Part 1. Kid Birthday Party

I found the place where all the things are true.

Not, like, Abiquiu, New Mexico, where Georgia O'Keeffe painted. Not the middle of the Pacific Ocean, or a tiny cave that leads to a huge cave strung with limestone rosettes in Uzbekistan where the Buddha once split a quinoa bowl with some chill snakes.

Nope.

I found it in Richmond, New Hampshire.

[This is a story in three parts. Today is the first.]

"We got everything?" My dear spouse yelled from the car to me at the half-closed front door. He usually runs the final check that mostly gets our family out of the house with what we need.

I said yes.

"Oh." I dashed back inside for my phone. "Okay!" I called.

"Let's get to this birthday party," he said, pressing the electric car's smugly understated power button with a flourish.

"Oh," I said, one leg in the car and one out. I ran back inside for a thin sweater, just in case.

"Hang on." I went again for a charging cable. A just-in-case book. A nectarine. A pen.

My son in the backseat looked up from his graphic novel. This one was about cats, although it might have been about polio vaccines or koala bear sisters in a ballet school. He reads a lot.

He roared. "Mommy, stop dawdling. I don't want to miss it."

It was the tenth birthday party for one of his schoolmates.

I did want to miss it. I dislike the thought of most social engagements. I rarely want to go anywhere, and if I do, I suffer my spouse through at least three rounds of analysis to make sure it's a well-reasoned choice.

But kid birthday parties. Ugh.

I mean, kids, yay! I love the little weirdos.

The birthday parties, no.

What are these "parties" but tiny portions of indigestible foods on microplates? What more than the same six lines of ancient, anthropologically meaningless chit-chat with parents you met maybe once at a classroom open house two years ago?

What are child birthday parties but the noise of a hundred thousand magnet blocks falling against the soundtrack of Ninjago on Netflix against the shriek of delight-or-is-it-a-fracture-and-did-you-ask-first-if-he-wanted-to-wrestle against screaming-because-she's-hungry against political and family rage arcing off the adults in purple-green jagged waves while we talk about property taxes and that one song we all know about, what was it? 1999?

No.

"Let's go!" My spouse jogged the snub-nosed shift lever into reverse, and the electric car announced our backing up with its L.L. Bean-cardigan beeps.

He turned left out of our driveway.

He turned left onto Blake Road.

He turned left onto Route 32.

In a world of logic, that many left turns in a row would circle us home.

But we were going to Richmond.

// End of Part 1. Next time: $14,000 for what? //