A Field Guide to the North American Family

They came to Long Island for the relative quiet, the soothing bugsong in summer, in winter the cold crash of waves.They came for the community, the neighbourhood, the schools. All it cost was a thirty-year mortgage, club dues and greens fees, and train-fare to the city five days a week. And if, after the switch to standard time, they got home well after dark ; and if gradually the kids became strangers, and if when the lights were out they only fell asleep exhausted ... well, was that so different from what their own parents had done, chasing their own dreams of America ?