When History Repeats Itself

Today would have been my Grandma McBride's 115th birthday. Can you imagine? I actually had to double-check the year she was born, it was 1896. The funny thing is, it seems totally plausible that she could have lived to be 115. She gave it a good run, that's for sure. She died just shy of her 97th birthday. I was working in Dubuque and living with my parents at that time. I came home from work and found one of those smallest sticky notes--you know, the ones that are about 1" square--stuck on the kitchen table with two words scribbled on it in my dad's messy handwriting. After staring at it and turning the note around several times, I realized that it said, "Hester died." Jeez, thanks dad...I like how you broke the news to me that my last grandparent had died.

So, as I was thinking about Grandma McBride today, thoughts of Grandma Scherrman also crept into my mind. It made me think how different they were, and how I inherited a little part of each of their personalities.

Grandma McBride was very old school. She never had a drivers license. Despite the fact that Grandpa McBride died in 1968, she always referred to herself as Mrs. F.A. McBride. She came from a very large traditional family. Her father's family came from England and her mother's family from Northern Ireland. She was the seventh of ten children. A second generation American. She lived in her own home until the day she died and cut her own grass with her riding lawn mower well into her 80s.

I think what I inherited from Grandma McBride was my appreciation for family history. She had pages of hand-written notes on our family tree. Her house was filled with antiques, and she knew the history of every piece. I have many of those pieces in my house. She was proud of her Irish heritage. Because of her, I became the self-appointed family archivist and have been documenting our family history for over ten years (it's a big project...I'm a little slow!) I prefer old houses and antiques to modern contemporary homes and furniture. I embrace my Irish heritage and am happy that, thanks to Grandma McBride who kept in contact with a cousin in Ireland, I've met many of my Irish cousins, visiting them twice in Ireland and hosting three of them for a visit in Iowa. And, yes, I do like to cut the grass.

Grandma Scherrman, on the other hand, was a woman ahead of her time. Not much about her was traditional. First of all, she came from a "broken" home. Evidently, her father Bernie Carden was a bit of a scoundrel and ran off when my Grandma was very young. Grandma was raised along with her two brothers by her mother, Nellie. No large traditional Catholic family for Grandma, just her single mom and two brothers. Grandma was also a working girl before it was normal for women to work outside the home. In addition, she didn't marry my Grandpa until she was almost 30 -- quite an advanced age in 1928. Once married, she told me, and I quote, that she was "fertile Myrtle" and had three kids in a little more than three years. After that, she said she was done. No large family for her! Another time she told me, and I quote again, that "any woman who would live with a man who would father 14 children to her is a dumbass!" She and my Grandpa traveled extensively throughout the U.S., leaving my dad and his two sisters home with her mother. She would frequently hop the train in Farley and go to Chicago to go shopping. She loved the Cubs and would lie on the "davenport" on summer afternoons listening to Harry Carey on the radio. She was 100% Irish, also a second generation American. She had a card club for years..and those ladies would get a little bit crazy. I remember being at her house several times when I was young when it was card club day. We used to go to her house on Christmas Eve, and she would drink wine and recite things. She drove a 1964 Ford Fairlane as long as I could remember. At 4'11", she could barely see over the big steering wheel. She got a little feisty when they wouldn't renew her drivers license at about age 80. She gave the car to my dad, and us kids affectionately referred to the car as Grandma. We loved to drive it. She made the best chocolate chip cookies. She was a weeper. She loved loved loved dogs. And, 40 years after their deaths, she could still be brought to tears talking about Pete and Brownie. 

If you know me, you can see that I have probably inherited more of Grandma Scherrman's traits. Forward thinking, independent, career-minded, sensitive, dog lover, sports fan, loved to laugh, loved to travel, loved chocolate chip cookies. She had a close knit circle of friends and enjoyed their company. For many years, she spent weekends at their cottage on Lake Delhi. She loved to be around the water, in the water, on the boat, it didn't matter. I know that love of water, too. She's been gone almost 26 years and hardly a day goes by that I don't think about her in some way. She was my godmother, too. I miss her still.