By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Many years ago, my high school biology teacher told us the scientific explanation for physical gender differences- women have XX chromosomes and men have XY chromosones. She also told us that we get most of our characteristics, other than biological gender, from the X side of the genetic mix. With each passing Mothers Day, I more vividly realize just exactly how impressive those XXs have been in my own family.
My mother’s grandmother, Kate Leonard, came to America with her family from Limerick, Ireland in 1888. They apparently were tenant farmers who had lost their land and means of livelihood, so they left home and hearth to try to find a new life. Kate was only age 20, and she found that new life, but lost it too quickly. She married a railroad worker named Michael Sullivan in 1891, and gave birth to their daughter Catherine a year later. Tragedy struck, however, and Kate died right after childbirth.
Her child, Catherine Sullivan, my grandmother (see the photo, my only one of her), grew up without a mother, but was raised by many aunts in the Sullivan and Leonard clans, including her mother’s sister, Mary Leonard, who had emigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1882 at age 17 and had saved money to help Kate and her other siblings make the Atlantic crossing. Catherine also eventually found love, marrying a meat salesman named Henry Gleason in 1914. They had six children, but like her mother before her, Catherine died young and left her youngest, Kathleen Gleason, to grow up without a mother too. Kathleen Gleason was my mother, and although she did not die young, she faced down numerous challenges in her own life, including an alcoholic father and raising a young family on her own after a divorce.
My paternal line includes some equally compelling examples of the strengths found within the XX chromosomes.
My second great grandmother, Alice Fitzgerald, and her eventual husband Jeremiah McCarthy, escaped as children from Ireland in the mid-1800s during the Potato Famine. Alice and Jerry married and had two sons and three daughters. Their daughter Annie McCarthy wed Edward O’Brien in 1890 and then gave birth to my grandfather Donald O’Brien in 1891. Sadly, just nine months later, Ed contracted tuberculosis and died.
Annie raised little Don O’Brien alone, working as a retail clerk and millinery shop proprietor to pay the bills. Her mother Alice helped a lot, while also caring for her other grandson Frank McCarthy, who also lost his mother to tuberculosis in the waning years of the nineteenth century. Annie’s sister Mary McCarthy never married, but for many years ran a successful tailoring and dressmaking business. Mary, nicknamed “Mame,” was a second mother to my grandfather Don O’Brien. After Mame’s and Annie’s parents died, and after Don and Frank moved on, Annie and Mame paid cash together to build a small wood frame home on Maple Street in Burlington, Vermont where they lived out the rest of their lives.
There are other golden stories in the female family line too. My father’s sister Maureen O’Brien was a Carmelite nun for five decades in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. My great aunt Mary Gleason also was a nun for over fifty years in the Sisters of Mercy order, working as a teacher and convent leader. She faced down a serious flood that threatened her school and small convent in Barre, Vermont in 1927. Her mother, Margaret Flaherty Gleason (my great grandmother) raised eight children and was married to my great grandfather for over 50 years.
And of course, I include my lovely and talented wife, sisters, daughters, cousins, and nieces in this mix of great women. I am more convinced than ever that when it comes to finding the core of strength and soul of my family, X marks the spot.
