“I left the colony.”

“Stay calm and decolonize,” continued.

Pop recently attended a high school reunion at the old bach. It was held in the town’s Mennonite Heritage Village, where a large “barn” serves various dishes our tribe has appropriated during our travels and travails. It was a small group, and he assured me a social distancing of sorts was adhered to.

Anyhoo, on his way out dad stopped at the museum gift shop and took a few shots of contempo Menno swag. It appears my tribe is re-branding itself via mildly ironic Plautdietsch puns.

I own a few similar items, courtesy of MJ’s Kafe (or, more accurately, friends and family who frequent the joint). They tend to generate conversation — not from my bunch, mind you, but from die enjlisch who puzzle over the strange spelling and say, “That almost looks German — what language is it?”

My kind might nod in acknowledgement. Or they might head for the other side of the street.

The one item of clothing that has prompted inquiry from a local Mennonite is a hoodie I purchased from the Canadian Mennonite University campus bookstore, during a family visit some years ago.

It was closing in on Christmas, and our church choir was struggling with the yearly cantata. Calls were made for a pinch-hitter director who might marshal a respectable performance out of us. A young woman on a family farm to the south of us had graduated from an honours music program somewhere — CMU, in fact. I was unaware of this when I wore the hoodie to her first choir practice with us. She took one look at this grizzled, gutty Lebowski embedded amongst the bassos and warily asked, “Wheeeeeen did you attend CMU?”

We cautiously played the Mennonite game until common points of reference were uncovered. “Make sure you talk to my parents at Christmas,” she said.

The Christmas meet-and-greet was pleasant, if short — the weather was ugly, and everyone was keen to get stranded at home, and not some cavernous Victorian church building. Still, the father and I had points of connection. But we were struggling with the constellation. 

He grew up Mennonite in Paraguay. In the '70s my grandfather pastored in Paraguay. I ran through some of the nationals my grandparents introduced me to, but none of the names were clicking with my new acquaintance. Finally he said, “I left the colony quite some time ago.”

Well, sure. I could have seen that. In the brief exchange I’d had with his wife it was clear she was a spirited woman with a sharp, potentially cutting, sense of humour. He was a deeply thoughtful sort, very careful with his words. I am, you could say, intimately familiar with this sort of union. Pairs of this nature tend not to suffer the foolishness that embeds itself in colony-imposed strictures.

We leave the colony — early.