immediate family

Blood makes you related, loyalty makes you family.

Skip Skip Ploosh
When I was young, my Dad taught me how to fish. Over the years we collected quite a lot of stories from our own experiences and several from others. There's always been a few that are our favorites. Some that got away, some that we landed, so many that were caught that we had to give them away, and even the days where nothing nibbled at all, as we just relaxed with our thoughts.
By Thavien Yliaster4 years ago in Families
Hitting Advice
My father saw that my sister and I were having too much fun playing softball and he wanted in on it when I was eight. He promptly studied a few baseball books and signed up to be an assistant coach. He sort of did that anytime we found something fun. He’d start studying it and take over. As long as whatever we were into didn’t make him physically cold. He hated the two years we played hockey. Wanted zero part of it. He co-coached our softball team by the book. He’d hand out bubble gum before a game and tell us when we got up to bat to chew it hard like we meant business. Blow a bubble at the pitcher. It would intimidate her. That was our team’s “secret weapon.” He started to preach the tenets of softball to me in everyday life, well outside of softball practice and games. He’d tell me I should do something every day to improve my game, be it a game of catch, or pointing out that someone on the Red Sox did not get a hit because they took his eye off the ball. “Keep your eye on the ball and you’ll get a hit,” was his most common piece of advice. After a bad at-bat, he would tell me I took my eye off the ball.
By Paula Desmarais4 years ago in Families
Never Done Teaching Me
I focused on my breathing as we waited for my dad to arrive. He hadn't met any of his grandchildren yet and it felt right to me that he be present for the first breaths of this one. So far, he was who I called on when I was nervous or scared. He'd always reassured me that life would turn out okay and guide me when I needed a push in the right direction. This was the most nervous I've ever been.
By Kaytlin Michelle4 years ago in Families
We're Not Dead Yet
It was a hot day in Vietnam, and Dan Smithson's aircraft was shot down by a mortar. A mortar is a high-angle-of-fire weapon that sprays multiple forms of ammunition, sometimes explosive. It stopped counting at four hundred.
By L.M. Marlin4 years ago in Families
Grumpy Old Man
We don't get to pick our families, our blood and the truth of it is my old man was a curmudgeonly geezer, who didn't want to be called granddad but Grumpy, so in his later years that is what he was called.
By KC4 years ago in Families
s.o.s
The water here appears vast - the image is crisp. The water blue and clear - still in that moment. In comparison, the land seems small - it is resting. The land might be comforted by this water - or the land might be stifled by this water. This water could be intrusive, and perhaps even destructive. We wouldn't know what the land thinks, land doesn't really talk - does it? It won't be discussing with the water, how over time, they have been eroding their edges - bit by bit. Taking away the only thing the land ever knew of itself. Little bits and pieces being swallowed up by the water. The land has no say - is the land a victim?
By Lady Bt4 years ago in Families
My Father,The Hero
Hero ( noun)- Just look under this word and I can guarantee you that his name will be there. My father Jim, isn’t like your ordinary American dad. He’s far from it. My dad always been a hard worker ever since I can remember at the age of four. He’s someone who’s never given up on well…anything.
By Christina Gagnon4 years ago in Families
The First Time I Meet My Dad
My mother and father did not have this great love story. They were two attractive young people having a great time together, but by early 1972, the fun was over. My mother found herself in a doctor's office feeling ill. To her surprise, they had been so careful; she was pregnant with me.
By Elesha Bennett4 years ago in Families
Patience. Runner-Up in Dads Are No Joke Challenge.
The grey morning sky trembled with a light drizzle, and I, at the ripe old age of nine, was surrounded by a host of frothing orcs who’d made the long march from Mordor to the backyard of my childhood home. I held aloft a silver war hammer, though to an onlooker with the dreary mind of an adult, it might have looked like a brand new Titleist 1-wood golf club.
By Jack Harrison4 years ago in Families
Bunnies in His Pockets
He called me over one afternoon while doing yardwork and told me to reach into his pocket. He's my dad, and I love him, but I hadn't a clue what I was going to find. "It's not going to bite!" he half-scolded me. I took a deep breath and plunged my hand into his deep, work-jacket pocket. Inside I found something impossibly soft. I reached in with my other hand and came up with two soft, brown, wild bunnies. He had been weed-eating the fence row and had accidentally destroyed their nest, so he scooped them into the temporary home of his pocket before the cat found them. They were about to leave the nest anyway, and when the coast was clear, they hippity-hopped happily off.
By Lydia Stewart4 years ago in Families
A Letter from my Father
I don’t have any memories of my father, he died when I was six months old. It was a sudden death, no one got to say goodbye. He was only twenty-six years old. My mother was widowed and a single mother by the tender age of twenty-four. I was left to grow up never knowing my father.
By Paige Turner 4 years ago in Families
Hands of My Father
Some say eyes are the gateway to the soul. I think it’s in the hands. I was just a girl, perhaps seven or eight, when I stumbled on this belief. I’d look at my dad’s hands, and be struck by a detail as though it held the key that turned all the locks in life. They were big hands with square fingernails. Strong hands with knobby knuckles and a slightly crooked thumb. Tanned, attached to sinewy Popeye forearms. Impressed upon them, it seemed, were the deeds and intentions of his life.
By Sarenka4 years ago in Families