Once Mom knew that her time was limited, she thought it very important to do her part to maintain a living history. She told me that one of her favorite memories from childhood was sitting on the back step with her mom, listening to her tell stories of the way things were. We crammed a lot of things in those last few months, but Mom gave me a piece of her past almost daily. Inevitably, the stories she shared were both warm and funny…and I kick myself for not writing them down at the time so that I would always remember even the tiniest detail.

Since Mom valued the magic of a memory as only a loved one can recollect (as opposed to a history book), she worked with her mother to get some of her origins on paper. I had completely forgotten about the project until the other day when Brenda left a copy of a type-written document on my desk at work. Grandma finished her history, spanning from what she knew about her parents coming to this country to her childhood living on a farm. She was born in 1928.

It was many months after Mom's death when Grandma announced, "I've decided that I'm going to live." I suppose it's difficult to outlive your children—heck, I think it's difficult to outlive your parents. There was a cloud of depression that seemed to hang over my family for that first year. If my grandmother in her late 70s (at that time) was willing to put herself out there for that painful thing called life again, a 20-something with many more years ahead of her had no recourse but to do the same.

I typed her words to have a digital copy. I was humored by a few things while reading her history.

First, you must realize that I come from centuries of Lutheran stock (from my mother's side AND my father's side, actually), and when immigrants first came to this country, their first thought was to preserve their identity. There is a part of the story regarding my great-grandmother going to a Catholic school because the nuns there could communicate with her while she learned English. When she came home from school wanting Catholic prayer beads, my great-great grandmother put her in public school, pronto.

I also couldn't help but chuckle over reading about my grandmother's grandfather. He died in a rocking chair when my grandmother was quite young. She doesn't remember much about the man, but she remembers being afraid of rocking chairs afterwards—apparently, they can kill you!

From this, I learned that I'm actually not nearly as German as I was told growing up. True, my mother's family all left Germany for America, but my grandmother's ethnicity appears to be tied completely to the Scandinavian or Nordic countries instead. My maternal grandfather is 100% German, and my father's family is 100% Norwegian (it was quite the scandal when my father's generation married non-Norwegians). I have absolutely no idea why I tan so easily. Descended from farmers who spent long days in the field beneath the sun, I suppose.

All these modern conveniences that we take for granted: personal transportation, telephones in every home, and butter that we don't have to churn ourselves! If you enjoy reading about days gone by, read on!