A man thinks about his relationship with his parents (especially his mother) as he watches them grow old. He then realizes that he is now old too.

A father tells his twenty-year-old son how he was married suddenly to his son's mother at a young age.

An encounter with a little boy and his abusive mother at an airport causes an old woman to reflect upon her relationship with her children and her late, depressive, and abusive ex-husband.

A woman struggles with shaky faith and emotional isolation from her son, which intensify when she goes to see him in prison. After one particularly difficult visit, she faces her fears with her brother’s help.

In the late 20th century, an aging couple's daughter returns to live with her parents in an attempt to flee her failing marriage. While the mother easily slips back into her maternal role, the arthritic father struggles to empathize with his youngest child, and, in his increasing frustration, commits an unforgivable act that isolates him from his family.

A college counselor watches anxiously as her teenage son applies to college without her help. As her son plans for his future, the counselor and her husband reflect on how quickly their lives have changed, seeking ways to steady themselves in the midst of middle age.

An older woman in a small town visits the scene of a recent car accident that took the life of a high school girl on her granddaughter's softball team. She is reminded of her own daughter's passing over twenty years ago. Now, the woman and her family confront their past, while the grieving softball team prepares for their upcoming tournament.

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.

When a mother's memory begins to deteriorate, her daughter catalogs her memories, both the ones she does and doesn't remember.

Four women–a retired dancer enacting an old dance, a grandmother preparing a birthday dinner for her family, her granddaughter participating in a genetics study, and a researcher quantifying the burden of old memories–all unite under the combined weight of their war-burdened pasts in the contemporary United States.