Generations

             The August sun gleamed off the rich oak desk in the study. The wheat-colored walls were brimming with family photos and mementos of Sophie’s achievements. In pride of place above the computers were framed photographs of Sophie’s Grandmother Ava and Great Grandmother Edie, two women she had met, but they both died when she was very young. Both women shared a soft, kind face, with intelligent, lively eyes. Sophie and her mother Madison had inherited those eyes and the women’s vibrant spirits and sharp, inquisitive minds. At adjacent desks, Sophie and Madison would while away the hours, Sophie working on homework and her mother writing stories or poetry. Cherrie’s dog bed lay in the corner of the room, where she often supervised the entire operation, when she wasn’t napping. The mid-morning weekend sun lit the entire room with a soft, golden glow. This was Sophie’s favorite room in the house, truth be told. It felt comfortable, like a grandmother’s hug.

             Although Sophie’s memories of Edie and Ava were faint, she had heard many stories about them. Edie and Ava were devoted to their children and grandchildren, generous to others, and real advocates for education. Edie was very active in her church and always willing to help a person in need. Ava was a schoolteacher and poured into every child who came through her door. Both women’s funerals were packed with individuals whose lives had been improved for having met them. However, as a child, Sophie heard other relatives call the women “an iron fist in a velvet glove.” The phrase confused her, so she researched it, learning that it came from the Napoleonic era. Scoffing at the idea that these absolutely lovely women could ever be considered dictators, Sophie asked her mother what she thought the saying meant.

             Arching her eyebrows and smiling, Madison said, “Well, Sophie, the women in your family can be rather strong-willed. We are polite and gracious, to a point. But we are also quite resolute about our intentions, particularly when it comes to the good of our family. Some people don’t like a woman who is firm and tough about what she believes and wants out of life, but it’s important not to be a doormat. You don’t want to spend your life getting walked all over.”

             That conversation was Sophie’s first education on the peculiar politics of being a Southern woman. During her years at school, she heard commentary from multiple sources about what women could and couldn’t do. Once, Sophie got in a heated argument with a boy in primary school over whether a woman could be President of the United States. Fortunately, the teacher agreed with Sophie that it was indeed possible. Another time, she went to church with a friend and heard a fiery sermon about the many extreme ways women should submit to their husbands. The sermon language and the reactions of the women in the congregation made her skin crawl. After every incident, Sophie came back and talked to her mother in the study, trying to make sense of all the competing messages and the roiling feelings they created inside her. Madison would usually respond by telling her more about Edie and Ava.

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             Edie was born in 1926 in a farmhouse in rural Georgia, the firstborn child of two young parents, no attending physician and no birth certificate. The day seemed full of hope for the young family, a beautiful healthy daughter and no complications for mother or child. The hope would not last. Three years later, Edie’s mother caught scarlet fever and died right before the stock markets crashed, leaving Edie and her father to fend for themselves. Shortly thereafter, Edie’s father deposited her and her meager possessions with a close relative and left to look for work out west. Edie never saw him again. Effectively an orphan, living off the kindness of family (a fact they never let her forget), Edie learned to navigate the world on her own. Somehow, she never lost her innate kindness along the way.

             Edie cooked and cleaned for the family who took her in and attended school full time. Although she never complained, they used her like a maid and treated her differently from their own children. Still, she was grateful to have a roof and food and to be learning important life skills. Edie learned to sew her own clothes, to cook, and to keep house, but she really wanted to graduate from high school. Getting an education was a point of pride for her. Unfortunately, the family forced her to drop out after eighth grade to work full-time. They insisted that she needed to make some money to repay their kindness, and they took every penny. Edie did as she was told but resolved never to tie strings to any of her gifts. Kindness should be free. She also vowed that if God blessed her with children, she would ensure that they got an education, especially her daughters.

             “Did Great Grandmother Edie hate the family for making her drop out and work like that?” asked Sophie.

             “No, darling, she didn’t. Remarkably. Somehow, I think she knew that holding hate and grudges isn’t terribly healthy. Those feelings don’t really hurt anyone but the person holding them, as they get heavier and become more poisonous over time. Great Grandmother Edie had a seemingly boundless capacity for forgiveness. And I think she realized that the best revenge was simply living her life her way and that’s what she did. She had a long, happy life, married to your great grandfather for 67 years with children and grandchildren, all of whom graduated from school.”

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             Ava was Edie’s firstborn, arriving in the middle of a hurricane in 1949 in Savannah, Georgia. Edie knew her life had been transformed when she held that little bundle sharing her eyes in her arms, but she also suspected, given the drama of her arrival, that the child might have a little spice to her. Ava was inquisitive, intelligent, stubborn, and strong-willed, and Edie was delighted.

             Ava was a freshman in high school when they integrated her public school in 1964. Edie taught her to love all people, so she couldn’t understand the sheer amount of vitriol and even violence toward fellow young people who were just trying to get an education. Walking into school one morning, Ava was especially shaken to see her Sunday School teacher’s husband holding a sign full of disgusting words, face scarlet, eyes popping from their sockets as he screeched at anyone walking into the school. The hypocrisy was jarring, frightening, and her first inkling that much of society’s mores were a mirage.

             Although Ava too had dreams, of becoming an architect, options for women in South Georgia were limited in the 1960s. She went to teacher’s school instead and became one of the best mathematics instructors in the county (or at least, that’s what Edie always said). Ava taught every mathematics course from Algebra through Calculus and inspired her students to become teachers, engineers, accountants, computer programmers, architects, and financial gurus. For the students who struggled, she showed them that they were capable of more than they ever imagined. And she always had a soft, welcoming spot for the bullied, the outcast, and those who didn’t fit in. When she died unexpectedly at age 63, students traveled from out of state to pay their respects, remembering how she had changed or even saved their lives at a time when no one else believed in them.

             “Did Grandmother Ava ever regret not becoming an architect?” Sophie asked her mother.

             “Regret might be a strong word. The opportunity simply wasn’t available to her at the time. I know she liked to draw building and house plans for fun, so I think she wondered what might have been from time to time. However, she loved all the students she taught over the years and felt that, ultimately, teaching was her calling. Certainly, she mattered deeply to every one of them. ‘Doing your best with the opportunities you are given’ was practically a mantra for her. All her students heard it more than once.”

             “Did she ever say it to you, Mom?”

             “Yes, nearly every day, I think,” Madison laughed. “And as a teacher, she was able to get up to some ‘good trouble’ for the sake of her students – standing up quietly or sometimes not so quietly – for minority students of all sorts, girls, and others who were mistreated at school. She loved having the classroom where kids felt safe.”

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Smiling at the photos of Ava and Edie, seventeen-year-old Sophie, a senior in high school, knew their stories well by now. Most weekends, she holed up in the office working on college essays and applications under her grandmothers’ watchful eyes. Assessing her high school career, Sophie realized now how her mother had guided her to an effective and polished resume. With excellent grades and a diverse array of activities, honors, and leadership experiences, Sophie was a good university candidate.

“I’m finished!” Sophie exclaimed with glee. “All I need is a credit card to pay the application fees.”

As Madison rummaged through her purse for a card, Sophie said, “You know, Mom, we haven’t talked as much about your story.”

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             Born in Savannah in 1973, Madison was Ava’s firstborn, arriving fist first, or so the legend goes, and with the family eyes. Ava and Edie were smitten from the moment she arrived. Opinionated, feisty, stubborn, incredibly intelligent, and always down for a debate, Madison would not accept failure. She tended to seize her goals with a ruthlessness that would make Caesar blush, and when her parents divorced and her father washed his hands of her future education, Madison took matters into her own hands, earning a full scholarship to the state university. In so doing, Madison became the first family member to attend university, and Ava and Edie nearly exploded with joy.

Still, Madison was not entirely true to herself. Ava encouraged her to become a novelist or a poet, but Madison was afraid that she couldn’t support herself as a writer. She did not trust her heart and took a more traditional route instead, heading to law school after graduation. As an attorney, Madison excelled and found opportunities for philanthropy, including representing domestic violence victims and shelters pro bono. Still, she felt somewhat unfulfilled, creatively. When her firstborn, Sophie, arrived, Madison vowed to encourage Sophie not only to chase the impossible but also to consider what makes her happy when making her decisions. To take a calculated risk, the calculation must be complete.

             “When Great Grandmother Edie died and then just a few years later Grandmother Ava died too, I completely lost my footing, Sophie. My story builds on those who came before me, and I felt, for a time, that my foundation had crumbled after their deaths. I still miss them all the time, but strength, resilience, independence, generosity, grace, curiosity, and of course, intelligence, these are our inheritance. Mine and yours too, directly from your Great Grandmother Edie and your Grandmother Ava. What we do with them is entirely up to us. My advice to you is to always seek to maximize your opportunities, elevate those around you, and do good wherever and whenever you can (good trouble included). This is how we honor them, how we remember them every day.”

Sophie nodded, and Madison smiled gently as she saw her mother and grandmother staring back at her from her daughter’s bright eyes.

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                A few months later, winter’s chill had ousted summer, and the days were short and dreary. The sunlight through the study windows was less warm, but the room itself was still as welcoming as ever. Sophie rushed to the computer, dragging her mother into the room.

             “It’s today! Early decision day. I’m so nervous. It should be here in my email somewhere.”

             Her fingers shaking, Sophie proceeded to fat finger her password three times before successfully logging into her email. Scrolling quickly past junk mail, advertisements, and high school announcements that did not matter at this particular moment, she found the email she was looking for: “Brown Early Action Decision”.

             “Oh my god, oh my god, here it is! I think I’m going to be sick,” Sophie screeched.

             “Well, get on with it, and open it! Let’s get the answer and we’ll deal with it, whatever it is,” Madison said, tousling Sophie’s hair gently.

             Sophie screwed her eyes shut, inhaled deeply, and clicked on the email.

             Dear Ms. Sophie Strickland,

             We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Brown University for the fall semester 2027.

             Both women began to scream simultaneously. Sophie leapt from her chair and started to do an ecstatic little jig. Cherrie thought the house was being invaded and began to bark furiously. Turning back to the computer, mouth agape, Madison nodded at Edie’s and Ava’s photos and began to weep. What began with a young country girl in the 1920s, in three generations was heading to the Ivy League. Madison couldn’t wait to see where Sophie took it next.