| The senior editor Sharan Shetty answers questions about the ideas inside the Family Issue, and the best and worst family photos he’s ever appeared in. Much has been made at various points about the specific composition of the American family being in flux. But what about the very idea of family itself? What’s changing? Nearly everything! Family is a malleable idea; there’s no public consensus on what it means. Much of the issue is about people trying—whether through apps, the legal system, or a perfect photograph—to reshape how we care for those dear to us. A chess set, an old portrait, some cardboard cutouts of “Peanuts” characters: what’s something that the family heirlooms shared by some of our writers this week have in common? With the exception of the chess set—“very rare,” with cream and red pieces—few of the heirlooms could be called nice things. One was destroyed; another is a cowbell. It turns out beauty is in the eye of the inheritor. Can you think of a line or a scene from the issue that might represent a bit of the scope of the ideas it contains? One of the issue’s most charming stories is about Steve Greig, a Colorado accountant who turned his home into a refuge for senior pets. There are ten dogs, a turkey, a pig named Bikini. But there is an undertow of grief, too: Greig started adopting animals after his dog Wolfgang passed away. Each time a pet dies, he welcomes another. “The joy I get out of it far outweighs the pain,” he says. “It’s hard knowing that it’s a short time, but that’s what the purpose is.” It’s a portrait of the families we choose, and how we decide to honor them. Are there a few specific examples of nonfiction writing about families that informed how you and the other editors imagined the issue? Families fight and disappoint; they’re the people we love, but also the people who drive us up a wall. We didn’t want to be rote or sentimental. For a total lack of these qualities, it’s hard to do better than Nora Ephron’s “My Life as an Heiress,” about the author’s hope that an inheritance, from a rich uncle, would allow her to set aside a troublesome script—which she later called “When Harry Met Sally . . . ” Of course, the greatest living writer on family, and on how it changes over time, contributes fiction to the magazine. Alice Munro’s archive is here. Based on what Michael Johnston says makes a good family photograph, can you think of a truly great one from over the years that you’ve appeared in? What about a really bad one? Johnston stresses the advantage of insider access. With that in mind, a truly great picture is the one of a three-year-old me, beside a hospital bed, enjoying the meal meant for my mom, who has just given birth to my brother. I think we can call this one very bad, too. | 
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