This morning, I dug up my two blueberry bushes – they looked strong and healthy – and dropped them off at the Miller’s food sales shed.

The Amish never work on Sundays, and the shed is closed.

I see my life in terms of passages and chapters; last year was the Amish Chapter, and the blueberries were the first part.

Our friendship continues still but in a very different way.

My friendship with Moise Miller and his family was one of my adult life’s most fascinating and educational chapters.

I am fortunate to know them and have gotten close to them. As I’ve written, our relationship has changed, and nothing is a better symbol of this chapter than my two blueberry bushes.

It was last year at this time that Moise asked me for help in finding inexpensive but healthy blueberry bushes to plant on his farm.

I worked hard at it, spent many hours online, and located 40 young bushes, for which he paid me.  I bought two for our gardens.

Moise sought my advice on caring for the bushes, and I thought I ought to know what I was talking about if I was giving advice.

Driving by his farm, I see most of the plants I sent him are doing well.

My two here at the farm were thriving.

But this year is different from last, and I am no longer buying things for the Millers online, ordering food supplies and packaging, driving them around, or helping them locate fruit and vegetable plants to grow and sell.

I felt at the time that Moise and I could become close friends – I think for a time, we were. We went on long rides together and talked openly and honestly. I learned a lot from him.

I admire him greatly for his energy, love of the land, family, and community, and almost otherworldly appetite for hard work. I know him to be a decent and honest man.

But I was to learn that a writer and photographer is not the right friend for conservative and traditionalist Amish leaders and families.

I also learned that a small town could be…well, small.

But I loved my year getting to know this family, their children, their farm, and their great dog Tina. I learned a lot, got to write a lot, and took many pictures. I loved every bit of it.

Ultimately, I was uncomfortable being a driver, buyer, and telephone and computer station for the family. I drove people to bus and train stations, picked them up, took telephone calls and messages, printed out receipts and documents, and brought soda and snacks while working.

Amish friendships with outsiders are, by nature, transactional. They are necessary for them keep their way of life, but I’m not sure they would exist at all if it wasn’t so necessary for them. For me, there had to be more to it than that, and I couldn’t find more.

I wasn’t cut out for that kind of work, and the things I am cut out for – writing, blogging, and taking photographs – are all alien and threatening to Moise and his sect.

He is a bishop, a leader, and strictly conservative. They do what they have done for 500 years, it is how they have survived.

Moise is opposed to change, contemptuous of technology, and determined to keep the American way of child-rearing away from his family. He is patriarch in every sense of the world but also a loving and fair person.

I tend to put too much on friendships and have often been disappointed in them.

I was never indispensable to the Millers, and a week or so after we parted ways, they had found eager and willing people to do all the things I did, and just as well, even better.

I never took payment for driving or running errands, and I think it is healthier when it is done for money. They always offered, but I always declined. That was my problem. I didn’t want to take money from friends.

I came to see that the Amish lifestyle – in its most conservative sects – cannot accommodate a friendship like ours, it’s really as simple as that.

Work, family, and church are everything to Moise. Our kind of friendship, the one I hoped for and thought I had, was limited, perhaps doomed from the start.

Fair enough, no hard feelings. I see Moise almost every day; we wave across roads and see each other in town. Our friendship was a great gift to me. We are good neighbors to one another, I have greater respect and affection for him.

I can’t really say what he thinks about me, I don’t know. He showed up a couple of times here, not to talk, but to visit, his way of saying I am important to him.

People tell me they miss my writing about our friendship, but I don’t. It was a chapter, not a whole book. The blog is the story of my life, when my life changes, so do I.

There are many chapters in my book of life, I hope that never ends. Someone sent me a snide message once accusing me of being a person of many passions.

It was, to me, the greatest of compliments. I am a person of many passions, and I hope I am that way until I die.

 

Moise and I are connected now, we are still in each other’s lives.

I plan on supplying Barbara and the girls with fresh flowers, gummy bears, potato chips, and soda. I like to think that one day we will sit down together and go over our friendship.

It’s just a feeling, it will most likely never happen. We are, after all, both men.

I know the ice cream they love, and when I see some at the convenience store, I’ll drop some off.

But I understand that someone like me can only make him uncomfortable over time.

And as many people reading my work and blog know, I can’t tolerate being told what to do and what not to do or cutting openness,  writing, and photography out of my life, even on my property.

I could see trouble ahead. I pulled back before it got painful or difficult.

In several important ways, I was the embodiment of much that the Amish traditionalists fear about the English or the outside world. They keep a distance to protect their children from what we have become.

I empathize with that. They would never tolerate disturbed people killing their children with weapons of war.

I carry an Iphone, have a camera around my neck, use computers, know nothing about carpentry or plowing, I am not a Churchgoer, and use all kinds of modern gadgets and utensils.

The children always wanted to look at the photos on my Iphone, and photos are a sin in the Amish world.

I am always writing about my life and taking pictures.

That is not the formula for a close friendship with the Amish. I learned much about tolerance, love, and respect for people who differ from me.

I think that was a precious experience for both of us, Moise and me.

I also learned not to judge a whole people by the activities of a few. The Millers treat their horses and dog very well. They are not abusive to their animals.

We always listened to one another and tolerated one another. We still do. We’re just not going to be Besties.

I was sad to return my blueberry bushes; I dropped them off with a note.  They couldn’t have gone to a better home. It was the end of something, for sure.

They marked the end of this unique chapter in my life. But they belong with the Millers, who will find a place for them in gardens, and treat them with love.