I don’t know why these aren’t popular anymore.

You’re a single woman over the age of 25 with an unnatural desire for independence. Words such as shriveled, aging uterus, and embryo cryopreservation are appearing more frequently in your family’s daily conversation. You often feel guilty for not having produced a grandchild to brighten up your parent’s monotonous post-retirement life. You’ve powered through a series of bad dates to find your ideal partner only to be abruptly abandoned two years later with a casual “I don’t know what’s wrong but something doesn’t feel right” as a reason.

Miriam Fungeltrap, 81, Dies; Discovered Important Strain of Bacteria.

As discussed on our WhatsApp thread between cousins, we would like to organize a short get-together for our extended family! So consider this an official start to our planning! I’ve included all 17 of us in this email thread, so just keep that in mind if you reply all. Let’s start with something pretty basic: picking a date. Now, Mark and I would love for this to coincide with the celebrations for our dad’s 75th birthday. I know there are a lot of you, but it’s nine months away so I really think we can make this happen. We could even make this an annual tradition! Please let me know which of these three weekends suits you best: August 3, August 10, August 17. We’ll go from there!

It was sort of the best of times, it was kind of the worst of times, it was like the age of wisdom, it appeared to be the age of foolishness, it seemed the epoch of belief, it seemed meh with respect to incredulity…