I just posted a quote by Edith Wharton, a very talented Edith, for sure. But it is a different Edith who inspires today’s post.
Right before our trip to San Francisco, we christened our newly-installed autopilot “Edith.” Yes, Edith did a wonderful job coming up the coast—and we’ll likely have many opportunities to write about Edith-the-autopilot’s performance. Today, I’d like to share a little bit about the Edith who inspired the naming of our autopilot.
People who have boats with autopilots often name the device. Many times the names are a bit trite but clever like “Otto.” It’s said that having an autopilot is like having an extra person aboard. Indeed, our watches were more enjoyable with Edith at the helm. With one of us asleep, the other person could tweak the sails, communicate on the radio, wander about and check for chafe, cook and clean, and so forth. All the matters of voyaging under sail could be performed so much more easily when we knew that Edith was holding the course set. And that brings me to the story of the real Edith.
Her name was Edith Berthoux. I met Edith in Indiana, at church, when I was five years old. It is likely that one of the reasons I liked Sister Edith was because even though she was a middle-age woman, she was quite short and really fit in quite nicely with us little kids. Our church had age-based Sunday School classes and then a “Children’s Church” which paralleled the morning’s sermon for adults. This kept the fidgety children occupied and out of the sanctuary during the pastor’s sermon. Important to me—CC was ever so much more interesting than whatever the pastor had to say. I did not like sermons unless they included stories of things like the burning bush, or babies floating in baskets in the reeds, or one of my favorites—Daniel in the lion’s den.
I liked stories. Stories of adventure and travel to far away places, to be exact. Stories about “lions and tigers and bears, oh-my!” And there again I had a reason to really like Sister Edith. She had stories. Good ones. Really good ones. Stories with tigers and snakes and other evils lurking in the jungles. Jungles? Indeed, Edith had spent her life as a missionary in Indonesia! She had stories about the islands of Indonesia as well as all the places between Indiana and there. She’d been evacuated from there during World War II and returned after the war. One story was about what she called a “sail” returning from Oakland, California to a village in Indonesia in the early 1950’s. I think the major part of that voyage really was on a sailing boat. The places that boat took her to included Manila and then on to Saigon where, going up a river, one of the boatsmen was shot and the missionaries had to hide inside. Somehow she spent some time in Singapore before she eventually got to Java. She had to wait in Djakarta (now Jakarta) for a couple weeks without knowing how she’d get to the village before getting that final boat ride to the village. She made it though. She always did.
One day, in the CC, there was an organized activity to get the children to talk about what we wanted to be when we grew up and why. I wanted to be “an artist, a pianist, a doctor, a veterinarian, a seamstress, a teacher, a car mechanic, and a farmer,” along with half a dozen other unrelated vocations. The various adults present said I should pray about it and eventually I’d choose one vocation. Since I was probably ten years old, I figured I had plenty of time to think it over. Sister Edith had listened to my occupational list and said “You can be all of them. And, if you are a missionary, at one point or another you will be all of them.”
That stuck with me—I decided that being a missionary would be my “fall back” occupation if I just couldn’t decide on what I wanted to do with my life. After all, Sister Edith had been a missionary and what a wonderful time she’d had as one.
When I was a little older, she became the pastor of our church. Continually, she encouraged my art, music, writing, and scholastic interests. Many times during my teenage years, she gave me little bits of life advice. I only saw Edith a few times after I grew up and left Indiana; she died in 2008 at the age of 88. I remain inspired by her brave travels into unknown lands—the “lions and tigers and bears” factor so intriguing and exciting. I know that Edith never saw the Star Wars trilogy. However, she was a lot like Yoda with the philosophy of “Do or do not, there is no try.” The quiet philosophy that flowed from her stories was really about doing the right things in life, setting goals and trudging along, doing whatever you had to do to achieve them. Having faith, working hard, and holding the course—whatever that course might be.
