That charity gala last winter where everyone wore their politics like designer labels — I stood by the oyster bar in my grandmother's vintage Dior, smiling at a developer who called Brutalism "aggressive" while his wife praised my firm's "cute aesthetic." My father would have dissected the power dynamics over gin and tonics; my mother would have filed the conversation for later ammunition. I excused myself to the coat check and texted my sister a single photo of the champagne tower: *surrealism