Family & Relationships

Family conversations

My Mother A1 My mother is fifty years old. She is small and strong. She wakes up before everyone. She cooks, cleans and goes to work. She is a teacher. She is…
My Little Sister A1 My little sister is seven. Her name is Ayu. She talks all the time. She asks many questions. "Why is the sky blue? Why do cats sleep? Why are you so…
Visiting Grandmother A1 On Sunday we visit my grandmother. She lives in a small house with a garden. She is eighty. She walks slowly, but she smiles a lot. She holds my hand…
My Best Friend A1 My best friend is Sari. We meet at school when we are six. Now we are twenty-five. She lives in another city, but we talk every day. We send messages…
Father and Son A1 My father does not talk much. He works, he eats, he sleeps. He is a quiet man. When I am a child, I think he does not like me. Now I know that is…
The New Baby A1 My sister has a new baby. His name is Rafi. He is two weeks old. He is very small. His hands are like little flowers. He sleeps and eats and cries.
An Argument A1 Today I have an argument with my brother. He uses my headphones and does not ask. I am angry. I shout. He shouts too. We do not talk all afternoon.
My Grandfather's Watch A1 My grandfather dies last year. He is ninety. He gives me his watch. It is old and gold. It does not work now. But I wear it every day.
Moving Away A1 Next month I move to Jakarta for work. It is far from home. My mother is sad. My father says, "Good, go." But his voice is strange.
Sunday at Home A1 Sunday is family day. Nobody works. My father reads the newspaper. My mother cooks something special. My sister and I clean the house. Then we all…
My Parents Are Getting Old A2 Last month I noticed something for the first time: my parents are getting old. My father, who could carry two sacks of rice, now asks me to carry…
The Friend Who Moved Abroad A2 My friend Wira moved to Australia two years ago for work. Before he left, we promised to call every week. For the first month we did. Then it was…
Living with My In-Laws A2 After we got married, my wife and I moved in with her parents. This is normal in my country, and I thought it would be easy. My in-laws are kind…
My Brother's Wedding A2 My brother Rio got married last Saturday. It was the biggest day in our family for years. Three hundred guests, a tent in the street, food for two…
Divorce in the Family A2 My aunt and uncle got divorced last year. In our family this was a shock. Nobody had ever divorced before. For weeks, the adults talked in low voices…
The Second Child A2 When my wife was pregnant with our second child, I was worried about something I couldn't say out loud. I loved our first son so much that I didn't…
A Long-Distance Marriage A2 My husband works on an oil platform. He's away for four weeks and home for two. We've lived like this for three years. People say, "How do you…
My Daughter's First Day at School A2 Yesterday my daughter started school. She's six. For weeks she'd been excited — the new bag, the uniform, the pencils. On the morning itself, she…
Forgiving My Father A2 My father left when I was nine. He went to another city with another woman and didn't come back. For twenty years I told people he was dead. It was…
Grandmother's Phone A2 My grandmother is seventy-eight, and last month my uncle bought her a smartphone. Everyone laughed. She'd never used a computer. She thought the…
The Things My Father Never Said B1 🔒 Premium My father died last year without ever having told me he loved me, and for a while I was angry about this in a way that surprised me. I'm forty-two. I'd known for decades that he…
When Your Best Friend Gets Married B1 🔒 Premium Sari and I were inseparable for fifteen years, and then she got married, and I discovered a kind of loneliness I hadn't known existed. Not the loneliness of losing someone — she…
Raising a Child Without a Father B1 🔒 Premium My husband died when our son was two, and I raised him alone for the next sixteen years, and people have often told me, meaning to be kind, that I did the work of two parents. I…
The Family Group Chat B1 🔒 Premium Our family group chat has eleven members, spans three generations, and has generated, by my rough count, over forty thousand messages in four years. It's where my mother sends…
My Mother-in-Law and I B1 🔒 Premium For the first three years of my marriage, my mother-in-law and I were polite to each other in the way that people are polite when they're avoiding a war. She thought I was too…
The Youngest Child Grows Up B1 🔒 Premium I'm the youngest of five, and for most of my life that's been the whole of my identity in my family. I was the baby. I was the one who was looked after, argued over, given the last…
A Marriage in Its Twentieth Year B1 🔒 Premium My wife and I have been married for twenty years, and when younger friends ask how, I usually say something light — patience, low expectations, separate bathrooms. The real answer…
Caring for Grandmother B1 🔒 Premium When my grandmother's memory began to go, the family held a meeting, and at the end of it I'd somehow agreed to be the one who moved in with her. I was twenty-six, single, and the…
The Friend Who Only Calls When He Needs Something B1 🔒 Premium I have a friend — I'll call him Dani — whom I've known since university, and who calls me roughly twice a year, and only when he needs something. A loan. A contact. Help moving. A…
Telling My Parents I'm Not Getting Married B1 🔒 Premium I'm thirty-four, I have a good job, I own a small apartment, and I've decided, after a great deal of thought, that I don't want to get married. In my family, this is not a…
The Eldest Daughter B2 🔒 Premium In many families there's a child who becomes, without ever being asked, the one who holds things together — and in mine, that child was me, from about the age of nine, when my…
Friendship in Your Forties B2 🔒 Premium I made most of my friends before I was twenty-five, and I've been slowly losing them ever since, not through any fault or drama but through the ordinary attrition of adult life:…
When Parents Divorce Late B2 🔒 Premium My parents divorced last year, after forty-one years of marriage, and I was forty-three when they told me, and I discovered that there's no age at which your parents' divorce…
The Only Child B2 🔒 Premium I'm an only child, and I've spent a good deal of my life explaining this to people who assume it means one of three things: that I'm spoiled, that I'm lonely, or that my parents…
Money and Marriage B2 🔒 Premium My wife and I have argued about money more than about any other subject, including our children, and it took us eight years to understand that we'd never once been arguing about…
The Adopted Cousin B2 🔒 Premium My cousin Bayu was adopted, and everyone in the family knew, and nobody ever said so, and this silence — which was meant as kindness — shaped his life in ways the family never…
The Long Illness B2 🔒 Premium My mother was ill for three years before she died, and I've come to think that the illness taught our family more than the death did, because the death was a single day and the…
Choosing Not to Have Children B2 🔒 Premium My wife and I decided, after several years of not deciding, that we wouldn't have children, and the decision has turned out to be the most public private choice we've ever made.…
Estranged B2 🔒 Premium I haven't spoken to my sister in six years, and I've discovered that this is a thing people find harder to accept than a death. A death has a shape; estrangement doesn't. People…
What My Grandfather Left B2 🔒 Premium My grandfather left no money, no property, and a single instruction, delivered to me when I was nineteen and he was dying: 'Look after your mother.' I've spent the twenty-two years…
The Family as a Small Country C1 🔒 Premium I've come to think of families as small countries — each with its own language, laws, currency and history, most of which is unwritten and all of which is enforced. You're born a…
On Being Loved Badly C1 🔒 Premium My father loved me, and he loved me badly, and I've spent most of my adult life trying to hold those two facts at once without letting either cancel the other. The temptation is…
The Marriage Nobody Sees C1 🔒 Premium Every marriage is two marriages: the one that's visible — at weddings, on social media, across a restaurant table — and the one that happens at eleven at night when the dishes are…
The Grandmother Problem C1 🔒 Premium In the village where my grandmother was born, an old woman was the centre of a household — the keeper of recipes, the arbiter of disputes, the one whose approval every marriage…
Siblings, Later C1 🔒 Premium There's a stage in the relationship between siblings that nobody prepares you for, and it arrives sometime in your fifties, when the parents are gone or going and the children are…
The Friend Who Knew Me Before C1 🔒 Premium I have one friend who knew me before I became the person I am — before the career, the marriage, the reasonable adult opinions — and I've come to think that this friend serves a…
Inheritance C1 🔒 Premium When my father died he left a house, a small sum, and a will that divided both equally among his three children, and within six months the three of us weren't speaking. I've since…
The Long Distance C1 🔒 Premium For eleven years my wife lived in one country and I lived in another, and we were married the whole time, and we're still married, and I've become, by accident, a kind of expert on…
What Children Owe C1 🔒 Premium My mother believes, with the certainty of someone who's never questioned it, that I owe her — that the years she spent raising me created a debt, and that the debt is repaid in…
The House After Everyone Leaves C1 🔒 Premium My wife and I have lived in this house for thirty-one years, and for twenty-two of them it was full — three children, their friends, the noise and mess and small emergencies of a…