One of my favorite people in the world is my wife’s aunt, Genie. Like everybody else in my wife’s oversized Baltimore family, Aunt Genie spends much of her summer enjoying the fresh air and scenery on a tiny island in the Saint Lawrence River, about a two-minute canoe ride from the Canadian border. My wife’s family has been going to “the River” for nearly a century. It is a darling place, an archipelago of little rocky islands with cottages and wooden motorboats that look dreamt up for a children’s book. It is also incredibly far away and hard to get to. It takes nearly eight hours to drive from New York City to the River by car, and in the seventh hour, because I am a jerk, I am prone to heaving a long, audible sigh and exclaiming, “We could have flown to Denmark!” When we finally arrive, we have to unload everything and take a boat. It is as if a hundred years ago my wife’s forebears placed a wager on what would be the most arduous journey they could possibly take to relax on vacation and then blindfolded themselves until they made their way to an island in the Saint Lawrence they named Summerland. Yes, the island is called Summerland. I was not kidding about the children’s book thing.
It takes so long to get to Summerland that by the time you go ashore, you need a drink. You need a few drinks. Here, the River is prepared. Almost always you can find Aunt Genie sitting on her porch dressed in something pink or green and possibly monogrammed, and if it’s in the vicinity of 5:00 P.M., she’s got you covered. I have spent many hours on that porch, admiring the view of the water and the gaggle of grandchildren playing on the docks, whining to anyone who will listen about the long drive, but mostly I listen to Aunt Genie. In Genie’s family, she is the boss. Period. On her side of the island, all power flows down from her.
Aunt Genie embraces this part. She is in her eighth decade and has earned the right to tell people what to do. But I think what I like most about her is that she has a Way of Doing Things. She is a firm believer in etiquette—not strict, joyless rule-making, but the kind of manners and civility few people practice anymore. The moment you step onto Genie’s porch, you start to behave yourself a little better. Kids in Genie’s house do not pick up sofa cushions and fling them across the room—if they do, they will spend the night in the boathouse. Drinks are prompt, dinner is prompter, there’s no yelling, no bickering, and hell no, your dog cannot come into her kitchen. Life has a comforting order to it. (My house, by contrast, feels as if a tribe of orangutans has gotten loose and opened up a case of Heinekens.)
I find Genie’s house to be one of the more relaxing places on earth. “Etiquette” has become such a fading, antiquated term; it starts to sound like you’re gnawing on hard candy or reading a newspaper in 1972. We have raised a planet to want what it wants when it wants it. Patience is in short supply. But good manners aren’t an inconvenience—they’re a relief, a survival strategy. The daily routine gets easier, less confrontational.
To be clear: it’s essential to distinguish between manners and telling other people what to do. Manners is treating others with common courtesy and civility, the kind of behavior that people admire and want to emulate. Telling other people what to do is the kind of thing that gets you punched in the ear at Home Depot.
I feel a hundred years old saying this, but I worry about the erosion of those common courtesies. The impersonal nature of modern life has made rudeness easy. I’m as guilty as anyone—I’ve given the finger to so many drivers in the car that my kids probably think it’s the left turn signal. But I do think my life could have a better order if I could just channel the civility at Aunt Genie’s.
Here are some basic manners, courtesy of Aunt Genie. She’s more direct than I am and is comfortable expressing her opinion about all this stuff. I just listened. We didn’t have a cocktail when we talked, but we probably should have.
I figure it is helpful to start with What the hell to do about thank-you notes, since it is an essential yet dying etiquette art and nobody seems to have a straight answer on how to do it. Well, Aunt Genie knows. She thinks people who don’t send prompt thank-you notes should be given light jail sentences. “Thank-you notes should be sent as soon as possible,” she says. They should not be sent months later, as Bessie and I did after our wedding. (I honestly think we have, like, six more to send.) “Send them in a few days!” Genie barks. (See, I told you she had an opinion.) And don’t listen to those weirdos who think it’s impolite to mention the gift in a thank-you note. Genie says it’s fine to mention the gift. That snow-cone maker you wouldn’t use on a 200-degree day? Shower that snow-cone maker with love! “Explain how much you like the gift,” Aunt Genie says. “Even if you don’t.” (Minor revelation here: Aunt Genie is cool with a minor white lie.)
★ Can you e-mail a thank-you note? I feel like I am asking Genie if I can build a Satanic temple in her backyard. “The old-fashioned thank-you note is better,” she says politely. So don’t be a slacker chump. Get a pen and a piece of paper; writing a handwritten thank-you note takes only one minute longer than microwaving a burrito. Your handwriting is not terrible. Wait, your handwriting is terrible. What is the matter with you?
★ Can you send a text message as a thank-you note? I think Aunt Genie might slap me across the face. She says only, “My mother would faint at the thought.” (I am going to assume that Genie’s mother did not have an iPhone 6.)
★ Invited to something? RSVP promptly. Come on. “Leave a message and express your appreciation for being invited.” Do not leave the host hanging for a couple of weeks while that opened invitation gets buried on the dining room table under a pile of Restoration Hardware catalogs.
★ “No Gifts” means what it says: no gifts. If you’re a sociopath who can’t follow directions and simply must bring a gift, Aunt Genie recommends something small and eatable/drinkable—“a bottle of wine, something that can be consumed and has short-term value.” So, not a puppy or a wayward child.
★ If you ask a host, “Is there anything I can bring?” and the host politely says, “Just bring yourself,” bring flowers, Aunt Genie says. See, here I had no idea. Yikes.
★ If you bring flowers, make sure they are in a vase “so the host does not have to scramble around.” When Aunt Genie tells me this, I realize I’ve been giving people flowers incorrectly for approximately twenty-three years. A vase? I have to carry a vase around with me? Thanks, Genie, this sounds like a huge pain in the ass.
★ Punctuality. “So important for social engagements. Let’s say you’re having a dinner and you’ve invited everyone for seven o’clock and someone doesn’t show until seven-thirty. It screws up when you’re going to start dinner and how many cocktails you’ve served and it screws up the hostess.” So, you don’t want us there at sevenish?
★ Phones at the dinner table? “No,” Genie says. “Dreadful. Dreadful and not allowed at Thanksgiving or the cocktail hour.” This brings up another matter: I need to say “the cocktail hour” more in my life.
★ Politics at the dinner table is absolutely forbidden—“I don’t have any objection to that. It makes for lively conversation.” Especially if the cocktail hour has turned into cocktail three hours and fun Uncle Billy has some stuff to say about Bush/Gore 2000.
★ Seating is the host’s job. I’ve made clear my aversion to assigned seating, but Aunt Genie’s a believer. “You don’t have to have place cards all over, but I think the host should have a seating plan written down to direct each person.” Really? What about just winging it? “People are uncomfortable without a plan.” Yes: next time I’m at Aunt Genie’s for dinner, I am going to try to sit in someone else’s seat, and will probably wind up kicked out and eating a turkey burger on the porch.
★ Do not crowd-source a dinner menu. “There are too many picky eaters,” Genie says. It’s true. Bessie and I are terrible dinner guests. My wife is a vegetarian who will eat fish; I am not a vegetarian, but I am allergic to fish. Basically, if you want to have us over to dinner, you have to serve sand.
★ The host determines the dress code. She might say, “I like men in jackets and ties for this special night.” She might also say, “I don’t give a damn.” Genie is fine with either, but if you show up wearing a Phish shirt and Tevas, I think it’s going to get a comment.
★ This etiquette conundrum has always driven me slightly insane: When you are leaving a building, does the person leaving hold the door for the person entering, or does the person entering hold the door for the person leaving? It’s the latter, Aunt Genie says. Hold the door for the person leaving! “Automatic!” she says. I feel this is our most-violated social rule on the planet, after spoiling TV shows.
★ Shoes off in the house. Genie actually doesn’t care one way or the other; she just finds people taking off their shoes in the house amusing. Years ago a host never dreamed of telling people to take off their shoes. Do you think anybody told Eisenhower to take off his shoes when he walked inside the house? “Now all my grandchildren do it as soon as they walk in.” She is laughing, but she is not complaining.
★ What if someone you know has bad breath? “You can’t do anything about it unless it’s a family member. But even then you can’t do anything about it. Ignore it.”
★ What if you see a fly open? “You have to know the person pretty well to say something. If I saw you with your fly open, I would tell Bessie to tell you the barn door is open. Ignore it if you don’t know the person well. Sooner or later they will find out.” I love that Genie says “the barn door is open.”
★ Crying baby in church? “Get up and get the hell out of church.”
★ What is the polite thing to do if a stranger is sobbing uncontrollably next to you on an airplane? “Oh, dear God.”
★ The pop-in visit to someone’s house? Nope. “Even if it’s your own sister, it’s more polite to let her know you are coming.”
★ When to leave a party. “I believe that guests should all leave at once. But if you were the last guest, Jason, I wouldn’t give a hoot. If I was tired, I’d just go to bed and say, ‘See you tomorrow.’ ”
★ Dogs in the house. “Ugh. By permission only.”
★ What should I get my cat for its birthday? “What? A cat? No.”
Just before Thanksgiving 2014, Aunt Genie’s husband, George, died after a long illness. George was a soft-spoken, lovely guy who once owned a hunting lodge in Colorado and rode bicycles and motorcycles into his eighties, and during those visits to the River, he and I had a zillion conversations about pedaling up mountain passes and the best rides up here near the Canadian border. Summers at the River will be different now. Or maybe not; Genie’s family has been coming for generations, and the timelessness is much of the appeal.
If you ever get to Summerland, you can find me on Aunt Genie’s porch, complaining about the eight-hour drive. The kids will be playing, the dogs will stay outside, and Aunt Genie will have the drinks. I’ll bring flowers, finally with the vase.