Other states, other lives, other souls

My Aunt Dorothy was a role model for me from an early age.  Growing up in the 50’s, she was an unusual American woman in many ways. She had served in WWII as a WAC ; she had lived in other countries (France and Japan); she knew how to use a ham radio to listen to people in other countries; she worked outside the home; she wasn’t married and had no children, and, most exciting, she could fly an airplane! She usually signed her birthday cards like this:    Dot (ant Dot)

She got me interested at a young age in learning about life in other countries. At age 5 and 6 I was fascinated by the things she had brought home from her time teaching in Japan after the war was over–the miniature garden in a glass bowl, with beautiful metal walking bridges, little people and mirrored lakes; the whistling saki set; the enameled wooden horse;

the wooden sandals with the special toe socks; the kimonos; the paper parasol; the 78 rpm record of Japanese knock-offs of American pop songs—“Don’t let the stars get in your eyes”.  She dressed us nieces and nephews for a mock tea ceremony under the cherry tree in my grandparents’ lovely side yard in Naperville, IL.

The first country she introduced me to directly was the Bahamas when I was fourteen. Twenty four hours outside the US, flying in from Tampa, Florida, where my family was staying during a spring vacation. Some thoughts from my diary entry from 1960– April 5th: “You’ve never seen anything so beautiful. A man met us with his greenbriar (?) to take us to Carlton Hotel. The roads are real narrow and you drive on the left hand side. The houses all seem to be pink or yellow. Our hotel isn’t very nice but who cares?!”  This was a foreshadowing of my blasé attitude toward lodging I’ve had ever since when traveling. I bought some delicate porcelain flower earrings which I kept for the next twenty five years. I was never sure why we only went for 24 hours. I imagined because it was a spontaneous trip.

The last time we traveled together, she came over to France with her best friend Gertrude to travel with me in Europe over my three week summer vacation between quarters when I was a college student at Stanford-in-France in 1965. I was twenty years old. Aunt Dot was in her fifties and Gertrude was sixty-six. We rented a Peugeot, and with no hotel reservations, but with maps, we decided we would make a circuit through Italy, Austria, Germany and back into France.  As I recall, we mostly had a great time. Perhaps I have forgotten the fights about when and where we would stop for the night and whether we were lost and should stop and ask for directions.  Anyway, it was another time where my favorite aunt let me have my way and gave me another great opportunity to see the world. They were willing to let me choose the cheap hotels with no elevator so that I didn’t spend too much money. I found an old journal from that time. I started out with youthful embarrassment about these “ugly Americans” and later decided they were terrific.

I think I can credit her with engendering in me a lifelong love of exploring foreign places and a preference for traveling without a group and leaving room for the unexpected to happen. Flying airplanes and operating ham radios were never my things, but my ideas about women doing non-traditional things (fixing cars, building things, being financially independent) certainly had an early boost from her.

She idolized her brothers, who were also amateur pilots (my father among them), and was a very loyal friend to my mother after my parents’ divorce.  She had a very even positive temperament, but didn’t laugh much or make jokes. I was grateful that she found me, a child, interesting, along with the other nieces and nephews, and seemed to want to spend time with us all. That was also not typical at the time. Adults with some means in the late 50’s and early 60’s were busy with bridge clubs, martini drinking and, for men, having affairs with their assistants at work (See Madmen). I spent a lot of time with babysitters. Aunt Dot always seemed to have plenty of money for travel, owning houses and new cars, which as a single woman and a teacher, mystified me.

She was strong and hearty until her death–driving, eating at restaurants, maintaining her property, and acting like she didn’t have a lot of pain or mental confusion at age 88.  The cancer which killed her at 89 seemed not to hold her back that much, until, in the last months she just gave up and died.  Perhaps I just missed the worst of it because I was not in town.   I suppose some adults found her relative naiveté and fussiness tiresome at times, as did I, but when I think of her in the rear view mirror, I am grateful that she was around and helped to set me on some lifelong paths.  I keep as a souvenir a crystal 75^th anniversary Ninety-Nines pendant, which she gave me.