Seashells and that Caribbean Feeling

As told by Samantha Sartor:

Aunt Ruby is literally the wildest person I know. When I picture her, I see her running around the backyard in a coconut bra and a sarong that’s glittering in the sunlight, tending to her garden. We loved visiting her in Syracuse, traveling down from Canada during the summers. I looked forward to it every year. My sister Gabriella and I would go together and we did stuff to occupy the whole week. I remember as soon as we’d pull into the driveway, she would come running out. Every single time. She always gave us a really nice, warm welcome embrace. You could count on that.

There were cute little restaurants that she would take us to whenever we would visit. Because we would usually spend the most time there in the summer, we were always by the pool. I loved being at her house. Aunt Ruby has a special spark, she really does. I feel like as soon as I would be at her house, it was almost kind of like you’d immediately start joking around. I was always silly with her and I used to laugh so much. She was super playful, the kind of person that was always making you laugh. She was full of creativity, imagination, and a lot of love.

Even though she lived in Syracuse and we lived in Canada, she would keep in touch throughout the year. I used to get these thick colorful envelopes with crazy cursive handwriting on the front and you’d know right away that it was from Aunt Ruby. When you opened it, there would be printed out pictures with sticky notes on the back of them. She also used to include a few sticks of gum in their aluminum foil whenever she would send me a letter. I believe it was Winterfresh, but we just used to call it “blue gum.” She would keep it in a drawer in her kitchen and we were crazy about it. Sometimes there were other things, like these tiny perfume samples, too. I remember for my 21st birthday, she put in tiny seashells. She wrote the number 21 inside and I still have them on my nightstand. When I think about what it would be like going on vacation in the Caribbean, that’s the feeling I would also get when we went to Aunt Ruby’s.