Read Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Memoir) (2010) for Free Online

G-rated lyric:
    Oh Mistress Bliss
    went out to pi- [pick]
    some pretty flowers.
    And in the grass
    she wet her a- [ankle]
    way up high!
    And in the cart
    she let a far- [farmer]
    pass her by,
    and in the coop
    she let a poo- [poor]
    old chicken die!
    My mother always reduced me to a kind of reluctant speechlessness.
    Then without further transition she suggested that since I had my apron on, maybe I wouldn't mind making two more loaves of cranberry-nut bread. I asked if the loaf I had made the day before was already gone. She nodded. "Your father likes it."
    The night before, Dad had insisted on interpreting the cranberry bread as a pudding. He had cubed tremendous chunks of it into a cereal bowl and then drenched the chunks with half-and-half. Now he came wandering into the kitchen. "Are you going to make more of that pudding? Good flavor," he said.
    "Actually, Dad, it's cranberry bread , not pudding."
    He disputed this in his big preacher's voice. "I feel it has more in common with a pudding," he said with a note of authority. "What kind of soup are we bringing to Aaron and Deena's?"
    "Curried butternut squash. Caleb and Staci said-"
    "Staci has lost about seventy-five pounds," said my father approvingly. "She's a go-getter, that gal. She's been taking some classes at the seminary. Growing and stretching."
    "And her hair looks very elegant now," said my mother. With the chicken in the oven, she was sitting at the kitchen table, working on the newspaper jumble. "Unscramble the following six letters: V-I-Y-T-L-E."
    "Good for Staci," I said. "She must feel terrific."
    "Their little Joon. She's a live wire, that one."
    "Does she still have a shine for gymnastics?"
    "She hops on one foot. A very athletic little girl," he said. "And smart. She sure likes being read to."
    Later that evening we pulled up to my brother's house, which demonstrated its sincere commitment to the Christmas season with a tornado of twinkle lights and a crèche on the lawn. Who wouldn't appreciate a Baby Jesus whose manger had been garlanded with self-wired ribbon and clusters of silk roses featuring, it looked like, baby's breath? Even the cow figurine was wearing a handsome floral lei. If I were a cow figurine, I too might don a respectful boutonniere to herald the Messiah.
    It's not that I'm opposed to the idea of a crèche. My mother has a very old, very beautiful paper crèche that was given to her parents just after they made it out of the Old Country in the troubled years following the Russian Revolution. Theirs was a hard story, as with so many of the émigrés. My own grandparents had almost starved to death; they had lost everything; their first children had died. When they finally received their clearance to board the train in Dolinsk, my grandparents had between them only the following: two babies spotted with measles, their precious Bible, and a tiny heirloom rose brooch. They had to wait a long time in England until the babies could pass the health inspections; the rickets from starvation were so bad that little Netha couldn't even lift her own head until she was four. They thought they'd have to throw Netha's body overboard on the voyage; but she, and they, stubbornly survived, frail but fierce. My great-aunt Helena Boldt, who had emigrated to Saskatoon five years earlier, presented the crèche to my grandparents in 1925. It was their first gift in Canada.
    I used to stare dreamily at the crèche every Christmas when I was growing up. I still love the lacy cutwork, the gorgeous colors, the Moroccan princes kneeling with their urns and bejeweled boxes. Atop the cardboard haymow are two plump curly angels, holding a banner that says in old German script PRAISE TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST. Inside the diorama a haloed Mary sits with a tiny iconic adult Jesus on her lap. He's raising one prophetic finger, as if about to speak. I imagined Oma nodding at that crèche, believing that the Infant King was commending her personally for having risked