Four generations: Essayist Amber Gass (middle) poses with the four living generations of women in her family, including daughters Jadyn, 3, and Jordyn, 6, mom Shelia Brown and grandmother Lorene Campbell.

When Amber Gass spotted an ad in Chattanooga Parent for the 4 Generations Essay Contest, sponsored by portrait photographer Cristie Sims, she knew she had to enter. The Ringgold, Ga., mother of two realized just how lucky she was to have four living generations of women in her family. “I thought I really needed to do this while I still have them,” she says. Still, Amber didn’t tell her mother or grandmother she had entered the essay contest until she found out she had won. “Then I let my mom read it,” she says, “and it made her cry.”

We are pleased to share with you Amber Gass’s winning entry, as well as two of the Mother’s Day portraits she won as her first-place prize.

“Just doing the best we can”

Ringgold mom reflects on the strong women who are the fiber of her family

Because my girls are 3 and 6 years old, they don’t realize how fortunate they are to get to spend time with both a grandmother and a great-grandmother.

By Amber Gass

Photos courtesy of Beautiful by Cristie

I am the third generation of my family’s four generations of amazing women. Growing up, I never realized just how fortunate I was to have so many wonderful women as role models in my life. I just took my mother and grandmother for granted, because they were always there, and I just thought the same applied for everyone else also. Now that I am grown, I realize how few girls get to grow up in such ideal circumstances, and I feel blessed to have so much of my heritage around. Up until just a few years ago, I even had a great-grandmother around.
The women in my life have been the most influential in my spiritual life, as well as in most other areas. My grandmother took both my mother and her brother, from birth, to the same church that my parents raised me in. I am now raising both of my daughters in this same church.
Growing up, every Saturday night I stayed overnight with my grandmother, and we woke up and went to church on Sunday morning. After church we came back to her house, and she cooked lunch for all of us. Even at 80 years old, my grandmother still carries out this tradition as best she can, while caring for a husband who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Out of three grandchildren, I was the only one who stayed with her on a regular basis. I always have felt we have a special relationship and miss those special times now that I am older, with kids of my own.
My girls actually get to be with my mom even more than I got to be with my grandmother, since we live in the same neighborhood. Because they are 3 and 6 years old, they don’t realize how fortunate they are to get to spend time with both a grandmother and a great-grandmother, but I hope that one day they will reflect back, as I am doing, and come to this same conclusion.
The first three generations of women in my family were able to choose to stay at home with their children instead of being employed outside of the home. This is a very personal choice that we have all made; it is what we feel led to do and feel is the right thing for our families. This is one of the many things that amaze me the most about our family. Although times have changed enormously since the 1960s, when my mother grew up, and even since the 1980s, when I grew up, we still found ourselves raising our families in the same way, religiously and morally, while caring for them in the home.
As fortunate as I feel about being able to do this, it is not by any means easy, nor do people always make me feel like a legitimate contributor to society. Whether or not my own daughters choose to do the same with their children remains to be seen, but whatever they do, they will have a family of mothers that have come before them that will support and stand behind them, no matter what.
Last year I decided that going back to work was what I wanted and needed to do, and my mother was very supportive of me. Even though I had some guilt about putting my youngest daughter in day care, because I didn’t ever have to put my oldest in day care, my mother never made me feel like anything but a good mother. She never questioned me, not the first time.
That job was short lived, only five months, because ultimately I could not be apart from my children. My mother stood behind me the whole time, and that was very important to me. It just shows me the unconditional love that she has for me, regardless of my life choices.
Although there is nothing extraordinary about the last four generations of women in my family, at least so far, that doesn’t really matter to me. We represent your average American family that is just doing the best that we can to raise a family the best way that we know how. After all, when everything is said and done, that is all that really matters. We feel very blessed to have had each other for so long and be granted good health and great family!