Backyard barbecues where everyone brought a dish.

A birthday at a modest pizza parlor where the pies were shared and the bill was split without anyone having to be reminded.

A potluck for a christening where my sister-in-law brought a pasta salad and did not, for once, photograph it for the internet with a caption about how blessed she was.

These were smaller events, and plainer ones, and there was less lobster in them and infinitely less resentment, and I found that I could actually enjoy the family at this scale, that there were people among them I genuinely liked once the transaction had been taken out from between us.

It turns out that some people are perfectly good company once they are no longer being subsidized by you, and that the discovery is both a relief and a small grief, because it means the warmth was always possible and had simply been priced out of reach by the arrangement.