Michael T. Young: Dutch Hex Signs
Whatever great, great grandmother knew she could only speak in Pennsylvania Dutch. Her descendants, on nights around the kitchen table, told the one story remembered about her: how she stood at the banister, yelling something at the kids, even though they couldn’t understand. I picture her short as all the ladies in our family, short as I am. I see her leaning as into a heavy wind, wearing a greasy apron stenciled with a red Dutch floral pattern, and her dry, thinning hair in a bun. I hold this image close because there are no pictures, and what I have, shoves up from my imagination refusing its ignorance, conjuring a composite from my living grandmothers, from trips to antique shops where Amish farmers parked buggies in lots alongside cars, and hitched their horses to fence posts. They spoke a language that smelled of horsehair and tasted of apple butter and red beet eggs, a language secluded, and remote as a dream, traces of it threaded through me of how to say “thunderstorm” or ask, “Can you catch flies?” And now, even on days I’m fully awake there’s this mystery that trails back to a barn decorated with hex signs under the eaves, and my great great grandmother at the doors shouting to me something I’m meant to do.
Michael T. Young‘s books include The Infinite doctrine of Water (Terrapin Books, 2019). He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey with his wife and children.
Copyright 2021 Michael T. Young
Vox Populi 
The interesting thing is that it’s Pennsylvania Deutsch (it became ‘Dutch over time’). And I can understand quite a bit.
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Love this. My grandmother left her Pennsylvania Dutch family at a young age and headed west to teach on reservations.
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What an admirable journey to take.
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Wow. I love the vivid imagery and how you try to keep the memory of your gg grandma close to your heart through your living descendants. Even if you never met her, I think she lives in this piece; I got emotional when reading this. I can especially resonate with not having pictures and just trying to remember them from imagination or in my case, my mind. I still don’t remember what my great uncle looks like, but reading this piece provided me some solace and peace. It’s utterly beautiful and raw; I adored these lines the most:
“They spoke a language that smelled of horsehair
and tasted of apple butter and red beet eggs,
a language secluded, and remote as a dream,
traces of it threaded through me of how to say
“thunderstorm” or ask, “Can you catch flies?””
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Thanks for this extended and enthusiastic response!
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I apologize for my slow response. But I’m so glad the poem resonated with you, Lucy. I’m very grateful for your kind words.
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