Short Stories from Family History

Short stories reduce prose to its essence. They're my favorite literary genre and somewhere on my list of "Things to Do Before I Die" is a book of short stories based on my family's history. Here are a few samples proving nothing is more interesting than life itself:

* My grandfather had an older brother named Leslie who was thirteen when his appendix burst. After he died the family found out that the doctor and nurse in their small town had been having an affair and that the doctor hadn't been able to make it to surgery in time because he was with his nurse. The rumor was that my great-grandfather never got over his son's death.

* My great-great grandmother, Anna Meier, was born out of wedlock in Switzerland while her mother was a young girl. A childless couple offered to adopt Anna and soon gave her a good home where she lived comfortably for several years. One day when Anna was 12 her mother came to visit and asked permission to take the girl to the circus, but she instead took Anna and boarded a ship bound for America, never returning to Switzerland. Anna never saw her parents or Switzerland again.

* My husband's great, great-grandmother, also named Anna, lived in poverty in Denmark. While still a young girl she heard word of an American family living in Minnesota who required a nanny for their six children. She eagerly answered the advertisement, leaving her family and friends for a better life in the New World. Once there, she discovered that in reality the wife had died many months before and that the husband who was an elderly, diseased man was actually in search of someone to care for him and his children. Without friends, the possibility of another job, or the means to return to Denmark she was forced into marriage with a man repulsive to her. Andrew's grandmother told me she could never recall her grandmother smiling.

* In England during World War II many men left their families to fight in Europe, but when my cousin's grandfather returned home after the war something was different. His wife was different, but what that difference was, after so long a separation, was not readily apparent. Some time later he discovered that while he had been away his wife had had an affair and had given birth to a baby boy. She had been hiding the baby in the house, presumably a large house, the whole time in an effort to keep her adultery a secret. The child was put up for adoption and soon left the country with his new family.

Are there stories in your family waiting for someone to write them?

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