Aunt Ida | Gladsome Lights

Over a year ago I shared here a few excerpts from old letters written from Central and South America by Aunt Ida. I still plan to transcribe them all and share some more stories, but I’m afraid have fallen right down on that job.

This week we’ve been struck by an unusual heat wave. No one has AC here, because it’s so rarely warranted, and my recent experiences of wilting and sweating made me remember this passage from one letter in which she writes home to her sisters about how to cope in the Panamanian climate. I managed to dig it up and offer it here for anyone who may have need of it.

Tues. a.m. Aug. 5, 1919 …I like this country. Talk about the lure of the tropics. It’s got me. You couldn’t pull me away from here. It’s warm but everything is built for it. And it’s always the same so you can get ready for it and stay ready. I sleep with a sheet partly over me every night, and it’s the same at 4 a.m. as at 9 p.m. Everything is built open like a porch and tightly screened and it’s comfortable. All you have to remember is to take it easy and not hurry. “Never hurry” …. A negro sewing woman said one reason why I was so warm was because I had “haste in my blood.” And that is right. If you even “feel” in a hurry, the heat just surges through you. But if you keep calm, you stay cool. This place would never do for Ma. She’d just naturally die. Because she has so much “haste in her blood” and she simply cannot learn to take it easy. You have to learn it or you perish. You know how easy I take things – well if I keep that pace I’m OK but just let me take a spell where I want to straighten up or do the least thing and I’m all “het up.”

May you all keep as cool as possible this summer, in every sense of the word.

Ida was a great aunt of my husband’s, whom I met once when she was old and senile, but cheerful. 50 years before that she had traveled from California to Panama and Peru as a missionary, and the gifts she brought home long ago have decorated our houses over the decades and made her name a household word. Like this carved gourd:

Recently I came into possession of several packets of the letters she wrote home from 1919 to 1922, when she was in her early 30’s. I am spending many hours of these winter days typing Ida’s words into computer documents so that this little bit of family history will be accessible to whoever is interested.

Ida wrote to her mother as she was preparing months ahead:

Florence Fletcher is making me a couple of skirts and a dress and I have enough waists and underclothes. You know things mildew down there so I’m taking only just what I need and no more. I’ll have to hang everything that I possess in the sun every week so I won’t want a couple of trunks full of things. Picture me dressed in white every day, just like a real lady. When my corset covers wear out (I have 6 good ones) you can make me some more.

Now don’t worry about me. I’ll get some fish berries and flush and won’t even be sea sick. God will lead me there safely or he never would have called me to go so you just rest easy in the Lord because that is all there is to do.

The night before she departed from San Francisco:

My war stamps will bring me $42.90. I had to wait 10 days so they (post office) are going to send me the money. My ticket will be $114. The fare is $152 with a 25% discount for missionaries. So you see I have plenty of money…. Sent my trunk to-day and to-morrow a.m. Sat. I go up to the city on the 7.20 train. I’m taking my rattan suit case and then 3 suit boxes done up in heavy paper with a shawl strap. Have practically all of my clothes with me.

She makes me laugh out loud, the funny way she relates her responses to the people and culture she encounters. And I admit that some of my laughter is over her less-than-charitable opinions which I would be unkind to publish. But here’s a fairly innocent clip from Panama, less than a month after she’d left home:

I’m sick of cockroaches but I do have many in my room. But ants and cockroaches have complete possession of our kitchen. Our girl is so shiftless and it doesn’t seem to be any body’s business to make her clean up.

There is no such thing as wall paper here. It wouldn’t stay on the walls – too damp – Nearly all the houses are ceiled, sides and all and painted in a most hideous shade of bluish pea green. The kind that makes you crazy. They are strong on red too. You’d think it would make them hot to look at it.

I like the spirit of someone who writes things like, “Don’t worry about me because you know I’m always happy anywhere and I sleep and eat like a brick, as per usual.” So I’ll likely have more expressions of her verve to pass on as I go along with Ida on her South American adventure.