Just before an American college student is set to leave for the airport after visiting her extended family in Ethiopia, she realizes her suitcases are too heavy. A fight breaks out between her relatives about what items should travel with her at their behest, versus which ones deserve to be left behind.

A series of vignettes about various sons along a family tree.

One night while visiting his mother, a man contends with the nature of faith and family.

An investigator stays in a family home in order to become acquainted with the family and all their intricacies while he investigates the case of family's adult son, who has threatens to kill the president of the United States to spare the lives of those involved in Vietnam.

Over dinner, an observer reflects on mothers and their omnipresent prevalence in children’s lives.

The children in a family grow tired of hosting their middle-aged cousin, but his expulsion brings unexpected strife to the family.

A father tells a story about his deceased wife and the wild traditions they used to have involving alcohol as well as the disapproval his mother-in-law had about their relationship.

A man reflects on the loneliness of his childhood home, where his family would fervently clean the house every Saturday for guests on Sunday who would never show.

In the era following the American Civil War, a man is charged with fulfilling his father’s duty to visit his elderly, dementia-suffering aunt every year on her birthday to give her a pair of tennis shoes. During the visitation, the elderly woman’s confused memories force him to confront painful remembrances of his own.

A boy's brother dies in the Korean War, but his grandma believes he is still alive, to the disdain of the family.