I was raised twenty-five miles south of this disappearing place, not in a valley but on a wooded hilltop within a radical experiment in intentional Mennonite community. My parents had left Hartville in middle age to move to this place called Deer Spring, where they lived for thirty years. The thing about leaving home is that not many Amish or Mennonites do it, or at least they didn’t use to a generation ago, or perhaps it’s that within my father’s family it was seen as a betrayal, or maybe that’s just my father’s guilt talking through me. Whatever the backstory is, the fact of the matter is that I was raised at the dead end of a dirt lane in the dark Appalachian woods. None of the other parents had ever been Amish, so my father’s heritage represented an extreme of conservatism within the group. Add to this his seminary studies and voracious intellect and, it was clear, at least to him, that he should be the minister. But as is the way of egalitarian commune living, it was decided that all adults should take turns leading worship. My father had wanted to move to the deep hills and find a following and become a prophet. Instead, he was relegated to worship leader every six to eight weeks.

I’ve always thought of my father’s Amish childhood as a place to which he longs to return but doesn’t belong. His love and anguish over this paradox, whether purposefully or accidentally, he bequeathed to me. This way of living in community, of subjugating the self and its desires for this beautiful life, this is the way, the truth, and the light. This beauty goes back centuries, to Europe, to the first martyrs who gave their lives in the name of pacifism. Grow up and marry into the faith and continue on in this way. But you know what else is nice? Films. Literature. Philosophy. The symphony. My father and I are in agreement on this.

I didn’t want to be a wife or mother. They both looked like traps to me. I wanted to go to college and live in New York City. I wanted, I wanted. And I fell in love with this wanting. He was everything a Mennonite wasn’t. And in the throes of this love I made a choice to love away from my family, away from my upbringing, toward the American oblivion of self-actualization and dreams.

So I left. I am always leaving, even when I think I’m settled in one place. Yet now, in middle age, the comfort of return suddenly, stupidly, sparkles with hopeful novelty. What if? the child-heart murmurs. What if you went home and something miraculous happened? What if a witch? What if a spell? What if, oh Lord, dare I pray, what if happiness, not just for me, but for us all?