Top Stories
Stories in Families that you’ll love, handpicked by our team.
Sunday Afternoon in Hyde Park
In 1975, my father took a Sunday stroll along the stone pathways of Hyde Park in London. A crisp fall day, Speaker’s Corner was in full swing. People shouted from soapboxes. Gathering crowds heckled back. Children ran through the open fields with pinwheels. The grass was so green that my father believed he had stepped into a picture from a traveling book. A young man in his early twenties fresh out of college and looking to make a name for himself as a singer/songwriter in London, the experience was so moving that he penned a song that changed the trajectory of his life. Forty some odd years later, I walk the same pathways to find the places my father sang about to understand how I am like him.
By W. Tyler Paterson4 years ago in Families
The developmental process of infant intelligence
When our daughter little Dawnxi was first born, she would occasionally grasp what we put in her hand, perhaps this was called "the grasping reflex" and was unconscious. She smiled, which we thought may also be unconscious. Little Dawnxi spent most of the first month of his life sleeping, except for breastfeeding, and at about 1 month of age, little Dawnxi began to smile, initially during light sleep and then, when older, during sleep. At 2 to 3 months of age, little Dawnxi responded quickly and in a coordinated manner to our voices. She would smile at us when we called out to her.
By Dawnxisoul393art4 years ago in Families
Our Last Summer Together
The days of summer in the year of 2003 felt different in ways I can’t explain. The innocence and the love were pure in the purest way possible. It was also the second last summer that I had spent with my father when he was alive. I could trade a hundred summers to live that one summertime all over again or maybe just over and over again. I can’t really be someone who could speak of a million childhood memories with their fathers. I only own a few and even that with no entirety but only glimpses. From those couple of memories, I have a really sweet memory with my father. A memory that I will always cherish.
By Mashal Haroon4 years ago in Families
Sunburnt Sprinkles
We rode bikes down sloped lawns into flooded streets, hitting the water with the tenacity of kamikaze pilots. We waged wars with squirt guns in worlds that didn’t exist, with battle lines drawn in the sunburnt driveways of Merritt Island, Florida. My summers were bright, magical, and long, yawning wide through the eyes of a child.
By Sean Kernan4 years ago in Families
What it was like growing up in the 80s
There are so many things that kids know nothing about, things I grew up on or people that grew up before the 90s. I think it was a fun time growing up. Things were not like they were today, and not as dangerous, at least where I live.
By Kerrie G.Diaz4 years ago in Families
Using My Own "Pocahontas" Family Story to Search for Truth
As a child, I was fascinated by our family story of Native American heritage. One of my goals as a genealogist is to distinguish (to quote mixed-race author Darnella Davis) “who we are” from “who we think we are.” I was told we were descended from a woman who was part of the "Cornplanter" tribe in Pennsylvania. Although I am pale white, my late brother, Peter, had darker skin and higher cheekbones, and he turned olive-brown in the summer. We assumed that was due to the presumed Native DNA. No. I have done a DNA test and it shows 0.0% Indigenous North American DNA. My story is not unusual.
By Andrew Gaertner4 years ago in Families
Mosquito Road
Standing at my grandmother's grave with her son, side by side, surrounded by a swarm of hungry mosquitoes, we both gazed silently at her tombstone. It had been a decade since her passing and somehow I had been the one to inform my father that she didn't wake up that day. To say that we weren't close at that time, would be an underestimation of the years of fear and pain under his thumb. The silence between us was ripe with tension, regret, and yearning for some sort of solace.
By Jack Cascade4 years ago in Families
Halcyon Daze
The humble ham sandwich has never tasted as good as it did in the summer of ’86. Who knows what sorcery my Aunt Elaine employed, but somehow, in her hands, two ordinary slices of bread, a smear of margarine and the cheapest deli ham became something magical.
By Allie MacBain4 years ago in Families
Toasted, Buttered Donuts
There’s a tradition at our family cottage in Maine that no one ever forgets and everyone is always ready for. It usually happens on those rare cool summer mornings, when even though it may reach over eighty degrees by noon, the mornings keep us wrapped in blankets or with hoodies pulled over sleep-tousled heads. As I possess the most parenting roles (Mom and Gramma) the responsibility falls to me to perpetuate the tradition; gather the supplies, prepare the space, initiate the activity. On those chilly summer mornings no matter who is there or how old they are, I make toasted buttered doughnuts. It’s a modest tradition, really, but oh, so important to our family.
By Cindy Eastman4 years ago in Families
