art
Family-themed art is a look into one's living room; it depicts celebration, crises, and the quiet moments of familial interactions.
Stickers and Blooms
Marissa kept her magic in the notebooks. She had a row of ten of them, the warm black covers lined up on her shelf, a record of everything she’d done and felt for two years. She started writing in a journal when her mother got very sick, when it felt like her stomach was eating itself and it hurt to open her jaw. The writing helped: she’d describe what she felt, and, when she couldn't write about herself anymore, she wrote what she saw, and what she wanted, and she wrote little stories about the people at the bus stop in the mornings on her way to work at the grocery story: the man with the stained ties, the old woman with her rolling basket, the sparrow that seemed to greet her and bathed himself in the dewy grass.
By Rachel Taube5 years ago in Families
The Orchid
You’re nineteen the day you receive a check in the mail—your coffee black as ink, your cat fat and curled in your lap like soft serve. Lips closed around a steel mug, you gurgle and spit as you process the check, the familiar loop of the G’s, the unmistakable I’s dotted with stars. It’s from Aunt Marie, along with a periwinkle sticky note: "I’d rather see you enjoy this while I’m alive then leave it for you later." Aunt Marie, who recently underwent a double mastectomy for her stage two breast cancer, is your very own godmother. The number on the check reads twenty thousand dollars and your cat sleeps through your warm trickle of rain, the clouds in your eyes. That night, you dream of twenty thousand knickknacks from the Dollar Tree and of actually buying a house. In the morning, you can’t choose what to do and so you wait.
By E.J. Schwartz5 years ago in Families
Rescuing the Crospey
“And what are you going to do with all this money, once it’s in your account?” Mia looked up expectantly. The money had been a surprise. My uncle Francesco, a school administrator in Haymill, had left me $20,000 in his will. I remembered, of course, having looked after his property after a fire had gutted his barn and partially damaged the farmhouse ten years ago after Aunt Maria had died. I came to love that farmhouse and the scraggly land with its dried riverbed. It had an unemphatic beauty, spare and unadorned flat ground, with willow oaks at the western perimeter and sweetgum and tulip poplars on the eastern. In the two months I had become close to Uncle Fran. Since then I had visited him at least once a year, the last two times with Mia, as our engagement ripened; I never expected to be in his will.
By Roger Lathbury5 years ago in Families
Memorable Gifts
Decorating the tree as a child was something to look forward to. Togetherness and memories always brought smiles and fun. It was fun for parents as well because it brought back fun times. The ornaments you had as a child, and all of the handmade ornaments you made. Those were special ornaments and families kept them because they meant so much.
By Melonie S Shelton5 years ago in Families
Remember that winter?
I was never a tattooed person. I didn't know what i wanted to do in my life. I never pictured myself as ''alternative'', even when i was bullied in high school for being an ''extraordinary introvert'' with my black clothes and my headphones always with me. The fact is that, like many and many people out there, i never had my group of friends and i felt like nobody every understood me completely. I always felt like an open book, surrounded by illiterates. (Pretty common, right?)
By Claire Mason5 years ago in Families
Bling Baby Bling. Third Place in Body Art Challenge.
It was March, 1996, in the suburbs of Seattle. The Coen Brothers’ film,“Fargo” had just opened in theaters. The first surface photos of Pluto, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, were released. The toll-free (888)- area code had just been born. And my mother had made up her mind that she’d take eight-week-old-little-me to a tattoo shop—and get my ears pierced with real diamond earrings.
By Hailey McKennon5 years ago in Families
A Picture's Worth 1000 Words
My first tattoo, it's fair to say, was a mistake of epic proportions. I fell into the same trap as many before me and saw my wrist encumbered with the name of a lover, whose enchantment was already beginning to break.
By Clara Elizabeth Hamilton Orr Burns5 years ago in Families
Rainy Thoughts
You look out the window, and, not for the first time that day, thought about how wrong the weather forecast had been. “But then again,” you reason with yourself, “This is Missouri, and they hardly get the forecast right anyway. I should really stop putting so much stock into what the news anchors say.”
By Aimee Pieper5 years ago in Families
