The invitation to my parents’ Fourth of July barbecue—technically a fake Fourth, since my sister’s family had been on vacation during the actual holiday—arrived via my mother’s carefully worded text message. I deleted it immediately. My wife, Sarah, however, received the follow-up call, complete with the gentle guilt only a mother-in-law can deploy with surgical precision.
“It’s just one afternoon,” Sarah said, standing in our kitchen with that look that meant she’d already decided we were going. I loved my parents. I even enjoyed most of their friends.
What I didn’t love was spending time with my two older sisters, their husbands, or their five children, aged seven to eleven. But Sarah had a generous heart and an optimistic view of family dynamics that my thirty-eight years of experience couldn’t quite dampen. We arrived fashionably late to find roughly twenty people scattered around my parents’ backyard paradise—the kind of house designed for entertaining, complete with a pool, hot tub, and enough deck space to host a small wedding.
My father had strategically positioned himself in the whirlpool with a cooler of beer, the wisdom of a man who’d learned decades ago when to retreat. My mother darted between clusters of children like a border collie managing sheep. My sisters, Lauren and Beth, along with their husbands, were already drunk.
Not buzzed—drunk. The particular kind of suburban afternoon drunk that makes people louder and less inhibited while somehow convincing themselves they’re still in control. “You’re late,” Lauren announced, her words slightly slurred.
“And you’re not even in swimsuits. Way to kill the vibe.”
I’d stopped apologizing to my sisters years ago. The truth was simple: we’d never been close.
Eight and ten years older than me, they’d been teenagers when I was still figuring out multiplication tables. As adults, the gap had only widened. They were stay-at-home mothers whose husbands made good money—one significantly more than me—but Sarah and I were both professionals with no kids and considerably more financial discipline.
We traveled twice a year, drove cars not filled with crushed goldfish crackers, and had investment portfolios that would fund a comfortable retirement. This lifestyle gap created friction. Envy, really, though no one said it aloud.
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