After experiencing what should have been the most idyllic childhood, four siblings must learn how to assimilate back into the real world.

When a middle-aged man's wife moves away to go back to school, he worries that he will not be able to care for their three children on his own. As the year goes on, the wife becomes increasingly distant, and the husband, resentful of her for leaving, wonders if he can trust her or if their marriage will soon fall apart.

On the day of her mother's funeral, a young woman reminisces about the summers during her childhood spent with her family and friends at their lakeside cabin. As she considers her parents' nontraditional relationship, she also wonders about her own love life.

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

On a weekend trip to their lakeside cottage, two anxious parents watch as their young son experiences nature and takes a small first step onto the long path of growing up.

A boy learns from his father’s best friend the history of his family and the value of man’s relationship with nature, but is interrupted by his father’s death and his mother’s sudden arrival.

A son tells a series of stories, most of them about his father and stepfather. As the son describes a robbery that took place at his house in high school and his experiences with his father, a former Jehovah's Witness and current alcoholic, he begins to recall details from his childhood.

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

As the only member of his family who is not a genius, a teenage boy lives his normal life of fishing trips and work while realizing that he is content despite his different life.

A writer is shocked when his retired father begins to publish stories. The man struggles to admit that his father is a talented writer, especially since the stories are based on events from the man's childhood.