Ultimate Dinner Party Guests: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Cool, calm and collected: the notorious RBG
Imagine a dinner where all the guests are “late greats” — people you would want to pull through time and into the kitchen.
My dinner table would be laid around the old wooden farmhouse table we had as kids at Revel Cottage.
My Aunty Jo would be there with her outspoken views, her red slash of lipstick and her huge, welcoming laugh.
We’ve already invited Margaret Bourke-White who is engaged in animated conversation with Jo at one end of the table, where they sit sipping cocktails, telling stories and giggling conspiratorially.
Ruth is sitting quietly at the other end, enjoying the garrulous pair’s conversation, with no desire to join in. Her eyes are slightly glazed as she listens to a Turandot aria in her mind’s ear. She’s part present at the table and part at the opera.
She watches me chop carrots, she listens to the other women and she hears the soprano sing her lungs out.
I want her here, in this kitchen, away from the news cycle playing its tune of hate. She foresaw the overturning of Roe v Wade but that doesn’t mean she wants to see it happen.
I want to fix her a drink, introduce her to the next guest at the door and watch her enjoy the party a little while longer.
