Nobody showed up to my 70th birthday party, but days later my family came to my door asking for $2,500, then called me selfish when I finally said no, and that was the moment I changed the locks and stopped being their emergency fund.
Nobody showed up for my seventieth birthday. No phone calls. No “I’m sorry, Mom, we couldn’t make it.” No last-minute text with an excuse about traffic, work, the weather, or some emergency that would at least have allowed me the dignity of pretending I had not been forgotten. Absolutely nothing. For most of that afternoon,…