TIP

18Day of All Days

Two weeks left at Crossroads, but Sunday was not going to be about an interview or a job or a career or how many vodka tonics he was going to make. Sunday was his son’s birthday.

The day started with balloons. Birthdays in the Davis house always start with balloons. Jen likes to think that she started the tradition of having balloons waiting for the kids in the kitchen when they wake up in the morning, but in reality, it was Brian who started the balloon thing by filling their first apartment with balloons on Jen’s birthday long before they had kids. She came home from work one night to find the whole place covered in multicolored balloons. She smiled for days. He was a hero.

When the kids came along and he was focused more on working and making money, he left the “creating experiences” job to Jen. Another muscle that he stopped exercising until it atrophied. He would show up for the parties and family gatherings, and every once in a while would offer input on which cousin should sit next to which cousin at the family holidays, but for the most part Jen was the event planner in the family, and she was really good at it. Why stick his nose into the process?

Drew was into dinosaurs. What six-year-old wasn’t? So, what better place to have a birthday than at the Museum of Natural History? Twenty kids and a few parents. It was a great idea, and best of all, it wasn’t at his house, so he didn’t have to clean up the mess.

Jen made sure to reserve a group tour designed ...