Family

=**Write about your family. Your parents, your grandparents, your child. Or maybe the group of friends that you consider your family.**=

Girl 67

You know the kind of person I hate more than anything? The kind who never gets it, who is endlessly unwilling to be convinced. The kind who, no matter how eloquent or logical or successful an argument you make, just won't accept it. Not the person who has a reason to not believe you, not the person who disagrees, but the person who will not sway, whether out of spite or denial or sheer stupidity.

Girl 360

Sometimes it is good to just escape from life. And believe it or not, that escape is visiting my family. It isn't exactly a peaceful vacation, as my whole family is holed up in one house for a weekend. But the contrast from my regular life gives me a moment to breathe. Somehow listening to my father and his siblings reflect on their childhood allows me to see the humor in life: their psychoanalyst father who was married five times, and their mother who even after 40 or 50 years still has a deep hatred for their father and any subject relating to him. Their similar sense of humor, which has been passed down to me now as well plays its own role in the weekends activities. The cousins ranging in age from two to 22, running around, one ten year old who is very interested in astrophysics, and history, and dragons, and space, and war, and will tell you everything he knows about these topics pausing only as you close the bathroom door in his face, but picking back up right where he left off when you dare to come out again.

Amid all the chaos, my uncle will subtly sit down at the piano and start playing a song familiar to all of us. Family members will slowly trickle in, gathering around the piano. Some come with instruments, others just their voices. The majority of us are trained musicians, but those who are not have no qualms in throwing in their voices or just sitting and listening. As I am standing there singing along to a beloved folk song, it dawns on me that this is the sole purpose of music, and family, at least my family; to make music together