Family

by Elizabeth Hunter— Do you associate sounds, sights or scents with feelings or memories? I know I do. Just a hint of ginger stirs up thoughts of Christmas and my mom’s peppernut cookies. Walking by lilies of the valley awakens memories of Easter and being held in the...

by Sarah Carson— Somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of my brain, I have several snapshots of a cartoon my mother used to play for my sister and me. I don’t have a complete memory—just a few random snippets stuck in the gray matter of my amygdala. I can’t tell you...

--by Diane Norstad “Who are your ‘real’ parents?” That question was my first sense of being different in a negative way. My parents had told me about my adoption when I was little. We always thought of it as a good thing. As the Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians...

–by Susie Gamelin A few years back, our family decided to play a game while recovering from a generous Christmas brunch. Each of us wrote on a slip of paper some­thing we thought the others didn’t know about us. The unsigned slips of paper were put into a bowl, drawn...

–by Abby Acceturra Recently I had a conversation with my partner that turned into an argument, and not the kind of argument that’s easily solved. He said something off-hand that I took too seriously; I responded to it in a way that triggered a landmine of his own...

–by Elizabeth Hunter The first day of summer—the longest day of the year—felt like the longest day of my life. Years of stress had taken a toll in the form of lost sleep, lost weight and lost relationships. Yet I was gaining much-needed perspective. You might call it...

–by Venice R. Williams In some ways, I had been preparing for these days most of my adult life. I just did not fully understand it until my 98-year-old grandmother, Ora, arrived at our home for a two-week visit. My excitement about her stay spilled over into...

–by Sara Zarr When I was a child, I prayed like a child. I chattered to God while walking to and from school, in the hours alone as a latchkey kid and when going to sleep at night. Often these prayers sprang from joy, or at least the kind of good mood one seems to...

—by Karen G. Bockelman My favorite photo of my father was taken more than 20 years ago. There he is, staring straight at the camera, his nearly bald head rising above a fringe of faintly visible hair. His round, German face beams. His eyes sparkle behind gold-rimmed...

—by Elizabeth Hunter The questions and demands for quantification from my youngest son can be so numerous they overlap and tangle. His persistence can tire me out, yet I appre­ciate it. I’m grateful for opportunities to communi­cate everything from the fact that...