Free An Uncommon Grace by Serena B. Miller Page B

on Oprah ?”
    “Grandma, I hate to say this—but I think you’re getting close.”
    “Do you see any piles of old newspapers?”
    “No.”
    “Do you have trouble walking through my house?”
    “No.”
    “Then don’t worry about it.” Grandma picked up a small figurine from her bedside table. “Some of my things actually have value, you know—I mean beyond my memories. Your grandfather and I weren’t completely foolish about what we purchased.”
    “Perhaps, but there’s a lamp in the extra bedroom upstairs that is the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen.”
    “Now that was a wedding gift. Your great-aunt Hazel gave that to me. I never cared for it.” Grandma’s eyes twinkled. “I never cared much for Hazel, either. She’s gone now, so you have my permission to get rid of it. Does that make you feel better?”
    “A little.” Grace traced her finger over the paperback. “Are you really going to read this while you rest?”
    “Oh, heavens, no. From the looks of the cover, it might give me another heart attack. Hand me that volume over there on the table beneath the window. The one with note cards sticking out of it. I started that one before I got sick. I think I’m feeling well enough to start in on it again.”
    Grace brought her the book. It was a new volume on biblical archaeology discoveries.
    “Hand me a pen, will you?” Elizabeth sank back into the pillows that Grace had piled onto the bed. “There’s a chapter in here I think might interest our ladies’ class when I start teaching again.”
    “You said that Levi used to come and read books with you,” Grace said. “Did you ever study anything together besides birds?”
    “Now that’s an interesting question.” Elizabeth laid the book back down on her lap. “Do you know what textbooks the Swartzentrubers use in their schools?”
    “No.”
    “Reprinted McGuffey Readers . The kind my grandmother used. They have a couple of other textbooks, but only those printed specifically for Amish schools.”
    “You’re kidding.” Grace pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down.
    “I’m not kidding. I’m not even exaggerating.” Elizabeth removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “It was hard for someone like me—an educator—to watch without saying something. Levi zipped right through those McGuffey Readers and was hungry for more. The young teacher—she couldn’t have been more than sixteen—knew little more than some of her students. I bought Levi a book once, as a gift. It was a large volume of Bible stories for children—just something for himto read at night before he fell asleep. I couldn’t imagine anyone finding fault with a children’s Bible storybook.”
    “Did he like it?”
    “He loved it. He took it straight home to show Abraham and Claire. Came back the next day, all upset, to apologize.”
    “For what?”
    “For the fact that Abraham had thrown it into the woodstove and burned it.”
    “Bible stories?”
    “Abraham was upset. He was afraid I was trying to corrupt their family’s Swartzentruber view of the Bible.”
    “Which is . . . ?”
    “If it isn’t their High German Bible—the one that Martin Luther penned five hundred years ago—they don’t trust it.” Elizabeth shrugged. “Of course in the book I gave Levi, there was the problem of the illustration of Adam and Eve wearing fig leaves. I thought they were quite tasteful myself, but Abraham disagreed.”
    “That was a terrible thing for them to do.”
    “It seems that way to you, but in Abraham’s eyes, he was simply being a good father. He was not a deliberately cruel man, but he was a careful one—and sometimes a very strict one.”
    “What happened then?”
    “I was afraid they would stop Levi from coming to visit me at all. With you so far away, I cherished having an occasional visit from a child. So the next day, as soon as Levi had left for school, I gathered an armful of books I thought he might enjoy and took them down to show