Matriarch

This portrait hangs above the davenport sofa in Jane Coffee's delightfully collected apartment in Hartford Connecticut. At first I thought it was from the 70s television show "Dallas" depicting JR and Bobby's mother Ellie. I think that was her name, but no it is not her, but Jane's actual grandmother, Rusty,  whom I was later to meet in Cashiers NC.
In a way my first guess was not so far off. Rusty was, and still is, something of a looker, glamorous to the extreme even still today. She was 'discovered' in Dallas in the late 50s and made an exotic career as a fashion model, becoming as it were the face of the fashionably rich Texans of the sixties of Dallas, and that is very much of a richness indeed. Her portfolio is filled with beautiful photographs and snapshots taken wearing the highest of high fashion posing with the rarest of rare celebrities in the most colorful and exclusive of the world's glamor capitals. I don't remember specifically if there is a shot of her with  Shah Rezha Pahlavi of Iran or with Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco but I will wager real money that there is either if not both.
I was terrified when I got to Cashiers and I learned that I was scheduled to meet Jane's grandmother, this formidable woman whose austere beauty made such an impression. I could not bring myself even mentally to call her Rusty, and I was racking my brain to remember as much as possible of the Emily Post which I actually read as a teenager in preparation for just such moments. Lo and behold she was a warm and engaging and charming woman, and she too collects  things, chinoiserie to be more specific and she was delighted that I knew the term and used it correctly in a sentence. I couldn't have done it again, but I will take a gift horse so to speak, and smiled and made a note to myself to shut the eff up while I was ahead.
Coincidentally a surprise party in Rusty's honor had been in the planning for months before Rosemary's tragic ending and it served a useful purpose in taking Jane's mind off the casual brutality of the cat's demise. That is a very good thing about family ritual, to distract us when it seems nothing will, and also the beauty of the matriarchy, to give us strength through the generations.