Story Time

The mom who was once a volleyball star loves her daughter but has trouble showing it because her daughter hates volleyball and every other sport and wants to become a writer and make her own footsteps in the sand. So the mom tries to support her daughter but she hates reading and can't bring herself to read her daughter's novel; as a result, the daughter feels unloved. So what does she do? She reads the novel even though she doesn't understand a word of it.

The same dad who loses his wife at fifteen loses his grandma at nine, his wife at fifty, and his daughter at sixteen. He feels like his life is one of those fictional plotlines where the female descent is cursed. He likes to pretend it's fictional so that he can shower and do normal things that he usually can't do. After pledging to never open up to another woman in his life, the nursing home forces him to because it's either loneliness or boredom; and to him one is better than the other. And he watches his second love die in her sleep. After so many solemn years, the man who is supposed to die of Alzheimer's and old age dies of heartbreak instead.

The brother who used to call his sister fat on a daily basis turns twenty-six. In other words, he becomes a man. He apologizes to his sister, but he's more man than most men by deciding not to compliment her weight loss. Because he knows she's been starving herself and not to compliment a mental disorder. He blames himself for causing it in the first place, but at least he can undo the parts of her brain that he contaminated. He owns that he is the cancer, and in the end that's what saves her: is her brother turning into a man.

The dog can't speak but she listens to us and knows certain words like "treat" and "ride." She knows that if she keeps licking us that we'll never stop petting her. When we take her for a walk and she gets away from an aggressive hound, she takes off and we freak out only to find her sitting in our yard; she knows the way home. She knows not to beg for food at dinner because she knows she'll be served after. She knows when we're arguing and tries to break us up like a professional mediator. Our pets know more than we think they do.