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.

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

Four generations of one family gather for a picture and tensions rise between distant relatives.

As an old woman revisits her family's quintessentially American history, she finds a way to respect and love her parents, despite the scandals and tragedies they endured.

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.

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

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.

When a family reunion brings together siblings, they realize they are now more like strangers. At the end of the day, a shocking incident tests their bonds.

A humanoid immortal figure lives through the years following the death of her friend. As she watches the last of her friend's lineage die after 600 years, she reflects on the nature of her relationship with the friend.

A man looks back on his father-in-law's life after he passes away, thinking of the many jobs he held and his military service.