There is a kind of silence that falls over a crowded room, not the literal absence of sound, but the kind that wraps itself around your spine when you realize all at once that you are not supposed to be there. It doesn’t matter how many faces you recognize, how many smiles you return out of muscle memory, or how tightly you’re holding on to your paper plate of lukewarm macaroni salad and store-bought sheet cake. You just know that you are the one person in the room no one thought to include.
That kind of silence doesn’t scream, doesn’t accuse, doesn’t even weep. It just sits there, heavy and quiet, like a coat you never wanted to wear but somehow ended up buttoned around your chest anyway. That was me, standing in my grandmother’s backyard under a half-collapsed balloon arch that read 80 and fabulous, surrounded by a sea of cousins, aunts, uncles, and distant relatives I hadn’t seen since the Clinton administration.
It was one of those suburban Midwestern backyards that had hosted a thousand barbecues and graduation parties: plastic folding chairs sinking slightly into the grass, card tables covered with dollar-store tablecloths in lilac and gold, a cooler of soda sweating in the shade of the garage, and a Bluetooth speaker playing a playlist that had clearly been curated by someone who thought ‘oldies’ meant early 2000s. And every single one of them, I mean every single one, had a gift bag in their hand. Everyone except me.
From where I stood near the drink table, I could see them lined up along the patio: pastel bags in soft pink, mint, and pale yellow, each one stuffed with tissue paper puffed up like frosting, each one with a glittery tag bearing a carefully written name. The cousins compared lotions and candles, laughing as they pulled out matching frames and little bottles of perfume. Even the toddlers had tiny bags with coloring books and crayons sticking out the top.
My hands were empty. I wish I could say I was surprised. I wasn’t.
Shocked would imply I had expectations, and expectations are a young woman’s game. At thirty-five, you learn to travel light. You learn not to expect fairness from people who have shown you time and time again that fairness isn’t in their vocabulary unless they’re the ones being slighted.
So I smiled. I tucked my jealousy deep into the pit of my stomach, swallowed the familiar burn in my throat, took a plastic cup of warm punch from Aunt Carol’s sweating hands, and offered to take a group photo of the cousins holding their pastel bags in front of the big vinyl banner someone had ordered online. Family over everything.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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