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the significance of family
the significance of family
why is the concept of family important
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When my mother asks me questions, her face curls as if she dreads the answer. Not as if she was afraid the answer is negative, but it looked like she was just asking to be polite. She always sounded bored and resentful.
“How is school?” she asked, pouring tea into a cup.
“Fine,” I replied.
She sent me to boarding school three years before that afternoon talk. When I was thirteen, my father died. My mother told the neighbors he was killed while in battle in a middle eastern country. The truth was he slowly withered away from a disease from the many women he took to cheap hourly hotels while my mother would stew in her chair, quietly knitting, feigning ignorance. She was denying her marriage was rotting from the inside. She built up this idea of perfection.
There was this photo of Mother, Father, and I standing happily in front of a woody scene in autumn in one of those posed pictures were the family dresses up and heads to the mall to smile hanging in the Guest Room.
That was how she wanted out family to be perceived by the neighbors. Rich enough to have professional family portraits and expensive formal attire. A wealthy army doctor, devoted housewife, and a well-behaved daughter. Perfect.
It was all a facade. Father was a prostitute loving drunk. Mother was nothing but a mindless, chattering socialite. Daughter was a lonely hermit.
Even though Father might have been considered a bad man, I loved him. I was lonely because he wasn't around as much as I would have liked, but when he was with me, I felt warm and loved. He called me Candy Cane.
It was my fifth Christmas. Grandma handed me a strange white and red cane shaped treat. I engulfed the treat, licking and chewing my way through. Since then, m...
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... probably horrid to see, but I just didn't want to hurt more than I already did.
“Good, you're on your way. Hand me the scissors.”
I held out the scissors as I heard the metal clank because my hand shook so much.
O'Maley smacked my hand and the scissors fell to the desk.
“You do not hand scissors blade side to me. You will hand them to me with the handle toward me. Pick them up and do it again.”
I did as she told me.
“Now, take your uniform, and go to the nurse down the hall. You're bleeding.”
I reached my hand around to my back and felt under my shirt. Then I moved my hand in front of my face. Thick, red blood flowed down my arm. As I took my new clothes and headed toward the nurse, I thought:
Mother, I have never asked for anything from you. I have hardly even spoken to you. Do you hate me so much that you would voluntarily send me to Hell?
From the early 1740s to 1829, an African-American woman lived and unexpectedly became an important woman in history. Even though most people never heard of her, what she did change how people look at other African-Americans. She was born in the early 1740s to African parents, and she grew up as a slave with her sister Lizzie in Claverack, New York, which is about twenty miles south of Albany. Their owner was Pieter Hogeboom, who was the head of a wealthy Dutch-American family. In 1735, Hogeboom’s daughter Hannah married John Ashley, who was the son of one of the original proprietors permitted by the General Court of Massachusetts to organize settlements along the Housatonic River. When Hogeboom died in 1758, Lizzie and her were taken to the house of Hannah and her husband, she was about fourteen at the time. Her slave name was Bett, she was called Mum Bett in her adulthood, and eventually became Elizabeth Freeman.
life was not always peaches and cream.She had a difficult childhood, her abusive father caused her mom
I walked into the room on New Year’s Day and felt a sudden twinge of fear. My eyes already hurt from the tears I had shed and those tears would not stop even then the last viewing before we had to leave. She lay quietly on the bed with her face as void of emotion as a sheet of paper without the writing. Slowly, I approached the cold lifeless form that was once my mother and gave her a goodbye kiss.
Ms. George states that her love of things British dates from a 1966 Shakespeare study trip to England
Christiana stated, "my mom says mean and hurtful things, but I don't let it bother me, but if I say hurtful things back to her she is ready to get into an argument with me."
She lovingly kept pictures, letters, invitations, announcements, programs, and clippings in an old trunk. Whenever she would place a new piece of memorabilia in her trunk, we would sit, talk, and look through her treasures. I would look at the picture of her Grandmother Elvira and hear about what a warm, loving person she was and how each one of her sons named one of their daughters after her. I delighted in hearing about my outgoing, fun-loving grandfather (James Robert Jackson), what a great cook, he was, and how he would use every pot, pan, and dish in the kitchen preparing his delicious meals and desserts. I learned all about my mother’s unconventional maternal and paternal aunts, her uncles, and her cousins (legal names as well as nicknames). My mother made sure I learned each branch of the family tree and into which generation each person belonged. I could draw our family tree in my sleep. Whenever I traveled anywhere, I was given the names and phone numbers of family members and was told to contact them because they knew I was coming and expected to hear from me. Even though I am a quiet, shy person, I was always comfortable contacting my family, because I had grown up hearing all about
Look,” Mother interjected, “you have hardly touched your meal. So, sit quietly and finish your supper.”
I felt pressure on my body as if the air pushed it down and the blood fluid up to my forehead and ripped my veins, it is the most painful experience I’ve ever had. My face started twitching and my hands started shivering. That was all I remembered
She grew up alone, as her brothers ran away, living each day tormented by her thoughts and her family’s past. Her family’s past haunted her
My mother never told me the complications of becoming a woman in this world. She never told me that it's not necessarily important to find "the one" true love in your life. She didn't tell me about the longing, the grieving, or the pain. She didn't have to, I guess.
They treated her very bad, Cindy had to do all the chores in the house in order to keep it clean. They ordered her around and gave her dirty clothes to wear. They would keep her locked in the basement so that no one would know that she was there. Cindy's life was made difficult, she often sits by the cinders and cry, and wish her parents had took her with them. But in the pass times, she would sing, which is something she loved with a passion.
My hand shaking at every thought, a cold shiver ran down my spine as cold sweat trickled down the side of my forehead. I lifted my hand up and a strong smell hit my nose, it was the smell of blood. I lifted the object and shock hit me like lightening, fear displaced my sadness, sickness changed my bloodstream from blood to a thick liquid pus and vomit. I held the muscle with my right hand as my left hand was paralysed with shock. The adrenaline shot me forcing me to move but shock shattered me into thin slices that were impossible to put back again.
When he first pointed it out I assumed that he was pulling my leg. When I did reach up to touch my face, I pulled my hand down and saw that it was wet with my own blood. I had kept a level head until then, but when I saw the red liquid staining my hand, no matter how much I hate to admit it, I started crying like the little third grader that I was.
OUCH! My leg crippled with pain. I tried to shuffle my way to the window, but it was excruciating. As my senses kicked back in, I felt pains shooting up and down my body. Peering down at my hands I screamed. My hands were covered in cold, congealed blood.
My mother was a game show contestant also, answering countless questions with the infinite patience that only an experienced mom can possess. Her prize for a satisfying answer was a flash of comprehension in my tiny, bright eyes and a hesitant "Oh" as I caught on. It seemed to make my mother just as happy to pass on the age-old knowledge of why the sky is blue as it made me to learn of it. My undying love for her at that age seemed to motivate her to new heights of mom-hood, as she constantly fought battles of her own with my father (who she divorced when I was four), and with her own shortcomings.