ABSTRACT
Even the smallest family has many stories to tell. Two partners have a story about how they met, how they came together in love, where their relationship is headed for the future. They each have stories about their own families of origin and how those families connect to and conXict with the nuclear family they have established together. Their parents and siblings have their stories about the relationship, too, about how, for instance, this is a match that was deWnitely not made in heaven, about how this couple deWed the odds to create something spectacular, or settled into a predictable pattern of domestic tedium. Add a child to this nuclear unit, and the narrative possibilities grow even more, for now there is the story of that birth and development, of what it means for the future as well as the past. And from the past come stories passed down from one generation to the next, stories these two partners will tell their child when she is old enough to appreciate them, stories that their child may cherish as narrative keepsakes from the past or reject as boring, irrelevant, or contrary to her own narrative sense of who she wants to be. She will create her own stories, and borrow many others. Her siblings will do the same, and their children; and on it goes.
