Many years ago, my aunts gave me a gift unlike any other. It wasn’t wrapped in glittery paper with ribbons and bows. It came in a simple box—plain, sturdy, dependable. Much like the women it honored.

Inside was a bracelet made of wooden panels, each one bearing the photo of a mother in my family line. Strong women. Independent women. Sometimes feisty women. All connected to me.

On one side of my photo are my two daughters. On the other side are my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother. A family tree you can wear on your wrist.

The brown wood feels especially fitting because it is the color of coffee, a drink that links us nearly as much as blood does.

“Coffee?” was the first word out of my mother’s mouth whenever someone stopped by. Family and friends gathered around the kitchen table while politics were debated, stories were swapped, and neighborhood news was exchanged. The same was true of my Norwegian grandmother. It is true now of my daughters and me. Coffee has long meant conversation, hospitality, and comfort.

When I study the panel with the photo of my mother as a young woman, her eyes sparkling with life, I’m taken back to a wedding where we danced the polka to “Roll Out the Barrel.” We laughed and spun until we were breathless. She taught me something that day: joy is not something to wait for. Joy is something to make.

Then there is my grandmother Caroline. She was tall, darker-skinned, and felt awkward about her appearance. Her mother scrubbed her skin, hoping to make it lighter. She was left-handed too, and people once foolishly considered that suspicious.

Once married, she worked beside my grandfather on the farm. Money was scarce enough that Grandpa once had to hock his watch to buy gasoline. Yet hardship did not rob Grandma Caroline of her storytelling gift.

She told the story of a wealthy married couple coming to visit her mother, Bertha, and her husband at their farm. The wife boasted, “My husband doesn’t work with his hands. He works with his head.” Bertha quipped back, “So does a chicken.”

You can imagine the laughter around the kitchen table when Grandma told that story.

I never knew my great-grandmother Bertha, but my mother described her as fun-loving and remembered her dancing with a cooking pot on her head for a hat.

Mom also recalled this memory: “She took me to the outhouse once, and while she was there, she sang, ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket, I lost my yellow basket.’”

My mother admitted she had no idea why that memory stayed with her. But isn’t that how family stories work? We never know which moments will lodge in children’s hearts and remain there for life.

What will our children and grandchildren remember about us?

I study the bracelet’s panel farthest back in time, belonging to my great-great-grandmother Mekka. She is a mystery to me.

“Hello,” I would say. “I’m the daughter of Marcia, who is the daughter of Caroline, who is the daughter of Bertha—your daughter.”

Then I’d pour us both a cup of coffee, as good Norwegians should, and ask every question I never had the chance to ask.

Finally, I study the panel closest in time, belonging to my daughters. Their smiles look toward the future. In them, I see traces of the women who came before—strength, sacrifice, and humor.

Someday soon, I hope we’ll sit together over coffee and talk about the mothers who shaped us. Women whose lives still echo through ours, link by link, story by story.