there was a look of horror around the room.

“Fire  you?” she said, “we’d have to fire ourselves first.” That mattered.

Trolls could never understand a friendship like that; I have no illusions. And Moise can’t really explain it himself.

All I can say is that it feels genuine to me, which means a lot, no matter what it is or how long it lasts.  It has given me wonderful material to write about; it has enriched my life and given it even more meaning. It has somehow made me a better human.

The good thing about getting older is that it doesn’t have to last long to last a lifetime.

I give thanks for my friendship with Moise right now and for every day that it lasts.