Turning points: the Grand Prix and the end of summer
Letter from Georgica: the Grand Prix marks the end of summer
Most people measure the passage of time with important events—birthdays and the New Year are generally at the top of the list. Personally, I never feel older on those occasions. For me, Labor Day marks the transformation. Perhaps it is the pace of having lived in a residential resort community for most of my life. While it is true that people now come here weekends year round, they didn’t often do that in the years when Labor Day began to take on this importance for me. Even now, with a substantial weekend community, there is a distinct change in the feeling of our towns following that first Monday in September
We still have a week ahead of us before Labor Day—yet I started thinking about it this past weekend. The leaves on the chestnut trees have been falling, and I’ve seen a few leaves floating down from the huge copper beech outside my window. Saturday was the final polo match of the season. Sunday was the opening of the Hampton Classic—it runs for a week and it’s the last big event of summer. The garden centers began their autumn sales. Shane Sutton reported in on the plummeting prices of nursery stock. Sunday night was the 10th anniversary party of Nick & Toni’s, and when I came home and turned on CNN, the news was about a hurricane forming in the Caribbean and possibly heading to the East Coast. The messages of the weekend were strong and clear: summer is ending, fall is around the corner.
One event—the Grand Prix of the Hampton Classic—specifically marks the end my summer. (This is the one year out of each seven when the Grand Prix precedes Labor Day. But even so, it is the last act of summer.) I always stay late, after the awards are handed out and the crowd departs. I do small things, pick up trash in the tent, remove the tablecloths, and wander around in the barns closing stall doors. I do anything to fill in the time because I don’t want to leave the show grounds. I know when I do, that’s the moment summer is over for me. I’m happy because I’ve had another summer in the Hamptons, in the place that I love most in the world. But I am also sad because even though autumn is perhaps our most beautiful season, those long, lovely, incomparable days of summer have gone.
I wish I could be more like my friends who jump right into fall, who walk off the beach without looking back and plunge into the world of white azaleas at 40% off. They are not sorrowful and triste the way I am. They are not listening, or at least not paying attention, to the clock ticking off the seconds and hours of summer—and the days of our lives. They embrace the shift in the season, where I am reluctant. They accept the inevitability of time, while I, at best grudgingly let go of another precious golden season. Their sparkling afternoon at the horse show or casual evening at a barbecue is my existential journey—my passage to another year.
I am starting to feel that way about the summer of 1998. The weather was splendid. Local melons were plump and juicy. Traffic was not as bad as some had predicted. I did not see a single jellyfish in the ocean. Saturdays at polo were outstanding—both the sport and the party, and I have lots of photographs with the beautiful Jenny Kennedy. Now it’s on to the Classic with Mickey Paraskevas and everyone’s pal, Junior Kroll, with Charlie Ferrara and Brian Whitelaw of Champagne Louis Roderer, who make sure my glass is never empty. And then we will have to say goodbye to summer.
Well, maybe it’s not goodbye after all. Maybe it’s just a bientôt, and we’ll all be together for another wonderful season in the sun next year.
