Commentary: Amanda

There was a special bond between my mother and Amanda. They often spent many hours working together in the hot summer sun.

Most people who met Amanda didn’t consider her stunning in her appearance. In her world she didn’t stand out from the rest in any significant way. She was regarded by most as just another being, treading the surface of the globe.

To Mother, however, Amanda was special. Amanda was a close friend; someone who listened while you sang or made small talk to wile the hours away. The two of them together made a rather striking contrast. Mother was a lovely eighteen-year-old, dressed in plain clothes, blemishless, clean-scrubbed face. Amanda had knobby knees, a long nose, black facial hair, and long ears — attractive none-the-less . . . to another mule.

Amanda was a rather lowly member of her equine world. Born of a union between a horse and a donkey, she was likely sterile, destined not to reproduce her kind. Life on a farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was hard in the thirties. In a family of sixteen children work was plentiful, money was not. Only two were chosen to go to high school. Mother was not. Instead she helped to provide for the family by working at Gerberich Shoe Company in Mount Joy, a four-mile walk. (The building still stands, sign clearly visible.) During the growing season, Mother’s evenings and Saturdays were often spent with Amanda cultivating corn.

With an air of reverence, Mother fondly speaks of “my Amanda.” Amanda knew her work. She knew “their field” and would dutifully walk to the field, Mother watching over the direction of the cultivator dragging along behind. Amanda would enter the first row and wait for the familiar "gick, gick.” And when the end of the row was encountered, she turned to the head of the second row, waiting for Mother to reposition the cultivator behind. And so it was, row after row, row after row, until dark, or the field was weedless.

Good work is done by the “Amandas” of this world. They know their work. They perform their tasks with consistency and without fanfare, whether they be considered select stock or, as in Amanda’s case, just another mule. They are steady in performance, and when the sun goes down they humbly accept their “bag of oats” and bed down in the straw to rest for another day. God teaches true character in many ways and from many sources and even, perhaps, through a special, inexplicable chemistry between human and beast.