Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Families.
A Remarkable Saleswoman
A Remarkable Saleswoman -- By Carolyn Edwards Boyce Her thin left arm clutched the huge fraying bag, with all the power you might expect of a woman used to depending only on herself. From the outside, the bag appeared to be filled with rocks, the bulging circumferences of Avon cosmetic jars betraying her abundance of optimism regarding possible sales for that day.
By Carolyn Edwards-Boyce5 years ago in Families
Surprises
Sitting here in an empty house full of his things wondering where to start, thinking about all the things I wanted to say to him now never getting the chance to say them. The BITCH!! The one thing I always ask her for all my life was to know my dad, what was her answer, when she was ready. When she was ready what kind of "Fd" upped answer was that. She has known him most of her life and supposedly has known how to get in touch with him whenever she wanted, so why make me wait, I am his daughter. She has told me and my sisters over and over again that he left us all when we were little and she had know idea why. She blamed him for everything and said he ruined her life. Of course over all the years she married two other men who according to her up and left her and ruined her life and over the years she managed to blame me and my sisters for ruining her life as well. I guess she never could take the blame for the choices she made, so her life suck because of the people around her not because of her own life choices. Anyway that is a whole different story.
By Lynn Roldan5 years ago in Families
"Her dad's belongings"
She was grieving as they cleaned out her dad's belongings. The workshop was full of boxes: rusty hinges, light sockets, outlets, and old paint cans. There was even a wall of vintage license plates. There were hand tools, jars of nails, and screws. Decades worth of things her dad saw value in. They found his pipes and tobacco. The hall closet was full of his sweatshirts and sweaters with pockets full of mints and lifesavers. They weren’t just belongings; they represented the lifetime of one special man. And oh, how she found it so difficult to part with it all.
By Debbie Couture5 years ago in Families
Book
It was another hot and humid winter day in Los Angeles, My mother and I had resorted to buying storage units at auction in hopes of possibly pocketing a profit with the units unknown contents. This last storage unit we purchased was a hail mary, it needed to have at least twelve hundred dollars inside it to cover the rest of our rent and outstanding bills. After haggling with the auctioneer and other people we ended up purchasing the unit for two-hundred dollars more than we wanted but again we needed to make a profit and as soon as possible. The moment we purchased it, I stepped inside the compartment scanning its contents quickly as we still had to pay auctioneer at his office. As I scanned, I noticed a large amount of what seemed like office equipment, filing cabinets and what seemed like an American flag on a stand tucked away in a corner. In a sarcastic tone I proclaimed “what a great deal this was” and “to go get the paperwork to get this done as soon as possible.” As I followed the owner and my mother toward the exit, I noticed this old workbench with two cardboard boxes atop it as I passed it I saw what was an old black book about twice the size of todays smart phones. With out any real reason too other than that I like books to draw inside. I picked it up without looking at it as I thumbed the pages and felt the leather strap that bound it and put it in my back pocket on the way out.
By Wes Cunningham5 years ago in Families
Mallory & Rose
Friday morning I woke up to the tearing sound of packing tape being ripped from the roll. Will was finishing up packing the last of the kitchen items we had needed to get through the past couple of days. The sun was piercing through the blinds as I sat up in bed and stretched my back, still sore from carrying so many boxes down the four flights of stairs from our top floor apartment. Swinging my legs out of bed, I walked into our tiny, empty living room. The room actually seemed somewhat spacious now with only Will and a couple boxes on the floor.
By Maggie Fanning5 years ago in Families
Lessons of Life and Love
Laura sat by her grandmother's bedside, trying her best to be strong. Heavy rain hissed at the windowpane, almost drowning out the sounds of the hospital machines that surrounded the room. Laura kept her focus on her Grandma who was breathing faintly and raggedly through her oxygen mask. Her Grandma Abigail, so strong and fierce throughout her life now looked incredibly, miserably frail.
By K.J. Smith5 years ago in Families
A Stolen Voice
By the time I met my mother, she was already dead. That’s not exactly true. We’d technically met when she gave birth to me, but that’s not something I remember. I only remember her absence, a woman-shaped void in my life where a mother should have been.
By Janna Benavidez Weiss5 years ago in Families
Choose
There was a time in my life when I looked at the sky and cried tears of smallness. Tears of understanding how insignificant I am in the vastness of space. The bright blue gave me no comfort and the clouds, barely visible, seemed skeletal. In th I saw traces of my own mother, eyes gray with death, struggling to lift her arm enough to brush my hair out of my eyes and wipe the tears off my cheek.
By Alex Marcu5 years ago in Families
Five Years and I'm Still Missing You
I do not know how we forgive ourselves for the all things we did not say before it was too late. That’s a line from the poem I just read. A line ever beautiful and wise in its utterings. It’s been a long time since I’ve found something that gave me so much inspiration in just a moment. In fact, it was as long ago as middle school, when you left, with Shane Koyczan’s “When I Was a Kid”. His words spoke to me, though I couldn’t relate to much of what he was saying.
By Emma Gillham5 years ago in Families
