It is Thanksgiving, the great day of dinner, of Dockers and dress shirts and marshmallow-sweetened squash. This year we are forgoing our standard slow graze on the home front to spend the day with my sister and her boyfriend’s family, meeting them for the first time—on this, a National Holiday. The whole situation has got my parents up in arms. My mother likes to do the cooking herself, and my father has been ranting about the traffic the whole way out to Long Island. I know the truth is that my sister is only home from college for the weekend and my parents would rather we have Carly all to ourselves.
“Help me out on this one, Ellie,” she instructed me over the phone. “I’m having a hard time getting Mom and Dad to say yes. What you should tell them is that if they don’t participate in my life, it’s entirely possible they’ll just get left behind.”