When the song was over, I received presents—from Mommy, a shiny ball and a doll with a mouth that smiled a terribly broad smile.

“It’s creepy,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” Daddy said.

“Yes, it is.”

“I thought it was so cute when I saw it in the store, and it was the biggest doll they had,” Mommy said.

“They didn’t need to make it with a smile like that,” I said.

“You have to say thank you,” Daddy said. “You have to say thank you to Mommy.”

“Thank you. For the doll. That’s creepy.”

I always spoke my mind, said what I thought, and maybe they were irritated but never enough to try to make me change my behavior. Or maybe it wasn’t all that simple to change it.

I remember the doll and the rest of the presents I received. I am pretty sure that I got all these things on this day: two books about flowers from Daddy; a herbarium, also from him; and a globe that lit up from both of them. I thanked them for everything. So many presents. I was aware that nobody I knew received as many, but nobody I knew had a mother who owned an entire hotel with almost a hundred rooms, either. There were eighty-four, but we always said “almost a hundred,” and we also had our own private wing—we just called it “the wing”—with three living rooms and four bedrooms and a kitchen and even a maid’s room.

She had inherited all of it from my grandfather, who died before I was born. There were pictures of him, of old Hauger, hanging everywhere. Everyone called him that, even I did. Mommy had also inherited his name, Hauger, a boring name, but nonetheless she kept it. She never took Daddy’s surname, Daddy’s Oslo name, because you can’t just rid yourself of a name like Hauger, Mommy said. Then you would also have to change the name of our hotel, Hauger Hotel, and she couldn’t do that. Because our history was in the walls, all the way back to the year it was built, which was written above the entrance in numbers carved out of wood: 1882.

I was given cake, both in the morning and during the rest of the day, so much cake that my stomach couldn’t contain all the sweetness. I also remember that feeling that I was seven years old and so full of cake that it felt like my chest would burst, but I kept eating all the same. Family members came by and they all sat together at a table in the garden—Mommy’s entire family: grandmother, the aunts, the two uncles by marriage, cousin Birgit, and my three boy cousins.

The guests talked and carried on noisily, but I made the most noise because I couldn’t sit still, not then, not later, and I had a loud voice that Daddy said could carry all the way to Galdhøpiggen. He always smiled when he said this, all the way to Galdhøpiggen, Norway’s highest mountain. He was happy that I shouted so much, he said, proud of it, but Mommy was of another opinion. She said that my voice cut right through to the bone.