Some families are at their best camping, others making lasagna or playing charades. Ántonia’s family blends together breaking land, driving cattle, harvesting crops. For my family, it was working the sidelines at lacrosse games and playing a card game called 99 that provided the ideal forum for trash talking. For the Tanners—and my mother—it’s managing illness. Filling prescriptions, treating symptoms and side effects, keeping the house quiet, these are things they’ve done together, and it shows. They know how to care-take, and in taking care they are able to do things they otherwise can’t:
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