Yesterday, if you had told me what the events of my father’s siblings’ yearly Thanksgiving reunion would be, I never would have believed you. I always thought that I belonged to a plain and modest family. My dad was my grandparents’ perfect child; he used to play hockey and baseball back in high school, but he never went out on the town with the team, and he always got straight A’s. When he went on to study law at McGill no one was surprised. That was where he met my mother, another very modest, and very conservative, law student. A few years later they were both done with school, making bucketloads of money as family lawyers, and living the kind of life most people only dream of in their twenties. Even when my mother retired early to look after the kids, and my dad switched to teaching law rather than practicing it, they continued to be both very happy and successful.