The Remains of the Day

Last updated on: August 23, 2016 at 6:52 am by Anne Kennedy

The Remains of the Day 2016-08-23T06:52:20-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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I have a bad feeling that Matt is going to appear in a few minutes and want me to walk with him, even though the temperature has fallen below eighty degrees to something that I’m sure resembles fifty or sixty. It is all one to me–anything below eighty is intolerable. And yet I go on tolerating it anyway. There must be a lesson in there somewhere.

So, first order of business–Oh my word! Thank you for all the lovely messages and happiness! If I were to measure my self worth in Facebook approbation alone, I would come out swimmingly. Sat ready to push like on every single post and then was just overwhelmed. It’s hard, when everyone is insisting you have a good birthday, not to finally concede.

Also, the children insisted. Ermentrude came into my room in the morning wearing a ballet tutu and wanting to know what time would be the party and when would be the presents. “When you grow up,” I told her bitterly, “there isn’t a party* and there aren’t presents**.” She stuck out her lip in defiance and disappeared and must have launched some kind of whisper campaign because later in the day, when I had finally beat back a place for the one cat to be far removed from the other cat, I was persuaded to sit down and was presented with a variety of friendly little objects–a shell, a doll’s tea set, the world nesting dolls (it’s the whole world, I was told), a dollar bill, and a beautiful cream pitcher. Oh, and an Apple Cake, and Hot Artichoke Dip.

Having established, by sheer numbers, a regular birthday celebration culture–cake, presents, getting to pick what to eat for all the meals of the day–no matter how much you may decide you have other things on your mind, you will eventually find yourself forced to give way to the expectations of the group. That’s what they, the children, all get for their birthdays, so you better have that too. Tragically, no matter how much I talked down the Hot Artichoke Dip, everyone decided it was their favorite. Uncool, children, uncool.

As I expected, I woke up this morning heartily more cheerful than yesterday–one because the day is over and I survived, and two because everyone was so horribly enthusiastic. What’s wrong with you that you can’t enjoy your birthday their eyes all accused all day long. Under such persecution I crumbled like a piece of Gramma’s Apple Cake.

So thank you! I raise my morning cup of oolong to you all!

*didn’t explain that that’s because adults are awful and often don’t want a party and a good time, they just want to go to bed after scrubbing the dog pee up off the carpet and moving the cat box again hoping the cat will forgive all offense and use the box instead of stubbornly and angrily only going next to it. Too many adverbs? I’m sorry, there aren’t enough adverbs in the whole wide world to express the anger of this cat.

**didnt explain that often there are presents but sometimes you go buy them yourself, and sometimes they are going out to dinner with friends, and sometimes they are gorgeous red roses from your mother who is never around when it’s your birthday, but by a stroke of amazing providence she is, distributing flowers and making the cake and the hot artichoke dip, and sometimes they are things like A House. That’s right, I’m counting this huge enormous house as essentially a birthday present, take that Eeyore.

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