Ann, Patricia, Zelma, Beulah: Our 42,224 Days

This book is a pleasant memoir treating the family trait of moral vigor against a backdrop of paradigm shifts in American social history, a lighthearted read for the most part, whose time has come. Desiring to bring forward human traits of kindness and restraint, seemingly left aside as our culture delves for a time into the trait of violence, I sense the time is right for a tribute to my late mother and my own life of sixty years. I hope to contribute wisdom for youth and also remind readers of the noteworthy year of 1948, my birth year. You will chuckle at some of the memories that came to me in my grandmother Beulah’s small house in south central Texas. You will feel tenderly toward Zelma, Beulah's last child of seven, my mother, gifted in genuine attentiveness, and beautiful. I am Patricia, and my chapters reveal academic interests, paradigm shifts belonging to a retro time in American culture, and a couple of disappointments, mainly in endeavoring to work as a public-school teacher in Memphis, Tennessee. My daughter Ann is the fourth-generation woman, and she has quadrupled the professional outreach. The life of Ann fills me with reverence for life, and so does the life of my grandmother. The spread between Beulah’s birth in 1884 and Ann’s reaching age thirty in 2010 encompasses one-hundred-sixteen years, 42,224 days that this memoirist has opened up for review. You will glimpse my mother’s six colorful siblings; the husband of my youth, whom I have kept for over forty years; and glimpse this “Daddy’s Girl's” father, athletic, wise, and wonderful; and also my daughter’s inspiring husband. Marriage for life, student responsibility to prepare for higher ed, and preserving religious practices come forward in this nonfiction narrative of ordinary women of moral vigor.