Musings from one of America’s foremost commentators.
I turned 79 a week ago and I’m quite satisfied with the promotion. I celebrated with lunch with five friends at an outdoor restaurant under a canopy on a perfect summer afternoon and in memory of my frugal parents, I ordered the most expensive wines and the Lord, who prepares a table in the presence of my enemies, prepared an even better one for my friends and we feasted ourselves silly. My wife was away, tending to the settlement of the estate of a crazy bachelor uncle, and texted me, “I miss you too much”, a very nice touch. I can’t remember a better birthday.
The best gift I got was the word ‘disarray’, spoken on the phone by a niece in LA. Somehow I had misplaced that word in favour of ‘chaos’, ‘mess’, ‘clutter’, ‘shambles’, but ‘disarray’ is so elegant, it sounds French, like the name Desirée, an improvement over ‘clutter’, which makes confusion sound trashy. My niece agreed. “It’s what I do,” she said, “I bring glamour to confusion.”
