All families are different. So many factors go into each and everyone to make them the way they are. A family’s past can lead to your future. In my family all of my aunts have made a considerable impact on my life and I feel as if each of them is a part of me in some way. Over my seventeen years of growing up and looking up to them, I have learned so much from their experiences and realized that I am like all of them in my own way.

When I walk into my grandma’s house there are pictures of my family all over. Upon walking through the front door towards the kitchen where the famous Shirley’s table lies, lays the school pictures of the eleven grandchildren. This table is a significant part of my family. So many birthdays, holidays, and Sunday mornings are spent around it. Above the grandchildren on the wall are photographs taken of each aunt with their own family and one grand picture of all my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Yet, one of my favorite picture is across the room. It displays my mom and her sisters posing for a picture at around my age. They all have their youth, and you can tell that they were all forced to be there and pose by my grandfather. They always listened to him. As teenagers they knew better or they would get a consequence. Around my grandma’s table, so many stories were told, confessions made from when my aunts were young and a bit wild. Stories that backed up each picture taken of my mom and aunts.

The third picture shows my aunts when they were very young. Six sisters sit and try to smile for a camera. This is an event that occured throughout their lives and that they now force on their own children. Pictures help you remember the celebrations, the incidences, the experiences, the occasions, the holidays, it helps you recall the memories, good and bad. From looking at each of the pictures, my aunts have grown. Not only physically, but they’ve developed emotionally and intellectually. I’ve seen each one of them and how similar and contrasting they can be. Yet, one thing that I do see in all of them is my grandmother. Looking at these three pictures helped me to realize that my aunts and my mother are all apart of me. They each hold a special place in my heart and all differently impacted me.

Over the years, I have observed the qualities of my aunts and they all have their own distinctive characteristics. I can tell that I have some of their qualities myself. Of course I have an attitude and a bit of sass similar to my Aunt Patty, I’d like to say that I’m not as bad though. I have the sense of humor like my own mother and like my Aunt Annie. I used to have the baking and cooking skills inherited from my Aunt Katie, but slowly she grew apart from the rest of the family, life just happens. My generosity is comparable, but not quite to her level, to my Aunt Sue. I am grateful to be like these wonderful woman in many ways.

Not only do I have traits similar to theirs, they make up apart of me that I will never let go. Somehow each of them will never not influence me no matter how close we are or if we don’t talk at all. I know for a fact that my life and who I am would be completely different if I didn’t have them. These pictures remind me of who they are and who I am. I appreciate the photographs, but not as much as I appreciate my aunts.