extended family
All about how to stay connected, strengthen ties and talk politics with your big, happy extended family.
A Hidden Life
I had an estranged relationship with my great aunt. Even after I was born she never saw me or my family. When I first learned as a little kid that she existed I wondered why she never came around for Christmas or other holidays. I'd ask my mom why we never saw great-aunt Evelyn. When I was little she’d give answers like she wasn’t feeling well or she was always busy without ever explaining anything about her or what was going on in her life. Later on I learned she hadn’t spoken to the family since her husband died when my mom was a teenager. That’s how it was all my life. My parents never saw her. My grandma only spoke with her occasionally over the phone, but never in person anymore. I think her funeral was the first time I had actually seen her face. So I was very confused to learn that I had received an inheritance of $20,000 from her after she died that was to be given to me after I turned eighteen.
By Jacob Wilson5 years ago in Families
LILIANA
It was January 1st, 1971, my 25th birthday. I was feeling very blue that day. My grandfather had died two weeks prior and there was no one left who loved me. The box, about twelve inches square, brown-paper wrapped and tied up with yellowed cotton twine, showed up on my doorstep in the late afternoon. I noticed it when I returned from my walk to the beach. Right away I knew this was going to be strange. There was nothing on it : no tracking numbers, no postage, no addresses. Only a scrawled name, Liliana
By Kathleen Vaughan5 years ago in Families
Dreams
I always dreamed of a home with blue shutters and a light yellow door. The ones with so many bushes in front that you can't see the siding? We'd been waiting for years to buy a house we could call our own. But I was pregnant, and we barely had enough saved to take care of the baby. That old cliche about having love is enough, well in our house, love needed to be enough because we didn't have anything else to go around.
By Miranda Bowron5 years ago in Families
Tuckaleechee
As soon as Lynnette got the call she began researching where her grandparents had been buried in the Tuckaleechee Primitive Baptist Church cemetery. She looked up Tuckaleechee, it meant "Happy Valley" in Cherokee. The stories of those hollows didn't seem very happy to her. She had a dim memory of her grandmother's funeral. It was the only time she had ever set foot in Tennessee in her life. She was eleven at the time. Her cousin Rollie was there too. They became instant best friends. However, when he dared her to touch their grandmother's corpse, she reached up and opened one of her dead blue eyes, proving she had no fear of anything, poor Rollie took off running. He kept a wary eye on her after that. Still, he took her fishing and showed her how to string corn on her hook instead of a worm. He was two weeks older than her and felt responsible as the older cousin. He also warned her about snakes.
By Danielle Branley5 years ago in Families
Book of Lies
Book of Lies By LaShawn Baker John watched the little girl skipping on the sidewalk from his upstairs window; her brown curls and blue polka-dotted dress with a white apron brought a smile to other wise sadden features. He smiled at her and stopped chattering to her invisible friend. From what he could see, her conversation seemed intense. He could not help but think back to a time in his life when he wasn’t like this. Her voice broke through his pity party. “Momma don’t want us talking to strangers.” Her invisible friend supposedly replied. Her little voice said, does he know you? Again she waited for a response. He laughed at the exchange thinking he wished he could return to childhood and his imaginary friend.
By LaShawn Denise Baker5 years ago in Families
Cost of Living
Whoever gave them rich-sounding car names in the Bealy family was a fool. Middle sister, Alexus, shook her head as she stared at the paperwork to do the tax return for her baby sister, Mercedes. The papers piled on her modest home office desk from the night before mocked her by the aging computer. Did they even make this brand anymore?
By Jeanette W Smith5 years ago in Families
The Inheritance
Daniel had not expected the room to be so heavily decorated with mahogany walls and regal furniture. The empty chair behind the desk had been cushioned with a deep maroon padding and complemented with golden armrests while the books that surrounded the room had been thick, old, and dusty. The young man had not known what to wear during such a formal meeting and so he wound up in the black suit ensemble that he had worn to his Grandfather’s funeral ten months ago. The outfit had seemed fitting the morning prior when considering the purpose of the appointment, began to wonder if it isn’t morbid.
By Jacob Dorst5 years ago in Families
I Leave the End To You
The late author, Ms. Steiner, hated to be predictable; her life, work and death were a testament to that. She never married, never bore any children, and never, ever, gave her stories a happy ending. Happiness is predictable, she often said. She had written several famous novels before her untimely death at 72, when the gardener found her body slumped against the lion statue in the courtyard of her estate.
By Robyn Rachkowski5 years ago in Families
Diggin' in the Dirt
So Uncle Jack was dead. Finally. Here we were, scrimping to make ends meet, and he takes years to drop off his perch. Years of crippling mortgages and groaning credit card bills. Jack was loaded, but he never gave us a dime. Nada, rien, nix. He went to live in that cabin in the woods, to chop wood, write and sketch and walk that dumb dog. Hemingway. I mean seriously, who calls their dog Hemingway?
By Clare Blanchard5 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
