1) Thank you, it was a lovely birthday, low key but sparkling, starting with the arrival of a dear friend at my home with a luscious box of Kain’s Doughnuts for a nice long kaffeeklatsch.
2) This concluded, to my surprise and delight, with a drive through my beloved Forest Hills Cemetery, through which my friend had never traveled. The photo is one he took not far from the grave of William Lloyd Garrison.
3) One of the ladies Cecil Beaton always praised — it might have been Lady Diana Manners, but it might have been another — said that “A rose always pulls up a mixed vase.” And the Oak Room (or something similarly grand) always pulls up a birthday. When Craig told me a couple days before that he and David would be taking me to lunch there, I gasped out loud. The Oak Room makes something an occasion.
Craig captured this as a live photo; it’s too bad you can’t see this in motion!
3a) The one advantage to traffic making me late was that I could sweep in in my cape to greet them, already at the table. In the words of the late Cornelia Otis Skinner, they “blew me to a swish luncheon” of (for me) Aperol spritz and lobster rolls, and the most excellent conversation.
4) I admit it: I love presents. And I love books. And I love books that are presents! This year I received a gigantic book on Barcelona architecture (my English friends, who will never let me forget that I described the famous-to-everyone-but-me La Pedrera as “some apartment block,” will be relieved), Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History, by Richard Thompson Ford, which I had just checked out of the Athenaeum but had to return unread; and from Miss Kymm, No Pickle, No Performance, the theatre memoirs of Harold J. Kennedy, which we talked about during our reunion and is technically not a birthday gift, but it arrived during Birthday Month, and I love it, so here it is.
4a) Best of all, Carl sent me a beautiful new copy of the centennial edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette, which differs from the copy I already have in one very important way: it is personally inscribed to me, “the one and only Etiquetteer,” by Lizzie Post Herself, the co-author. Carl just did a book event with her in New York, he having a long association with the Post franchise. Wasn’t that enormously sweet of him?!
5) Other than these encounters, and a committee meeting, the rest of my birthday was online or on the phone, including about 130 greetings on ye Fycebykke at last count, and a beautiful call from Aileen, one of my oldest friends from Lago di Carlo.
5a) Sweetest of all was a call I got last night from . . . you will never believe it . . . my Niece Who Must Not Be Tagged. I never hear from the children (except Alex, who sends me almost daily photos of Sweet Layla), which is not unusual, so a nice long conversation with my niece filled part of my heart, to hear about her life and what she’s doing directly from her. That made me happy.
6) And just think, next year I can finally admit to 40!
