Sunday

 

My phone alarm went off at 8:00.  Ann mumbled something incomprehensible (and likely profane) as I got up.  I took a quick shower, got my golf clothes on and headed up to the lodge to root around for some breakfast.  I didn’t expect to see anybody else up yet, but there were Jeff and Katie, bathed, dressed and alert, having breakfast.  Then it dawned on me—they hadn’t been at the pub the night before.  A feeling of self-righteous indignation hit me.  OK, it wasn’t really self-righteous indignation—I didn’t have enough energy for that—but I felt it was unfair that they were sitting there after a good night’s sleep, feeling fine and looking bright eyed and bushy tailed.

 

Jeff was not scheduled to play golf so I asked them why they were up so early.  Jeff went into a tale of woe—they had to (a) get down to Saratoga Springs where they kept a summer house to close up for the season, (b) collect a child and a nanny, (c) deal with potty training issues they were having with the child (note to Jeff and Katie: update nanny job description), (d) go down to their Sutton Place apartment in New York and grab some gear, and then (e) get on a corporate aircraft and go down to their place in Palm Beach.  I was actually still feeling sorry for him until he got to the corporate jet.

 

Now granted, I was sleep deprived and hung over, so perhaps I was not as compassionate as I should have been, but I concluded that brother Jeff’s problems were virtually all self-inflicted.  When you have a two year old at age 58 and way too much real estate it can generally be traced back to an adult version of the “your eyes were bigger than your stomach” phenomenon that we all experienced (less expensively) as kids at Thanksgiving dinner.  However, it must be said that Jeff was dealing with his problems responsibly and definitely felt a lot better than I did on Sunday morning.

 

I said goodbye to Jeff and Katie as they left for Saratoga and then learned that our golf game had been pushed back to 10:30.  I was already fully caffeinated, so there was no chance of going back to bed for an hour.  I would gut it out.

 

Breakfast for me was fruit.  I had eaten so much rich food that I just didn’t think my system could take a baked egg and sausage, as appealing as that sounded.  I had a nice conversation with Missie, who appeared in her bathrobe since she was staying in a room right down the hall.  As I ate my breakfast the other golfers dribbled in—Paul, David and Mac.  Paul looked fresh as a daisy, Mac looked like he had been run over by a truck and David looked like he had been part of the same accident but the truck had backed over him a few more times for good measure.  Breakfast included aspirin, Advil, and Alka-Seltzer served on a silver platter.

 

We took one of the resort’s Suburbans up to the local golf club—I believe it was the Saranac Inn course.  It was a very nice country course—good layout, well maintained with good greens.  Paul and Mac were quick to team up against David and me on the ride over.  I think they perceived that I was hung over and sleep deprived and that this would probably David’s inaugural golf round of 2012, perhaps of this decade.  I negotiated for David to get 2 strokes a hole except on the par 3s.  Whatever small shred of decency they had prevailed and they agreed.  They had very self-satisfied looks on their faces as we walked to the first tee.

 

I believe David and I lost the first two holes and, as expected, I was playing terribly and David wasn’t much better.  However, we steadied ourselves with some implausible saves and stayed in the match.  Just when it seemed a win was beyond reach in the last couple of holes, David dug deep, made some shots and hit two incredible clutch putts to win.  There was grumbling and whining but they paid up and David and I returned to the Point triumphant.

 

When we got back some of the party had left.  Bo and Missy had left early to catch a flight out of Burlington, Vermont and the Lomases had gotten on the road for the marathon drive back to Cleveland.  We packed then wandered up to the lodge for lunch at around 2pm.  They served lunch on the terrace—a delicious turbot (which I believe is a relative of a flounder) over homemade pasta with shrimp, squash and homemade bread.  Sam inhaled his lunch then challenged the chef to whip up more homemade pasta, only this time he suggested red sauce with meat.  The other rug rats—Hope and Jane—seconded the motion and before long large bowls of fresh pasta emerged to fill the bottomless pits.

 

We realized as we were getting ready to leave how difficult reentry was going to be.  David warned Ann that she would find me lying in bed Tuesday morning waiting for Cameron to come and turn me so that I did not develop bed sores.  We all feared that we had lost the capacity to care for ourselves and that we would be reduced to lying around like helpless baby seals calling for the staff to bring us pasta and warm cookies. 

 

We agreed that Sam would likely have the most difficult reentry.  Having intensively abused the chef, bartenders and staff for three days (albeit with an irrepressible charm that made them all willing victims) he was going to have to return to Colorado as a junior geologist at a company that doesn’t care if he wants another bowl of homemade pasta for lunch and where he will experience a two digit difference in the cost per bottle of his wine (and, to add insult to injury, have to pay for it himself).

 

After lunch we emerged to a fully packed car—the staff had taken care of loading it while we were eating.  We said sad goodbyes to Paul, Betsy, David, Robin, Mac, Jill, Michael, Julia and the kids.  We generally agreed that it was the best weekend in the entire history of the world (with the possible exception of the short period in the Garden of Eden just before God threw them out) and that we all love each other forever.  We slowly drove through the gates, entering the sordid world of That Which is Not the Point (feeling like modern day Adams and Eves, though somewhat more guilty).  That Which is Not the Point has little to recommend it and we steeled ourselves for the squalid chaos of the real world.