Aunt Ruth

The next of my mother’s siblings would be either my aunt Ruth or my uncle Serenus, again I forget the exact order in age. I shall choose aunt Ruth to write about first.

Aunt Ruth when I first became aware of her as an individual was a member of my grandmother’s household, was the organist at the church and the person who came periodically to help my mother on washdays. This picture of her never really changed for me, except for the last item. This aspect of her gradually phased out and ceased entirely when we moved to the farm.

She was of reasonably height but always sort of a spare person similar in this respect to uncles Carl and George and aunts Esther and Lillian. She tended to be shy and retiring as far as any social contacts outside of family and church. I wonder if there was ever any attraction to a member of the opposite sex in all her life or if any male was ever attracted to her but was deterred by her family characteristic of unusual piety. I don’t recall whether she had any schooling at Gustavus. I do seem to remember that she had musical instruction, perhaps in both piano and organ in the Twin Cities area, but this was before my time.

She was quite a competent organist, and vocalists who used her as an accompanist regarded her highly in this respect. The congregation really paid her a pittance for her work, which was actually more extensive than merely filling the role of organist. I seem to recall the figure of $30 per month; of course at the time in the 1930s $30 was much more in what it could buy but even so the pay was too low. She did have her board and room at my grandmother’s house, I suspect she never paid anything there and perhaps she received distribution from the farm as my mother did but that was irregular in character.

I think she gave piano lessons over the years; I seem to recall specifically that she gave lessons to Brynolf Lundholm, one of the four sons of one of the pastors of the Gowrie congregation who was actually the pastor during my younger years) who later went on to a rather significant career in the musical world.

She gave lessons on the piano to Clarice, me and Vivian. I don’t think the three younger brothers were ever her pupils. I certainly recall her lessons with me, going through and practicing the various scales and arpeggios. And I remember such pieces I liked to play like “The Happy Farmer” by Robert Schumann. I never became very proficient with the instrument but I think this exposure to the piano was what led to my lifelong liking for the piano as a musical instrument.

During the time I lived in San Pedro I stated to take piano lessons but these were interrupted by my transfer to the Bay Area and I never resumed them. Though I did rent a piano for a time and played on my own for a while when while living in Berkeley.

The instruction by aunt Ruth ended for me when we moved to the farm, but Vivian kept on and this doubtless led to her later interest and activity in this field. Clarice I think sort of stopped lessons when I did.

Sometime in the mid-1930s after our move to the farm, my aunt Ruth developed some odd illness, which resulted in further emaciation from her already slight figure, but which at the same time results in a distention of her abdomen. Was it a kind of cancer that was never properly diagnosed? The term of diagnosis I recall was “tropical sprue” whatever that might signify. [Actually, it may have been celiac sprue. —LS] She had as her doctor either Dr. Waddell in the nearby town of Paton or a Dr. Shafer in Fort Dodge. I remember driving her to appointments with both of these doctors, driving uncle Carl’s old blue Essex for the trips.

Whatever treatment was administered was eventually ineffective and she died during the time I was away at school at Iowa City. I came home for the funeral at the urging of my mother — I remember as in the case of uncle George seeing her lying in the casket at my grandmother’s. Unlike in the case of uncle George however the mortician had prepared the dead body in a less than normal or attractive aspect. He had been told that her hair was wavy (which it was with a very slight waviness — she wore her hair with a bun in the back, as did also my aunt Esther, my mother and my aunt Lillian all their days). The mortician had interpreted this as rather fuzzy curls. I recall that aunt Laurine was rather incensed at what had been done.

So my aunt Ruth passed out of my life. She left me with an appreciation of music that I might not had had otherwise.

Naomi and Religion

I started writing about my mother in saying that I anticipated in a way that it would be difficult for me. And what I try to put in words at this point is the most difficult of all.

My estimation of my mother is somewhat ambiguous — on the one hand I have the highest regard and appreciation for her unquestioned devotion to providing for the well being of her family, both the children and as a partner in the marriage union with her husband. Her concern for her children was unqualified and she acted with integrity to her ideals in her treatment of and relationship with them throughout their lives.

On the other hand she was the product of the social milieu into which she was born and what to my thinking was the stultifying religious outlook of the Peterson household. I think this outlook transcended that of the Swedish community of which she was also a part. My observation of other members of the church — such as my uncle Reuben and his family — was that they had sort of a pro forma acceptance of the teachings of the church. It provided for them a viewpoint of the world around them and a framework in which they could live their lives in a fruitful and reasonably psychologically satisfying way. That is to say their rather unconsidered acceptance had utility for them — it wasn’t required that it was correct nor that they should strive for utmost consistency between what they thought and did and what the professed in words. They never really thought about their religious commitment, it was just something that had always been a part of their lives.

For my mother and her siblings the situation was quite different. Partly this was because their intellectual level was higher and this provided a basis for greater consistency between what they thought and did and the actual teachings of the Bible and Lutheran theology. But more important was the subtly repressive influence of my grandmother. She, too, was the product of her position in life which led to her conditioned retreat into Christian piety as a means of meeting the vicissitudes of her life. She influenced her children to an unthinking (from the standpoint of analysis of the world around them, both physical and social) viewpoint characterized by consistency to selected and limited religious dogma.

While this parochial outlook did provide a framework for handling the problems of human existence, it also restricted the opportunity or likelihood of a realistic assessment of nature in general. Maybe the latter is not a worthwhile or significant goal for some — it is for me. It is perhaps, in the last analysis, the only real and ultimate goal (if there is one at all) of human existence. The extreme commitment to Christian theology typical of my mother’s family resulted in some quite unhealthy viewpoints such as the attitude toward dying, because of the fear of judgment of God.

I recall hearing my mother speak of this personal fear when close to the end of her life she was contemplating what she considered what she thought was in store for her. I was saddened for her, and at the same time incensed at the hundreds of years of highly egotistic and intellectually sterile Christian theologians who because of their inadequacies in capability had foisted on humanity not the inspired revelations of a deity, but their own stunted views of the cosmos.

So I have a very mixed assessment of my mother — very appreciative and thankful for her aspects of love, care and concern for family, friends and humanity but saddened by the persons, clergy and institutions that restricted and stultified her thinking and the development of her personality. I am now in almost total disagreement with her on what was to her the most important segment of her philosophy of existence. I suppose I should have realistically the same assessment of my father, however I have the intuitive feelings that his commitment and attitude toward Christian theology didn’t have quite the depth or unhealthy involvement that was the case for my mother.