The big family cookout with everyone there won’t happen forever. People move, age and drift. Go to this one.

Getting everybody into one place depends on a long list of things lining up, and that list gets shorter every year. Nobody announces the last one. It just turns out later that a particular summer was the final time the whole group stood in one yard. The invitation in front of you is the only one you can accept.

Go to the next family thing you were quietly planning to skip. Being a little bored for an afternoon costs almost nothing next to not having gone.