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My grandmother died three summers ago.

I made my peace with our unloveable loving relationship before she died.

I finally accepted that I was so far outside her experience that she just didn't trust me.  Or I her.

My mother and my daughter are my favorite people to have fun with.  We love to travel together.  We've been to San Francisco and New Orleans together.

We go to dinner and movies together, and we love painting with a twist together.

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My mother and I are more proud of her than we can ever say.  She is 33 years and her head firmly on her shoulders.  She takes care of herself, always has, always will.

In Jessica, my mother and I see the culmination of our hopes and dreams to be strong, independent women ourselves.

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In time I had my own daughter.  I named her Jessica.

And she is her grandmother's child.

I haven't been able to make her do anything she doesn't want to do since she was was an infant.

Jessica failed kindergarten on purpose by refusing to learn to read because she did not want to be the shortest kid in first grade.

She learned to read the next year, and is now a 33 year old with three college degrees.

She also hears the call of books to be read.

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I did put my books down long enough to finally get married and then pregnant, at seventeen.

My mother begged me to finish high school even though I was married.

My grandmother cried at my wedding she was so happy I was no longer an old maid.

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My grandmother, my mother, and now my daughter are part of my face and my fate.

We are the story of the daughters.

Each one of us has achieved more than the daughter before us.

We don’t always understand each other, we don’t always love each other, but we are an inescapable part of each other.

This is our story.

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My mother is proud of my education.  She knows I have it because of the persistence, resilience, and stubbornness, she wove into my DNA.

I just confused my grandmother.  She once asked me why I needed more schoolin'.

She never understood why I don’t want to get married again.  She use to invite eligible men to her house for me to meet when I would visit her.

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I  earned my high school diploma from West Orange-Stark High School in Orange, Texas. I graduated 32nd in a class of over 300 students.

I earned a BA in English from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and then an MA in English, also from Lamar University.

I may even get an EdD in Learning, Design, and Technology from the University of Houston in Houston, Texas.

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But I was Rachel's daughter.

I rebelled.  I rebelled in ways my mother didn’t understand.

I walked across town, which I was not supposed to do, to the library on Saturdays rain or shine.

My mother caught me walking to the library one day, and grounded me from reading for two weeks.  She made me watch television for punishment.  I hated television.

When she realized I was going to walk to the library no matter what the punishment, she let me go.
She has never understood that books call to me to read them.

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I made it to fifteen without getting pregnant or married.

My mom was so happy she gave me a skating party with all my friends.

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I have a picture of the three of us circa 1968.

It must be a Christmas picture since we are at the old place my grandparents moved to in Orangefield, Texas, after my mom and I moved to Orange, Texas, and we wearing sweaters.
I am five years old, not yet school age.

We are standing together nestled close and lovingly with smiling faces.  It is clear from our faces that we are all related.  We breed true.

I don’t remember any of us being happy outside of this picture.

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My mom finished the fifth grade with straight A’s.

She didn’t go to the sixth grade. Her father told her that if she was going to marry that Jessie McClelland, she better do it before school started.  He was going to be mad if he bought her school clothes just to have her run off and get married.

Rachel and Jessie got married.  In the pictures, they look like kids pretending to be grownups.

In 1968, long before it was common, they were divorced.  My mom went on to remarry, and my dad went on to serious alcoholism.

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My mother and I grew up in totally different places because my mother made every sacrifice she could to make it happen.

My mother, Rachel, left her mother in Jasper, Texas, to live a life away from everyone and everything she knew because she wanted me to have the chances she never got and could not even imagine.

She moved first to New Orleans, Louisiana, and then to Orange, Texas, when she found the big city strange and distressing.

Her big dream for me was to graduate from high school. It didn't matter what high school.

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My grandmother, my mother, and I were all born in Jasper, Texas.
We all started there, but only two of us were raised there.

My mom was in a school play in 1962 when she was fourteen.  A year later she was married with a baby.