“But they must be home. It’s only been a few minutes since they sent me to the store for ice cream.”

November 1950

“I don’t know about you people, but I have a busy day ahead of me tomorrow.”

November 1959

“I really had a wonderful time, and I know Marge did, too.”

November/December 1997

“Man! It’s getting colder than a …”

October 1982

“I suppose you want to come in.”

November 1950

“I call this Beethoven’s unfinished fifth!”

April 1959

“Uncle Henry! This is a surprise!”

October 1954

Cartoons: Company Coming The Saturday Evening Post

Not only did Nicole’s father show up for her winter wonderland wedding in Vermont on December 29, 2012, he walked her down the aisle alongside her stepfather, Dan. Afterward, Nicole and her father danced to the perfect song for the occasion—John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

Nicole Stefanowicz was only 6 when her parents divorced in 1993. It was a real shocker because she never saw them fight, and her father was a doting dad. “My mom worked on Sundays, so that was our special day together,” recalls Nicole fondly. “He was a terrible cook, so we had boiled hot dogs and ravioli, but I loved it because we were together.”

That all changed after the divorce.

Though Nicole’s mother recovered quickly—marrying a family friend who became a loving stepfather—her father Glenn spiraled into depression, anger, and alcoholism. “He really went downhill after that,” Nicole says. “It was hard to see him like that.”

Unable to accept his wife’s new relationship, in a drunken stupor, one day he vandalized the family car, forcing Nicole’s mother to file a restraining order. That was the end of Nicole’s contact with him. She didn’t see her dad for most of the next decade, only hearing occasional updates of how he had moved away to Vermont, was scraping by, was in and out of jail, and eventually wound up living on the streets.

Although Nicole knew she could do nothing to help her father, it planted the seeds of a caring heart in her—one she first noticed when a friend in high school had a drinking problem.

“I could see my dad in him,” Nicole says. “I wanted to fix people and make them better. I think secretly I wished I could fix my dad.”

Nicole became a community service devotee helping the less fortunate however she could. And a few years later, all those good works earned her a scholarship to St. Michael’s College in Vermont. When she arrived, one of the first things she did was look for her father. “Vermont is a small state,” Nicole says. “I figured maybe I could find him. But I couldn’t.”

She majored in journalism and threw herself into the volunteer work that was now part of her makeup. One thing led to another and soon she was working with the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) at St. John’s Hall, a permanent housing location for displaced individuals. From the moment she arrived, Nicole was thinking about her father. But she was totally unprepared for what was to come. As she walked past the mailroom one day, she noticed a mailbox with her dad’s first name on it. “I got really nervous,” Nicole remembers. “I sat down and started playing a game to take my mind off of things. But I couldn’t stop from thinking and hoping that maybe it could be him.”

Then, as the residents were called in for dinner, Nicole’s wish came true. “My dad came in carrying his bike, and was totally nonchalant when he saw me,” Nicole recalls. “He just said, ‘Hey, there. Let me put my bike away, and I will come down and say hello.’”

Her fellow volunteers and the staff at the shelter looked on in shock and confusion as Nicole proudly informed them that the homeless man they knew as Glenn was her dad. “I was so happy to see him,” Nicole recalls. “I didn’t even think about how crazy it was. I was just glad we were together again.”

The two made small talk after dinner and left promising they would see each other soon. But Nicole wasn’t about to leave it to chance. She began volunteering regularly at the center, just so she would be sure to see him. “We would take long walks together and talk, sometimes go to the mall,” Nicole recalls. “I just enjoyed being with him.”

She also enjoyed the work. Seeing how the center helped Glenn made her think of all the residents differently. They were no longer faceless social victims, but rather they were people’s fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. In her sophomore year, after a weeklong field trip working with Hope House Ministries—a group that caters to some of the most desperate of disadvantaged souls—she knew helping the less fortunate was her life’s calling. She switched her major to sociology, and began working a lot more with COTS. “That’s when I really began to think maybe my dad and I could have an ongoing relationship,” she says. But that notion would soon be tested in a big way.

As part of her continued commitment to charity work, Nicole went abroad the following semester. During her stay, she received word Glenn had gone back on the streets and was involved in a serious accident while riding his bike. The news terrified her. “I first thought he might be dead,” recalls Nicole. “I never really thought about that being possible before, and it really affected me. That’s when it really hit me how much I cared for him.”

When she returned to the U.S., she was happy to see he was safely back in the shelter. She realized she would never be able to fix all his problems, but she also saw that having him in her life was a gift.

When Nicole graduated from college the next year, her father surprised her. He showed up in a suit, nicely groomed, and perfectly sober to cheer on the graduate. “He was so proud of me,” Nicole recalls. “It really filled my heart to have him there with the rest of the family.”

Today, their relationship endures and grows, even though Glenn struggles to stay sober and faces mental and emotional battles. One night last year, he wound up in the hospital with a breakdown. He called Nicole crying and apologizing. When Nicole showed up, she found him cold, wet, and starving.

But, some time later, when Nicole recently told him she was getting married, he beamed with pride and promised her he would be sober for the wedding. “It’s beautiful that he wants to be there for me, but I love him whether or not he shows up,” Nicole admitted at the time.

On the big day, December 29, 2012, her father not only showed up for the wedding but also walked her down the aisle, then shared a dance with his daughter at the reception.

For Nicole, the most important thing is having a relationship with her father—even if it’s an imperfect one. And grasping that lesson has brought her peace, both in her personal life and in her career.

“For all those years I didn’t have him when I was younger, I felt like I was missing something, and now I don’t,” Nicole says. “I feel like I have a rich and full life that he adds to. As long as he can continue to do that, then whatever we can have together is better than what we would have apart.”

Photo by Todd Stoilov/courtesy Nicole Stefanowicz.

Inspiration: Father of the Bride The Saturday Evening Post

When you first meet 18-year-old Donna Lane in the opening pages of My One Square Inch of Alaska, you realize that this Midwestern high school senior growing up in the 1950s has a lot on her plate. Since her mother’s death seven years ago, her father has become a broken man and an alcoholic. Donna waits tables several nights a week to support her father and her younger brother Will. She keeps up with her studies and earns extra money sewing alterations in a dress shop in hopes of one day moving to New York to begin a career in fashion design.

As Donna pursues her dream of becoming a fashion designer, Will collects cereal box tops for a contest; the prize is a deed to one square inch of land in the Alaskan Territory. He plans to rescue a mistreated junkyard dog, a mute Siberian Husky, and take the dog with him on this journey.

Donna thinks her little brother’s plans are childish. But when he grows ill, Donna is committed to making her brother’s dream come true. It is this point in the book when her greatest exploration begins. Her determination to make it to Alaska is inspiring, and she takes readers along for an exhilarating and challenging adventure.

Not only will young adults enjoy this heartwarming, family-oriented novel, but author Sharon Short will take baby boomers back to the 1950s, reminding them of their own coming-of-age experiences.

I recommend this book to the individual reader, as well as to a book club looking to encourage thoughtful discussion about the memorable characters and events, and as a catalyst for club members to share their own stories and similar experiences from early adulthood.

The novel is a new creative direction for Short, who is the “Literary Life” columnist for the Dayton Daily News and author of the Josie Toadfern and Patricia Delaney mystery series.

My One Square Inch of Alaska by Sharon Short is available for preorder from Penguin Group for a list price of $16.

Book Review: My One Square Inch of Alaska The Saturday Evening Post

"I knew the chances of us surviving if we went down that hall were slim … but I just couldn’t walk away,” says Jacob. Photo by Doug Baines.

It was a typical hot and sweltering Chicago day in August 1972 when the emergency call came over the radio for Jacob’s firefighting crew to handle a small fire that had broken out in a downtown apartment building. They hustled as always to make it in record time. But even in the few minutes it took them to weave through the afternoon traffic, the small fire had grown to engulf the entire building. “It was already looking pretty hopeless when we got there,” says Jacob. By the time the 24-year-old fireman arrived on the scene most of the hundred or so residents had already made it out of the blazing seven-story inferno.

But the firefighters had to be sure everyone was safe. So Jacob and his partners hurriedly entered the building clad in their fire-retardant gear, busting down doors and checking for any remaining trapped tenants. “It was a real old building in pretty bad shape,” recalls Jacob. “Whole floors were crumbling faster than we could even get to them.”

The roaring fire had started on the fifth floor before spreading throughout the rest of the building. Ladders enabled the firefighters to rescue residents on the top floors, but the fifth floor was too far gone to risk entering. They heard no screams or sounds, but they had no way of knowing without a physical check if there was anyone left on the fifth floor clinging to life. “It was unreasonable for any firefighters to enter the fifth floor at that point,” says Jacob. “But I had a nagging feeling that there was still someone left inside.” Finally ground personnel, who were busy taking names and trying to account for everyone in the building, radioed the order to evacuate. “It was way past the point of recklessness to be in there,” recalls Jacob. “And they assured us everyone was out.”

But suddenly, as Jacob and his colleagues came out of the front of the building, a young, frantic woman came running up to them yelling at the top of her lungs, “My baby, where is my Kris?”

Jacob’s instincts had been correct. The woman who lived in Apartment 529 explained that she had left her 7-year-old son, Kris, alone for just a few minutes while she went down the street for some groceries. And ground personnel could not account for Kris anywhere. “I knew he was still in there,” says Jacob “I could just feel it. And the fact that I hadn’t heard him screaming or calling out signaled to me he was either in shock or had passed out from smoke inhalation. Either way I knew we didn’t have time to waste.”

Jacob and another firefighter made their way back up to the fifth floor while firefighters outside used ladders to look for any signs of life. Thick black smoke poured out of the windows and through the hallways. The heat inside had become so intense that it was about to overwhelm the firefighters’ protective clothing.
By the time Jacob and his partner made it up to the fifth floor the fire had grown so fierce, neither could see more than a few feet in front of them. Apartment 529 was engulfed in flames at the other end of the hall, and most of the floor was already impassable. “My partner looked at me and gave me the thumbs-down,” says Jacob. “As a fireman I knew he was right. The chances of us surviving if we went down that hall were slim, let alone anyone finding that boy. I had been in situations like that before where I had to accept the loss, and I dealt with it. But I just kept seeing that mother’s face in my head. I just couldn’t walk away from this one.”

Inspiration: The Gift of Life The Saturday Evening Post

Devil May Care

Devil May Care
Norman Rockwell
March 21, 1942

Half of the 52 Post covers in 1942 were war-related: soldiers in action, girlfriends waiting at home, and so on. So this cover (left) was a special treat for two reasons. First, it was humorous and fun, and second, it was by America’s favorite artist. When Rockwell did a cover, thousands of additional issues were printed to meet the demand.

Rockwell sometimes used neighbors’ homes for the settings of his paintings. In a 1976 Post article, former Rockwell model Ann Morgan Baker (see The Missing Tooth in “Rockwell in the 1950s—Part I”) recalled that the artist “used to call my mother at 7 a.m. and say, ‘Don’t make the beds. I want to come and look at some messy rooms.’ Then he would come and wander through our morning rubble.”

Because Rockwell did not have a daughter, he probably used such a neighbor’s home to find this vanity with all the frills. Reportedly, middle son Tommy had to be bribed to pose for this 1942 cover, although it was noted that the mischief-maker was just the kind who would have read his sister’s diary—if he had a sister, that is.

War Stories

War Stories
Norman Rockwell
October 13, 1945

Norman Rockwell’s World War II covers were usually light and humorous, like the ones in his Willie Gillis series. A very fine exception to this was the serious depiction of a returning marine sharing his experiences at left. There is no bravado; no showing off. The grim reality of war permeates the gathering at the local garage.

As Rockwell’s life is well documented, we know most of the models in the garage are the artist’s Arlington, Vermont, neighbors and friends, including the actual shop owner, Bob Benedict (standing behind the marine). Sitting beside the marine is Rockwell’s youngest son, Peter. The blond boy standing up is Jerry, his oldest. The decorated soldier was real-life marine Duane Parks, whom Rockwell met in a nearby town. At times, uniform medals and ribbons were borrowed to dress up a scene, but the military decorations shown here belonged to Parks.

Rockwell enthusiasts will appreciate the artist’s attention to detail in this 1945 cover. In addition to the usual machine-shop equipment: gaskets, the large hook, etc., he included the Japanese flag; the newspaper clipping on the shop wall, which declares the marine a war hero; and the small flag with the blue star representing a family member serving in the armed forces. We see these starred flags not only in Post covers of the period, but also, for example, in movies. In Saving Private Ryan, Ryan’s mother has such a flag. A star was added for each family member in service; the blue signaled hope, and a gold star meant a loved one had died in service.

Readying for First Date

Readying for First Date
George Hughes
October 16, 1948

The young man at left getting ready for his big date is Tommy Rockwell, who is looking quite grown up compared to the little sneak he portrayed for a cover six years earlier (see Devil May Care, above). Tommy’s actual room in Arlington, Vermont, is the setting, and the woman giving him a hand is his real-life mother (Rockwell’s wife Mary). However, the artist of this domestic scene is not whom you’d expect. It’s Rockwell’s good friend George Hughes, who had moved to Arlington to join the small community of Post artists there. The artists often used the same neighbors, their families, and each other as models.

Hughes, though less well known than Rockwell, was the most prolific Post cover artist of this era—he produced 80 covers in the 1950s to Rockwell’s 45—and he had an unintended influence on one of Rockwell’s classic covers, Saying Grace (below).

Saying Grace

Saying Grace
Norman Rockwell
November 24, 1951

Intrigued by a fan’s description of an Amish woman and her grandson praying together in a cafeteria, Rockwell painted what is now one of his best-known works, Saying Grace (left). But this painting came very close to being abandoned before it was completed.

Rockwell told fellow Post artist George Hughes that he got so frustrated with the painting he threw it out his studio window, according to a 1992 article in the Post. When Hughes asked the theme, Rockwell described it as centering on several rough-looking fellows watching a woman saying grace in a diner. Hughes agreed it would never work. That comment was all it took to get Rockwell started again. He retrieved the painting from the snow and completed it. This became a long-running joke between the two artists: Rockwell would solicit Hughes’ opinion and then do the opposite.

The blond diner with his back against the window is Rockwell’s son, Jerry, looking much older than he did on the 1945 cover War Stories (above). On a sad note, the woman bowing her head, May Walker, did not live to see the cover; she passed away five days before it was published. Although she didn’t have the pleasure of enjoying the stir among her Arlington, Vermont, neighbors over her newfound fame, Rockwell assured Post editors that she derived a great deal of pleasure from the experience. When the painting was done, Walker was brought to Rockwell’s studio to view it. People who knew her well told the Post “her enjoyment of that day was one of the high moments of her life.”

The Soda Jerk

The Soda Jerk
Norman Rockwell
August 22, 1953

In his first attempt at this 1953 cover (left), the artist had painted a man in the immediate foreground and a woman with her son at the other end of the counter. He decided these people cluttered and confused the scene. Painting it again, Rockwell focused the attention on a teenaged soda jerk and his female admirers.

The idea came after Rockwell listened to his youngest son Peter’s tales of his summer soda-fountain job. Peter posed as the soda jerk, but he didn’t care for the finished painting. “I’m not that goofy-looking,” he said. Peter Rockwell appeared on the War Stories cover (above) and in Second Thoughts.

Today Peter Rockwell is a sculptor living in Italy and discusses his art in this video, courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum.

The Homecoming

The Homecoming
Norman Rockwell
December 25, 1948

The Homecoming at left is one of the great Rockwell covers featured in our special holiday issue, Norman Rockwell A Very Magical Christmas!. And it is magical indeed when an absent family member comes home for the holidays. All three of Rockwell’s sons are there—although we only see the back of his oldest son, Jerry, who is receiving a joyful hug from his mother Mary. To the left of Mary is son Tommy in the plaid shirt and to the far left is youngest son Peter wearing glasses. To Mary’s right, with that ubiquitous pipe, is America’s favorite artist, who enjoyed the occasional cameo in is own paintings (See “Rockwell Paints Rockwell”).

A family gathering needs a grandmother, and happy to pose for the role was none other than Grandma Moses. Rockwell wrote of Moses in his 1979 book, My Life as an Illustrator:

“After the war I became acquainted with Grandma Moses, the famous painter of American primitives. She had started painting seriously at the age of 67 after the death of her husband. Using dime-store brushes and house paint, she did scenes of country life which she remembered from her childhood.” Noting that she would do paintings of someone’s house for $10 or $15, Rockwell continued, “When I knew her, she was over 85 years old, a spry, white-haired little woman. Like a lively sparrow. She still painted in her bedroom on the third story of her farmhouse, using the same cheap brushes and house paint, though the paintings were selling rapidly for very good prices.”

The rest of the homecoming crowd consisted of Rockwell friends and neighbors, including the “twins” in the red jumpers—both were actually one little girl named Sharon O’Neill, whom Rockwell painted twice.

Classic Covers: The Family Rockwell The Saturday Evening Post

More than the decorations on the annual Fraser fir tree or the wrapped gifts below it, Ann Balderston Glynn’s fondest Christmas memory is of her mother’s cream pies. She remembers how her mom would crush the graham crackers for the crust, pour hot butter to set it, and then stand over the stove stirring and stirring until the pudding consistency was just right.

“That pie represented home and love and family,” Ann says. As the years passed, she realized she wanted more than the handed-down recipe card from her mother. She wanted the stories that went along with it. So one December, 17 years ago, she returned to her childhood home in upstate New York, gathered her parents in the kitchen amid the ingredients for cream pie, and hit the record button on a video camera as her mother went to work. Ann’s mother spoke about learning the recipe from her mother on their farm in the 1930s while Ann’s father reminisced about a love of cooking that led to his career as a chef. (See also “Story Basics.”)

On that raw, unedited tape, Christmas pie became the centerpiece of a permanent family record.

Ann, 53, a married mother of two, is among a group especially eager to create—and celebrate—family history and turn it into a legacy, baby boomers. “That generation is at an age where they want to pass on family history to the next generation,” says John Paolo Canton of Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource. “It gives them a sense of being, a sense of belonging. They’re finding out family stories no one knew. It’s like a treasure hunt.”

According to a Harris Interactive poll conducted last year, four in five Americans have an interest in learning about their family history. And if there’s an ideal time to bring a family tree to life, it’s during the holidays, the traditional and sometimes only occasions, when multiple generations gather. Reminiscing about the good old days comes naturally.

Peppering the family matriarch or patriarch with questions at the Thanksgiving or Christmas table is a magical moment. That’s when it hits you that your relatives are flesh-and-blood time capsules. “You don’t realize how many questions you have until you don’t have the opportunity to ask them anymore,” says Michelle Ercanbrack, a family historian with Ancestry.com. The holidays are a call to action, a time to “open the door for those beautiful conversations. If that opportunity is lost, think of the cultural heritage your children and grandchildren are being denied.”

Think about it: These conversations fill holes in understanding who you are. Scott Tims of Dallas, Texas, describes the impact of stories told by family members around the holiday table. “My grandmother graduated high school in 1933, one of the very worst years of the Great Depression,” he says. She would describe trains running through town loaded with good, honest men, shabbily dressed, looking for work.

Those stories of hard times resonated when Scott found himself dealing with his own challenges in our current recession. “There were times I really felt sorry for myself and then I thought back to the stories my grandmother and father told me about their growing up and what they had and what they didn’t. It puts things into perspective.”

Treasuring Memories The Saturday Evening Post

The holiday get-together is the perfect place for beginning your family history project. Everything works better if you do a little planning. Here’s how to start preserving your family’s history.

Get Ready
Start with what you know: birth dates, marriages, deaths, etc. Write it all down.

Get set
Transfer your notes to a chart, and organize it as a family tree. You can use the free family tree at Ancestry.com and make use of their repository of 10 billion statistical records from all over the world. Select census indexes; state-specific downloadable charts and forms are available at no charge.

Before the family gathering, draw up a list of open-ended questions with specific family members in mind. These can be as simple as: “Tell us about your wedding day,” or “Where did you serve in the war?” If you have them, gather family photos, letters, memorabilia, and heirlooms. These will help jumpstart memories. (One caveat. Some memories may be difficult for loved ones to share. Don’t push. Be respectful.)

Go!
Select a relaxed moment as dinner is winding down, and start by announcing that you would like to ask members of the family to share some of their fondest memories. Pass around photographs and other collected items to get the conversation started.

Tip: Prompt young children to be the interviewers. Their innocent questions and true wonder about the mysteries of that hard-to-imagine time before they were born can open up reticent elders to share stories they might never share with another adult. Encourage one of the younger family members to record stories using a video camera or smartphone. (Create an instant audio scrapbook using the free iPhone app Saving Memories Forever available at savingmemoriesforever.com.)

Expand your search
The mission to document your family’s past can go well beyond family members you have always known. Use Facebook and other social networking sites to search for distant family members. On Facebook, you can create family-only groups or plan a reunion.

Story Basics The Saturday Evening Post

Treasuring Memories

Treasuring Memories

If there’s an ideal time to bring a family tree to life, it’s during the holiday season.

Brawner-Malone History

Scott Tims’ Family History

In the Nov/Dec 2012 story “Treasuring Memories,” Scott Tims of Dallas, Texas, describes how he’s been impacted by the stories told around the holiday table. He began compiling his family’s history 35 years ago and shares their memories in these short videos.

Genealogy and Family History

The Joy of Genealogy and Family History

There are many reasons people trace their lineage and family history. These personal narratives show how discovering family history can fill in holes in understanding who you are.

Genealogy for Beginners

Genealogy for Beginners

Follow these steps to start preserving your family’s history. Learn how to document and share the lives and stories of your ancestors, whether as a written history, scrapbook, DVD, or website.

Tracing Family Roots The Saturday Evening Post

The Joy of Genealogy and Family History The Saturday Evening Post

In these videos, he’s compiled memories and photos from his grandmother, Eva Marie Brawner-Malone, 98, who grew up during the Great Depression in Grand Saline, Texas. (See also “Tracing Family Roots” to begin your own genealogy journey.)

Scott Tims’ Family History The Saturday Evening Post

For more informational videos, visit FamilySearch’s YouTube channel.

Genealogy for Beginners The Saturday Evening Post

"Just let him know that you’re not afraid of him."

October 1975

"Oh, George, you’ll never guess who’s come to
spend the weekend with us!"

September 10, 1955

"We're looking for a mattress for our guest room.
We don't want anything too comfortable."

Jan/Feb 2009

"Come right in, folks—never you mind what George says."

November 25, 1950.

"I'm usually more polite than this, but my mom says there's no pleasing you."

Mar/Apr 2000

"Just tell him you don’t care for dead squirrels,
Mrs. Goulard."

December 18, 1943

Cartoons: Welcome, Guests The Saturday Evening Post

Photo of Carolina Oates’ quilt by Charles G. Gross

My favorite is always on my bed. Even in warm weather.

It is not a large quilt but very beautiful, I think: comprised of numerous brightly colored knitted-wool squares of every imaginable color—red, yellow, green, blue, purple, magenta, brown, cream.

The pattern is neither simple nor complex. It isn’t, like some quilts, a labyrinthine design.

From the start, I loved this quilt. Just to look at is to feel comforted.

Several generations of cats have slept on this quilt. (Even as I write this, my little gray cat Cherie is probably sleeping on it, asprawl in a patch of sunshine.) How many years have passed since my mother gave the quilt to me and my husband Ray Smith, I can only estimate: thirty years? Thirty-five?

The beautiful little quilt in all the colors of the rainbow has followed me from one residence to another. The same bed, in different bedrooms in different houses in different phases of my life.

In this most recent phase, in which the bright-colored quilt is laid on a pale blue comforter on my bed in a house in Princeton, New Jersey, into which I moved in 2009, with my second husband Charlie Gross. My mother has been absent from my life for nine years.

Nine years! That seems so long, yet my memory of Mom is so vivid, I can glance up and “see” her in the doorway of my study—I can “see” the expression on her face, and (almost) hear what she is saying.

My mother never visited this house. She would love it, I think—especially the large curving flower beds, so like the flower beds she’d tended in our yard in Millersport, New York, years ago. When she’d visited Ray and me in my former Princeton home, less than five minutes from this house, Mom had always helped out in the garden, as in the house; we would garden together, and we would prepare meals together, while my father, a gifted amateur pianist/organist, played my piano in the living room.

Whenever my parents came to visit us in Princeton my mother would bring gifts for us: mostly items she had knitted, crocheted, or sewn. Several lovely afghans, including one that is entirely white, with a subtle, delicate design, and another, large and heavy as a comforter, that’s made of orange, brown, and white wool. She’d knitted me several sweater-coats, one of them in a vivid crimson wool; she’d sewed the most exquisite blouses—a white long-sleeved blouse in raw silk, which I used to wear often; a pumpkin-colored silk blouse; a dove-gray silk blouse with a fine-stitched collar. For years I wore these blouses and dresses and jackets my mother had sewn; in many of my “author photos” I’m wearing Mom’s clothes. Those I no longer wear are enshrined in my closets—I look at them often, marveling at the fine stitching and hemming, the exquisite small touches, mother-of-pearl buttons, pleated bodices. Dresses, skirts, vests, shawls. Often I wear the shirts she’d sewn for me—white, pink, red, magenta; one of my favorite sweaters is a pink sweater-coat with a knitted belt.

There is nothing so comforting as wearing clothes your mother has sewn or knitted for you.

After my mother died in 2003 for a long time I would imagine her with me, in my study in particular; though “imagine” is perhaps a weak word to describe how keenly I felt Mom’s presence. In writing the novel Missing Mom I tried to evoke Carolina Oates—well, I’m sure that I did evoke her, not fully or completely but in part. Mom is so much a part of myself, writing the novel was the antithesis of an exorcism, a portrait in words of a remarkable person whom everyone loved.

In February 2008 when Ray Smith was hospitalized, and after he died unexpectedly a week later, often I lay in bed too exhausted to move, beneath the rainbow-colored quilt. The bed became my haven, my refuge, my sanctuary, my “nest”—with my mother’s quilt predominant, a sign of how love endures in the most elemental and comforting of ways. Warmth, beauty, something to touch.

In extremis we care very little for the public life—the life of the “career”—even the life of “literature”: It is comfort for which we yearn, but comfort can come to us from only a few, intimate sources. I know that I have been very fortunate, and I never cease giving thanks for my wonderful parents who bequeathed me their love and their hope for me; for this quilt on my bed, as singular and beautiful in 2012 as it was in the late 1970s.

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. “Quilts” is from the anthology What My Mother Gave Me: 31 Women Remember a Favorite Gift, edited by Elizabeth Benedict, to be published by Algonquin Books, Spring 2013. She is also author of the forthcoming story collection Black Dahlia & White Rose (September, 2012, Ecco). A professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Quilts The Saturday Evening Post

Cast of NBC's Parenthood (Photo courtesy NBC).

Like so many other Americans, Gentle was hit hard as the financial dominoes fell in 2008. The value of her house dropped while property taxes soared. When she was laid off from her job as director of marketing and sales for a small publishing company, she could no longer keep up. The bank eventually foreclosed on her Indianapolis home.

So, at 35 years old, Gentle did what numerous other 20- and 30-somethings are doing: She moved back in with her parents.

“It was difficult,” Gentle readily admits. “I had a successful career, and I went from being on my own, in a good place, to basically starting over.”

Gentle is not alone. Adult children of boomers— famously overeducated and underemployed—have created a moving-back-home tsunami. The driving force behind this trend is financial pressure, particularly rising housing costs, health insurance premiums, and college debt. About 8.7 million young adults ages 25 to 34 became part of multigenerational households in 2009, an increase of 13 million over 2007. Now, more than one in five young adults lives in multigenerational households.

But it’s not just the young who are coming home to roost. Many elderly parents of boomers are moving in with their children as well. All told, the number of multi-gen households grew about 30 percent during the past decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And a Pew Research Center report found that 51 million Americans lived in homes of two or more adult generations in 2009, compared with 42 million in 2000. That’s a 21 percent increase in less than a decade, but more importantly it reflects a turning back to what used to be, well, normal.

“We had a 50-year experiment of thinking of families as two parents and two kids,” says John Graham, co-author of Together Again: A Creative Guide to Successful Multigenerational Living. “What’s happening right now is that the 50-year nuclear family experiment is ending.”

So you want to live under one roof? To successfully blend multiple generations into one household, here’s a checklist from Nancy K. Schlossberg, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and author of Revitalizing Retirement: Reshaping Your Identity, Relationships, and Purpose.

Click image to enlarge checklist.

Dan, who requested that we not use his last name, considers the decision to stay put a no-brainer. Apartments in his neighborhood cost upward of $1,100 a month, and with a $15-an-hour job, his budget would have been stretched to the absolute limit. “I didn’t want to move out on a whim,” he says.

Whatever the circumstances, being an adult in your parents’ home is different from being a teen there. Before Gentle moved in with her parents this past January, the family sat down in the living room and discussed expectations, including chores, financial responsibilities, and how long she would stay. This phase of basically resetting her GPS could have turned into an ugly high school flashback. Instead, having new structure in her life was soothing. “After all the stress of being laid off and losing my house, it was very comforting to be with my family,” Gentle says. “I’m used to being very self-sufficient and independent, but it was nice to take a deep breath for a moment and get back on my feet.”

Gentle has found a job and plans to move out again soon, but author Graham sees multi-gen living as the wave of the future. “The boomerang kids’ experience is spring training for the long season of baby boomer retirement,” he says. “They’re learning how to live together. That’s vital, because in the next 10 years, boomers will start moving in with their children.”

He’s undoubtedly correct, but the trend of elderly parents rejoining their children has already begun. When Hurricane Irene raked the Eastern Seaboard this past summer, 79-year-old Lois Bechtel grew uneasy as the winds increased and the rain pounded her Stamford, Connecticut, home. Instead of weathering the storm alone, the retired executive secretary describes how she dashed a few steps into the adjoining house to be with her daughter’s family, safe and secure. “If I lived on my own, I’d be by myself in storms or other emergencies,” Bechtel says. “Now I know that if I get sick, they’re close by. It’s a comfort.”

Bechtel lives in an attached, “in-law” apartment that allows her privacy when she wishes. According to a 2010 Coldwell Banker trend survey, home builders are on the multi-gen bandwagon, increasingly incorporating in-law apartments and adding other features for extended family members, such as separate entries, multiple kitchens, and second master bedrooms.

The New American Super-Family The Saturday Evening Post

Pregnancies are announced, engagement rings studied, medical diagnoses questioned, and Grandmother Nettie’s recipe for cucumber lotion—an anti-wrinkle remedy—quietly passed around to those in need.

Standing around the picnic table sipping sweet tea as my uncle pontificates on the lack of civility among young people, I look around at the assembled aunts, uncles, fathers, mothers, greats, grands, and cousins two-, three-, or four-times removed and realize that a family gathering not only reconnects whole generations of folks, it also builds a support network that allows us to weather all kinds of ills.

There’s always a mother or aunt who’s ready with a shoulder to cry on, strong arms to lift you up, and a nurturing spirit that puts her right up there with the angels. There’s always a cousin who’s ready to pull your car out of a ditch—or your husband out of a bar—and an uncle who’ll give you his last five bucks if you need it.

Unfortunately, in most families, there are also an equally bad cast of characters who like to cause trouble, particularly when the whole clan gets together and offers them a stage. Grease the boards with a keg of microbrew or a few pitchers of sweet tea spiked with rum, and it can get so dramatic you could sell tickets.

But, as Los Angeles psychologist Leonard Felder, author of When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People, points out, “They’re still the people who can teach you to be civil when you don’t want to be—and the people who can teach you to look past the surface of other human beings to find the wounded child within. They’re also the only people who—as you debate whether to stay or go, forgive or not—can give you a deep emotional ‘workout’ that leads to personal growth.”

“Even if your relatives are obnoxious,” he adds, “they’re still irreplaceable.”

Putting down my sweet tea to accept the even sweeter blessing of a small cousin’s hug, I think about Felder’s words. He may have a point. But how do you manage to reap the benefits of connection and avoid the backsplash of toxicity?

First, says Felder, you need to figure out how to shape your own reaction to relatives’ sometimes oddball and often hurtful behavior. And, second, you need concrete strategies that will stop them in their tracks. Turn the page for some common caustic family archetypes drawn from my own experience—and what to do about each one.

Helpful Hannah

Your sister Hannah means well. She really does. She has lots of advice for you every time the two of you cross paths. And, after receiving the advice, you’re just about set to strangle her.

The Problem: You can always count on Hannah making suggestions about how you can better manage your weight, your kids, or your job. Aww, isn’t that nice? It sounds to everyone else as though she’s a concerned big sister who is trying to help, but her words simply make you feel overweight and incompetent.

The Solution: Reacting emotionally to her negativity is a trap, says Felder. Instead, try a little understanding. In some families the “helpful” big sister might just be doing unto you what was done unto her. Perhaps your mother constantly criticized her weight, for example, so now Hannah takes it upon herself to pass that legacy on to you. Or maybe, just maybe, she really means well because being overweight and lacking parenting or job-related skills has cost her big time—and she doesn’t want that to happen to you.

To blunt the impact, you need to have a conversation with yourself before Hannah starts picking at you. Say to the Hannah that resides in your head, “Thanks for teaching me who I don’t want to be.” It will crystallize the differences between you and Hannah and allow you to respond to her compassionately and without resentment.

As for a strategy that will stop her in her tracks, that’s easy, says Felder. If she starts giving you tips on how you should be raising your kids, answer with, “You’re probably right. I’m gonna think about what you’ve suggested. But right now let’s talk about something else besides kids.”

The Perfect Nephew

This is a relative I happen to be very familiar with. Let’s call him Robert.

The Problem: The little twerp “borrowed” his parents’ life savings to start a business and lost it. Now he’s moved on to my widowed mom. “Dear Robert,” she said to me at last year’s get-together. “He’s so helpful. Always willing to make sure I hear about a new investment opportunity.”

Last time the “investment” was in Robert’s boat. I admit I’d like to back my cousin into a corner and give him a piece of my mind. But as Felder points out, 20 years worth of studies have now discredited the once-popular theory of scream therapy—you know, where you “express yourself” through genuine rage. Although it may feel good temporarily to really let someone have it, more recent research has discredited this pour-oil-on-the-fire approach.

The Solution: Nothing can unhook you from your usual negative reaction to someone like humor, says Felder. The approach I favor: Simply look quizzically at the person as though he’s a bug under your microscope, note his more bizarre qualities, and silently classify him as a Mephitis mephitis (striped skunk) or Agkistrodon contortrix mokeson (northern copperhead). Or, as in my cousin’s case, a Hadogenes troglodytes—a big, fat scorpion.

Big Mama

Illustration by Kagan McLeod

Your mother-in-law actually has some good qualities. In fact, when it’s just the two of you alone, you get along just fine.

The Problem: You married her little boy, the youngest of the clan. He’s all grown up now, but Big Mama still calls him a couple of times a week, talks to him for hours, and always has some little thing—a blocked drain, a marauding mouse—that he needs to come over and take care of. When the family gets together she wants him by her side, talks to him constantly, and fires subtle put-downs directly at you when you join them.

The Solution: “Make your relationship about when someone’s humanity comes across, not their worst moments,” says Felder. If the two of you enjoy being together when you’re alone, offer to come early to the gathering and help her set up. Or offer to come early and cook. Then use those moments to connect.

When your husband arrives, give him up gracefully. “Tom, why don’t you get your mom a drink and take her down by the lake?”

True, Big Mama’s sure to get off a few shots before she goes quietly into the night. So to keep your blood pressure down, keep score. Count the number of zingers she sends your way and write it down when you get home, suggests Felder. Then, after every family gathering, compare the totals. “An ironic sense of wit can keep you from being destroyed,” says the psychologist. “If last year you got pissed off after 20 minutes, but this year you lasted an hour—congratulations!”

Husband #3

Your cousin Sarah has divorced two lovely but flawed men. One was lazy and the other was a drunk. Now she’s presenting husband #3 as the crown prince with whom she will happily live forever.

The Problem: Chances are this one will be gone before sundown. So how do you hang around with him at family gatherings but not get so close you’ll get hurt when he disappears?

The Solution: “Keep your heart open,” advises Felder. Just because you’re afraid you’ll have to share another guy’s pain and suffering in the future is no reason to keep him at arm’s length now. Why should your cousin define your relationship? And if husband #3 becomes a good friend, well, hey!—friends are hard to come by.

The Beauty Queen

She’s gorgeous. And smart. And one of the nicest, kindest people on the planet.

The Problem: Every time you see her, you get so jealous it gives you a stomachache. How can you make her feel as ugly as you do?

The Solution: You can’t. But you can shape your reaction to her, suggests Felder. “Realize that the Beauty Queen has at least one flaw that people who are really close to her know about. Do some people research and see what it is.”

The point is not to use this information against her, but simply to help you see her as an ordinary, fallible human being with the same kinds of faults as anyone else. Ask yourself, what is it about her that really sets you off, suggests Felder. You’re likely to find this test extremely revealing—about you. “All of us have character traits that we get to work on,” explains the psychologist.

Nasty Nell

Solving the “Nell Challenge” is harder than getting rid of the zombies in The Walking Dead.

The Problem: Dear Aunt Nell loves telling you what your mother said about you at bridge the other day, and the worse you feel the happier she seems to get. She actually enjoys making other people feel bad.

The Solution: Unfortunately, says Felder, “there are a variety of people who feel better about themselves by poking at the vulnerabilities of others.” You’re not going to change them, but you have a good shot at changing how they affect you by learning more about them. Ask older relatives how Aunt Nell was when she was a girl. Ask when she started to get nasty, and what was going on in her life at the time.

You may find that she was dumped by someone she loved, prevented from going to college, or trapped in the town she grew up in by the need to care for an aging relative.

Then ask yourself how Aunt Nell might feel when she looks at you. “Is there something about you or your choices in life that might intimidate or threaten her?” asks Felder.

Thinking about all the blessings that flood my life, the people who love me, and all that I’ve been able to do and be, I begin to see my aunt’s actions in a different light. And that little cognitive shift has allowed me to accept her for who she is. I find it’s a gift to regard her with compassion even as her latest barbed comment rips into my skin—and to respond to her quietly and with love.

As Felder says, “Sometimes the spark in someone is really well hidden. You really have to look for it. And sometimes the most difficult people—that ex-spouse, that toxic parent, that obnoxious sibling—can be the one that forces us to the most growth.”

Build a Better Family Reunion The Saturday Evening Post