Grandma Ida Aeschbacher Durtschi,
I begin my story back in the late 1800s when my Grandma Ida Aeschbacher Durtschi was born in Eggiwil, Swit-zerland, to gentle, kind, loving parents, my great grandparents, Christian and Barbara Frey Aeschbacher. Christian Aeschbacher was an adopted boy put to work for his farmer adoptive parents preparing meals for the family and cleaning the house and, by law, his parents chose not to send him to school. Barbara had no record of her father, but her mother was my great grandma, Anna Barbara Frey, born in 1846. I honor Anna Barbara for raising Barbara. This child mattered to Anna Barbara. Her decision to keep and raise her daughter, no matter how this child was conceived, changed the course of history. It changed the course of the whole world! I’m so thankful that Anna Barbara chose to give her only child a chance in this world, so I could be Me!
Another miracle of Me is that Great Grandma Barbara Frye, bore 12 children. Of the 12 children, only six grew to adulthood, only five of those married. Only two of the girls, #10 child, my Great Aunt Lena, born 7 Jan 1889 and my Grandma Ida, #11 child, was born 29 Jan 1990, one year and three weeks later. Only their older brother, Christian, bore children! But Grandma and Aunt Lena, the only two who made it to America, have huge posterities today.
Great Grandma Barbara spun flax for the people in the town, Great Grandpa was a skilled craftsman who taught himself, among other things, to make wooden-souled shoes 1-inch thick, which were much warmer that the leather-soled shoes, Grandma Ida writes. He made them for his children and also sold them to the townspeople. They did whatever it took to take care of their children. They foraged for nettles, berries, and mushrooms and in the woods. They grew a productive a garden by the house, and nearby fields. They grew and understood wild herbs and how to use them. They were resourceful and frugal, self-sufficient and hardworking, traits they passed down through the generations, to me.
Great Grandma Barbara was a religious woman. After their daily 6:30 a.m. scripture reading and prayer and a blessing on the food. During the warm season, after breakfast, Grandma Ida and her sister Lena, gathered the goats every other day, until winter, and sprang up the day for another adventure. They headed straight uphill on the dirt path, barefoot, to the forest for another day in the picturesque Alps of Switzerland with a meager lunch with them and foraged the wild food growing all over the hillsides. They ran through the lush green meadows and played in the caves and among the trees. These two little girls tended the goats and played and sang until it was time to head home. They yo-deled in harmony while their melodious notes reverberated, echoing off the mountain cliffs and through the verdant valley. I can only imagine how it was… like… Heaven! Sometimes the girls were mischievous. Once they lit the thick sticky pine gum with the matches meant to light a small fire to warm themselves on cold days. Then, they spent pre-cious time running back and forth, throwing dirt they gathered in their aprons from a nearby cave, to put out the fire. Whew!
Grandma recorded, “In the summertime my childhood was spent herding our seven or eight goats in the alps. Lini and I started for the mountains as soon as Father finished milking them early in the morning. We took potatoes and apples along for our dinner which we roasted on hot coals. We picked wild strawberries, raspberries and what we called bushberries. After we took the goats home, we took the berries down into the town to sell them. We bought cloth with the money we got and Rosette, our older sister made clothes for us.
Mother died when she was 45. Lini was eleven and I was ten. We had two other sisters, Marie worked in a hotel and Rosette learned the sewing trade. My brother Christian, worked for Mr. Widmer, the man we rented our home from and later went to another town to work.”
In the winter, the girls went to school. They taught their father their lessons because he had never learned to read or write. Lena and Ida were the very best of friends. They loved music and dance parties!
One night, when Grandma was about six, the house they were living in burnt down. The family escaped, but nothing was saved. They found a rental further up the mountain on a beautiful alpine hilltop meadow, just east of Eg-giwil, in an area called Steinbodenschwand, Switzerland.
I begin my story here, with my grandma, because Grandma is one of the heroes of my story. She was Swiss through and through. Her story is so much like the beloved story of the poor girl, Heidi, who tended the goats on the beautiful hillside of the Swiss Alps. Grandma’s sister Lena, affectionately called Lini, was a year older. These sisters looked out for and cared for each other so much that at age four, Grandma Ida carried Lena ½ mile home after Lena impaled her toe on a wheat stock in a field where they had been gleaning wheat for flour. Anyway, you get the idea.
Nostalgic story, I know but it is a true story about my Grandma Ida Aeschbacher Durtschi. This really happened. It was a regular Johanna Spyri, Heidi, story.