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Chapter 1
Chapter One: Packing List
The first sign that I was in over my head was the spreadsheet. It had tabs. The top one was labeled “Beach Essentials,” but then there was “Contingencies,” “Contingencies—Wet,” and “Conversation Starters That Don’t Mention Politics.” My wife read it on my laptop and kissed my cheek as if she’d found a squirrel building a fort out of bottle caps.
“It’s a vacation,” she said. “Not a siege.”
“You say that now,” I said, and highlighted, in orange, “sand-proof snack strategy.”
This was our first full-family holiday since our wedding. I had survived scattered dinners and two birthdays, but this was a week inside the same walls as her mother, her father, her older sister, and the younger brother who posts sunrise photos “for the brand.” I was determined to impress without looking like I was trying to impress, which is a terrible zone for a human to operate in.
We packed the car at dawn. Her father had emailed a list titled “Nonnegotiables,” which included a smoker he fashioned from a barrel and a metal bucket. He insisted we bring it.
“Do you know how to navigate the old bridge?” my wife asked, tossing in a board game where the rules take days to comprehend.
“I have it routed.” I tapped the dash. My spreadsheet also included an “Apology Plan” if my driving made her mother nervous. It involved licorice and upbeat small talk about refurbished furniture.
“So,” my wife said, fastening her seatbelt, “operation easy-breezy?”
“Operation easy-breezy,” I said, and floored it into seven straight hours of traffic and my future.
