A Trip Back in Time

During lunch at my sister’s baby shower, I happened to be sitting next to my grandma. At one point in time, she leaned over and said, “You know, this is where I had my high school prom.” My mom, sitting on my grandma’s other side, seemed equally as surprised to learn this mildly historic tidbit. I’ve always felt like I know so little about my grandma, her life growing up, her years as a young wife and mom, and all the time between then and when I came along. So I took this opportunity to ask a few questions, and this is what I learned.

My grandma was the first generation of her family to be born in the US. Her mother came over from Romania, and her father was from Austria-Hungary. She didn’t speak English when she started school—only German. She grew up bilingual, reading, writing and speaking English and German. She commented that it proved to be an advantage in high school, where she got excellent marks in her German class.

My grandpa had been attending a military high school, but when his parents moved, he started at the public school in Chicago, where my grandma attended. They went to the school prom together, which was held at the Itasca Country Club. There were no buses to shuttle the kids out there, so that meant driving themselves or finding another way out to the distant and mostly undeveloped suburb of Itasca. After high school graduation, my grandpa joined the Navy, so as to avoid being drafted by the Army. And after his time of service was finished, he and my grandma married.

It wasn't a very detailed retelling of their early years together, but it was more than I had heard before. I couldn’t help but wonder what my grandma was thinking as she sat there, watching her granddaughter open shower gifts for the little one who will soon be her 13th great-grandchild. I thought about the room where a high school romance once blossomed, and the years that followed as a young wife and mother, and later a grandmother and great-grandmother. And here she had come full circle, sitting in the same place where it had all began, only, sadly, without her dancing partner of nearly 60 years, who had passed on 4 years earlier.

Sometimes a day can feel as long as a year. And a year can feel as short as a day. I try to do my best to make the most of each day and enjoy each stage of life as I come to it. So hopefully, if I am blessed to come to a time where it seems my life has come full circle, I will be able to appreciate just how full that circle was.