family-relationships

Your best is good enough.

But in a home where grief is fresh and patience has long worn thin, making it through another day is often heroic in itself.

I felt a surge of love for my aunt. We disagreed about so many things, yet here was family: the people who kept dancing with you, even after the music stopped.

I was such a smart kid, I should have figured out that the only way to really get my parents_ attention was to disappoint them or fail. But by the time I finally realized that, succeeding was already a habit too ingrained to break.

There__ no such thing as half family.

Love is a creative act. When you love someone you create a new world for them. My mother did that for me, and with the progress I made and the things I learned, I came back and created a new world and a new understanding for her.

And the reason he cannot bear her dying is not the loss of her (which is the future) but that dying puts the two of them (now) into this nakedness together that is unforgivable.

Which meant it was time for the centerpiece of the celebration, the reason they were all gathered on Saturday, the weekly episode of what, as far as many of the Davidsons including Jody were concerned was the greatest television show ever made. Hee Haw. While Roy and Buck sang the opening song, everyone would bicker and talk back and forth, what was better about the show, the music or the humor, what have you, the natural result of 40 people crowded around one rabbit eared television set. But once Hee Haw started, the talking was over. After that, it was all about the love. And so was everything before, really.

Beauty will never fade away from the eyes of those who love one another.

You men never change. Is that all you can see? Proud grandfathers of a large...._ Mrs. Werner smacked her husband upside the head and took the pictures away.

The most wonderful part of life is when your family becomes your friends, and your friends become your family.

When you're sorting yourself out, family are not often the ones you can turn to. They represent the place of departure and not the place of arrival.

The debt we owe our parents can never be squared, and jolly good too, because doing so would threaten to nullify all relationship, all emotional commerce between the two generations. Being in debt, just like being in credit, means an active interest applies between the two parties and, once the debt is taken care of, the interest is bound to wane.

At this moment, I know that the answer has to be yes. I am defeated. By my own father. How Darth Vader.

I know you see me as some crazy old bitch nagging at you," she said, "but you forget the reason I ride you so hard and give you so much shit is because I love you. Everything I have ever done I've done from a place of love. If I don't punish you, the world will punish you even worse. The world doesn't love you. If the police get you, the police don't love you. When I beat you, I'm trying to save you. When they beat you, they're trying to kill you.

It's in a can. It's good forever.

Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.

So even though Grandpa's life has closed its final chapter, the story that he embodied continues each time we take a handful of dirt to check moisture levels or turn our head at the sound of the wind shifting directions before a storm. It lives on as we give thanks for the abundance that we have, whatever it looks like. It lives on in every decision we make that puts someone else first.