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A Birthday Remembered

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A Birthday Remembered

The story takes place at Ellen’s a year after Jackie passed away. The situation is that when Jackie died, Tobie’s father got the custody of her, but because he has a problem in dealing with the fact that Tobie’s mother was a lesbian, he won’t let Tobie see Ellen, who’s the woman Jackie had been in a relationship with. After a year living at her fathers, Tobie calls Ellen at her birthday to congratulate, and invites herself and a friend for a cup of cocoa. Following they talk about Jackie and love. In the story, a third person narrator appears, and it is seen from Ellen’s point of view. Ellen is a lesbian, and she had had a relationship with Jackie, who passed away about a year earlier. She is born on Valentine’s Day and she had become editor of the food section and had written a cookbook. At the time, when Jackie passed away, and Tobie were to live with her father, she was very sad. She did not get a chance to say goodbye to Jackie during the last rituals, because of the father, and that has made a deep wound inside of her. She does not feel like Tobie belongs to her – them - anymore, and she miss both of them very much. Now she has moved on a bit, and can look back and recall without too much pain, but there is many things about Tobie, that reminds her of Jackie and the past. Tobie is a girl with blond hair, which is cut short, and physically she looks like her father with the sharp, angular face. She looks like her mother in the warmth and quickness of her smile. She is a girl, who likes to have her own money, and she likes to have a cup of cocoa, which Ellen used to make for her, when she lived there. Besides that, she is the type of person, who never has had an abundance of friends, only special ones who were very close. Just like Ellen, she misses her mother. When she grows up, she wants to have a relationship as beautiful as what her mother and Ellen had. Jackie has passed away. Besides what already has been said about her, there is not much left. Roger is Tobie’s father, and he spends a lot of time, trying to become a top business executive. His main object in life seems to be to prove how much money he can make and keep. He is furious, appalled and angry with his wife, because she left him for a woman. During the divorce, he tried to declare Jackie temporarily insane.

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