One of the many ways in which my parents blessed their six children was introducing us to their aunts and uncles.

Our mother was particularly close to her Aunt Annie, one of her father’s older sisters. We knew Aunt Annie by her German title: Tante Antje.

We visited Tante Antje frequently and she often visited our home, usually several days at a time.

Tante Antje, the third of seven children, was born in 1882 in an East Frisian village in northwest Germany.

According to family lore, Antje’s oldest brother, Hinderk, wanted to go to America. Hinderk, however, suffered from some intellectual disabilities and their mother doubted his ability to survive on his own. Accordingly, their recently widowed mother encouraged her five oldest daughters to accompany Hinderk.

Around 1900 the six siblings traveled to America and settled in Cleves, a tiny village in Iowa’s Hardin County. About five years later their mother, their youngest sister and their little brother, Dirk, emigrated to the United States, settling in with the other children in Cleves. Dirk was my grandfather.

I don’t know a great deal about Tante Antje’s early life. I understand that when the 18 year old reached Iowa she taught herself English by purchasing a German/English Bible and comparing the two languages. Her English was heavily accented and she much preferred her mother tongue.

When Tante Antje was 23 she married an East Frisian man, Andreas (Andrew) Gerdes. Though they never had any children of their own, they raised an orphaned nephew. Tante Antje was widowed in 1943.

I was not privy to Tante Antje’s financial specifics but was aware of her poverty. Her small house in Cleves was spotless on the inside but in dire need of paint on the outside. She had electricity but no plumbing. Her water came from a pump in front of her house and her toilet was an unpainted outhouse out back.

She earned some money by selling her crochet work which was impressive even to a kid who hardly knew a doily from a dolly.

As Tante Antje grew older her neighbors kept an eye on her. They told my mother that as Tante Antje’s mobility diminished she crawled on her hands and knees to work in her garden and to visit her outhouse. She was a tiny woman with an oversized streak of independence.

Tante Antje was a generous soul. Each summer our family benefitted from the bounty of her garden. One summer Tante Antje spent a week with my family and brought along several bags of produce. One of the meals my family enjoyed that week included mashed potatoes with an orange tint. I did not like the taste and said so only to be strongly advised by my mother to shut up and eat them.

I found out later that Tante Antje had blessed us with rutabagas from her garden which my mother cooked and mixed into the mashed potatoes. The concoction gave me heartburn.

One year Tante Antje accompanied our family on a vacation trip to north-central Minnesota where we visited her sister and brother-in-law. My two great aunts hadn’t seen each other in years and you couldn’t get a word in edgewise. And it was all in Low German.

My mother and Tante Antje went shopping at a local store one afternoon. Mom overheard her aunt heatedly conversing with a sales clerk. Upon investigating, Mom learned that the clerk was having difficulty understanding Tante Antje’s request for “blake threat.” When Tante Antje was questioned in German my mother learned that the request was for “black thread.”

It was no secret that my mother and her aunt had an especially close relationship. In her later years, my mother became more and more like her Tante Antje — fiercely independent and strong willed.

Despite the deprivations of her life, Tante Antje lived to the ripe old age of 98. I have been told that her sweet spirit and fierce independence made her a legend at the nursing home where she spent the last few years of her life.

It was a blessing to have loved — and been loved by — Tante Antje.

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. ©2024 by Huisman Communications.