But exceptional moments are not often what matter most to us, when we reflect on the lives we have lived. Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, for instance, recalled in the notes for her memoir lazy summer afternoons with her children digging in the garden at their summer house on Long Island. They planted flowers and vegetables and kept a little rowboat on the pond nearby, to which was added a small mast and sail when the children were big enough. Harold, her baby son, the great America’s Cup defender, had his first sail with his mother and sister, Consuelo, as a tiny boy on a calm summer pond in a
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