Some of my favorite memories have my Aunt Ruth in them. My earliest memories of driving up the coast to Cayucos from our home in South Gate, were of arriving at Aunt Sisi's house for the night. But the next day, usually right after breakfast, my sister Kelly and I would head across the street to Ambrosia's where Aunt Ruth worked. It was a cool touristy beachfront store. I can still hear the bell ring as we pushed the door open and Aunt Ruth would be standing there waiting for us. We'd get the usual hugs and kisses and then she'd tell us to do our loop of the store that we always did, looking for that one perfect treat she'd buy for us. It could be candy or coloring books, sometimes a beach toy. Kelly and I would wander around the store for an hour looking at everything before making our purchase decision. As soon as we presented our treasures to Aunt Ruth, she'd pay for the items, bag them up, hand them off to us and then shoo us back across the street to Aunt Sisi's house.
Another treat for us was walking around the corner and up the street from the pier to Aunt Ruth's house, once she got home from work or on her days off. She had a big plum tree in her backyard that always seemed to be overloaded with fruit. We'd stand out in the middle of the yard with brown lunch sacks that Aunt Ruth would fill with fruit for each of us. We'd eat our fill and always have enough left for Aunt Sisi to make refrigerator plum jam for our breakfast toast the next day. Sometimes, when we'd spend the afternoon with Aunt Ruth, she'd wash her laundry then take it to the backyard to hang on the clothesline to dry. To this day, I love hanging my sheets on a clothesline because of my Aunts. It's such a wonderful memory for me and the fresh, crisp, smell of line-dried sheets is intoxicating.
When Bob and I were married just a few years, we moved to Cayucos and lived across the street from Aunt Ruth. It was a normal occurrence to have her walk in our front door to check on us and our firstborn. Aunt Ruth was so good to me when I was a new mother. She spent a lot of time building my confidence as a twenty year old first-time mother. She would also walk out to Aunt Meta's ranch with me, pushing Matthew's carriage as I walked alongside, stopping now and then to pick anise or talk to the cows at the fence line along the country road. Once we'd walked the mile to Aunt Meta's ranch, we'd sit and have coffee and talk about gardening. Aunt Ruth always had beautiful flower gardens and Aunt Meta's vegetable gardens were spectacular. Every six weeks or so, Aunt Ruth would dye her hair black again and always in Aunt Meta's kitchen sink. I can't count the times I sat at the kitchen table with Aunt Meta, watching Aunt Ruth with her black hair dye.
When Aunt Ruth died, I was really sad thinking she was gone. So many memories of driving to my parents house in South Gate and later Fullerton with Aunt Ruth riding shotgun ran through my mind. We would talk the entire four hours which made the time fly. I didn't want to ever forget her and I wished that I had something of hers as a keepsake. A few years after she passed, I was at the ranch and Aunt Meta sent me to the basement to get something. As I looked around the dark rooms downstairs, I suddenly saw, back in a corner sitting on an old table, Aunt Ruth's creepy clown cookie jar. This was the very cookie jar that sat on her kitchen counter for decades and was always full of her homemade chocolate chip cookies. After Aunt Ruth died, Kelly and I had talked about sitting in her kitchen with glasses of milk waiting patiently while Aunt Ruth fished out cookies from the clown. I carried the creepy clown upstairs and asked Aunt Meta if I could have it. Of course, she agreed because that was Aunt Meta. The following Christmas, Kelly unwrapped her gift from me to find Aunt Ruth's creepy clown cookie jar. We both laughed and cried a little as well. When Kelly passed away, the clown came to me. I'm pretty sure, Kelly got a good laugh out of that.
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