Charlotte turns 98 today, and she's still blogging. The quintessential narrator of our cultural and political past, nobody on the web outcharms her. Just read the comments from any of her diaries. She has groupies! And young male Kossacks swooning over her. Her daughter, emmet, has pointed this out to me with great delight and concern.
I have known Charlotte since my freshman year in high school. She introduced me to Pride and Prejudice and made a life long Austen fan and English teacher out of me. To this day she insists on which books I simply must read.
Emmet and I bonded over the Dodgers the first day of school so I was over at their house a lot. Charlotte would run up these gorgeous silk shantung cocktail dresses during the week so she'd be ready for her standing Friday night date. She and Mr. C would go out for drinks and dinner. Just the two of them. That this was something parents might do was inconceivable to me.
Not only that, but before Mr. C got home from lawyering, Charlotte had cooked individual dinners for each of her kids, according to their disparate and finicky tastes, to heat up later. This was unimaginable to me. At my house on Fridays, it was tuna casserole or fish sticks. Like it or lump it. And to top that off, she would remind emmet and her younger brothers that the garage refrigerator was fully stocked with each of their preferred soft drinks. (Emmet's was Fresca.) Knock out punch.
So you can see that Charlotte was and is a goddess to me. I raise an Irish toast to her on this her happy birthday. And, Charlotte, stick around so you can see the Dems retake the house.