Quotes About Family

I would never trust her. Not one hundred percent. Not the way some people can trust their mothers.

For a long time, my mother's wasn't dead yet. Mine could have been a more tragic story. My father could have given in to the bottle or the needle or a woman and left my brother and me to care for ourselves - or worse, in the care of New York City Children's Services, where, my father said, there was seldom a happy ending. But this didn't happen. I know now that what is tragic isn't the moment. It is the memory.

we don't know to be sad, the weight of our grandparents' love like a blanket with us beneath it, safe and warm.

Harvest Time When Daddy's garden is ready it is filled with words that make me laugh when I say them -- pole beans and tomatoes, okra and corn sweet peas and sugar snaps, lettuce and squash. Who could have imagined so much color that the ground disappears and we are left walking through an autumn's worth of crazy words that beneath the magic of my grandmother's hands become side dishes.

I know in my heart , Tiago whispered, the language we like to speak is music and poetry and even cold, sweet piraguas on hot, hot summer days. But it feels like this place wants to break my heart. It feels like every day it tries to make my mom feel tinier and tinier, like the size of Perrito's head in my hands.

My whole family knows I can't sing. My voice, my sister says, is just left of the key. Just right of the tune. But I sing anyway, whenever I can.

My sister's clear soft voice opens up the world to me. I lean in so hungry for it.

I should have known that sometimes common sense skips a generation.

My grandmother tells us all this as we sit at her feet, each story like a photograph we can look right into, see our mother there marchers and dogs and kittens all blending

Our baby brother, Roman, was born pale as dust. His soft brown curls and eyelashes stop people on the street. Whose angel child is this? they want to know. When I say, My brother, the people wear doubt thick as a cape until we smile and the cape falls.

He would give his own life to see Melody able to stay this young, to see her live her teenage life—all the years. He wanted to pull her to him now. Say, Hold on to yourself, Melody. Don't get lost. He wanted to say again what he'd said to her so many times before. You're loved, baby, you're loved.

he's not my hero, he's my dad, which means he's my every single thing.

When I tell my family I want to be a writer, they smile and say, We see you in the backyard with your writing. They say, We hear you making up all those stories. And, We used to write poems. And, It's a good hobby, we see how quiet it keeps you. They say, But maybe you should be a teacher, a lawyer, do hair . . . I'll think about it, I say. And maybe all of us know this is just another one of my stories.

When my mother comes home from the hospital with me, my older brother takes one look inside the pink blanket, says, Take her back. We already have one of those. Already

wasn't afraid of dying because dying had always been somewhere in our house, somewhere so close, we could feel the wind of it on our cheeks.

After the chicken is fried and wrapped in wax paper, tucked gently into cardboard shoe boxes and tied with string... After the corn bread is cut into wedges, the peaches washed and dried... After the sweet tea is poured into mason jars twisted tight and the deviled eggs are scooped back inside their egg-white beds slipped into porcelain bowls that are my mother's now, a gift her mother sends with her on the journey...

My mother has a gap between her two front teeth. So does Daddy Gunnar. Each child in this family has the same space connecting us.

I held on to my mama's Spelman College sweater. Wore it the first day I got there myself and still have it now. Held on to my own daddy's stethoscope until I pulled it out of its black leather case one winter and saw the rubber had melted into sticky pieces of nothing and the silver disk was flaked with rust. Seems all I had from them was the memories of fire and smoke.

They were laughter on hot city nights hot milk on cold city mornings, good food and good times fancy dancing and soul music. They were family.

Here she was, in all of her deep unknowing knowing that this was the place, this was the time to keep me here by letting me know how easy it would have been to stay fifteen. That the people I loved almost as much as I loved my own father would have determined me optional. Two words spoken early enough, I'm pregnant

For God so loved the world,' their father would say, 'he gave his only begotten son'. But what about his daughters, I wondered. What did God do with his daughters?

But what I know now is this: Look at your grandmother's face. Remember the lines. Touch her cheekbones. Hold the memory of her in your fingers, in your eyes, in your mind. It might be all you get to keep.

When I sit down beside my mother, she shivers. When I touch Ellie's shoulders, she smiles like she knows it's me. Maybe she does. Who could have told me that the wind was some passed-on soul stopping to touch your face, your hands, your hair. Who knew a surprising cool breeze was someone who had gone before you saying, 'You're loved.

When Daddy's garden is ready it is filled with words that make me laugh when I say them- pole beans and tomatoes , okra and corn sweet peas and sugar snaps , lettuce and squash . Who could have imagined so much color that the ground disappears and we are left walking through an autumn's worth or crazy words that beneath the magic of my grandmother's hands become side dishes.