One Mother's Day, two old women reflect on their relationships with their children--present and absent--and with the same adulterous man. When their paths cross at a crucial moment, one woman's refusal to accept the help of her husband's secret lover leads to her death.

A woman's complicated relationship to her mother is captured in three vignettes: one from directly after her death, one from when she is still alive, and one from years after she is gone.

A daughter wakes up her mother to ask how much money she made from the dog races — but instead the mother distractedly dwells on her troubling encounters with men.

An overprotective mother attempts to get her teenage daughter to tell her why she is so upset. In an erratic and panicked conversation, the daughter reveals an unimaginable problem they must tackle together.

A mother, upon helping a girl at a playground one day, contemplates the nature of her marriage and the daughter who came from it.

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 young girl's mother goes to the hospital for an operation without explaining to her family what she is sick with or when she will return home.

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

When a mother proves unreliable, two girls try to figure out how to take care of a baby boy.

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.