So easily sold on the American dream

It's a Dad's life:"Do I want syrup on my pancakes? Sure, why not. Yeah, go ahead, more bacon sounds good, and a couple of eggs, and while you're at it those sausages smell divine. Course I'll have more coffee, put it down here beside my juice, writes Adam Brophy.

Where are we going after breakfast? What, Diane's having a barbecue? Super. We can have a few hours there before we make our way up to Dennis's restaurant. He's laying on an Italian feast as a pre-wedding rehearsal dinner. Then Jeff and Becky and their band are playing down the pub later. We'll get the kids to sleep after dinner and head to that. Hopefully there'll be snacks."

I am sure I had a conversation that ran along those lines in the past few days. The details are sketchy, but only because there was an unending litany of events planned around the wedding we are in the US to attend. Over the course of a week, one meal has stretched into the next, an overlapping of cheeseburgers and cacciatore that has had my tastebuds enraptured and my heart squeaking for mercy.

We Irish have a reputation for hospitality. Compared with this crowd of Italian-Americans in Saratoga Springs, we are the Taliban welcoming a sashaying, semi-clothed prom queen into our place of worship. If I could, I would have it written into our Constitution that we are all legally obliged to marry Yanks, just so each of us could be treated like this on a regular basis. Of course, we would occasionally have to have them back to ours, but by then we would be so obese in our stretch pants that they would understand we couldn't possibly have the energy to entertain them.

Here's an example. We were teamed up with an old college buddy of the groom, Freddie, and his family. They were to put us up for four nights before we moved into town for the nights around the wedding itself. I'm a bit nervous about this, Benjamin Franklin's words that "guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days" ringing in my ears. But sometimes you have to trust that there are people who are excited about having a strange family stay in their house, even though I myself would be terrified. Freddie was mad for it.

After landing in JFK, we had a four-hour drive to Saratoga where Freddie arranged to meet us at a hotel before leading us to his house. In advance of this, he e-mailed me to assure me that their house was our house, that we were to have the master bedroom, to not even attempt to argue out of this, that no plans were made and all options were open, depending on what we wanted.

When we finally got to his place, he showed me a wooden box he had made specially, full of snow from the previous week's fall, stored for the kids in case there was none while we were there. As it happened, we were caught in a freak storm and got six inches the first night, but his intention could not have been more clear - he and his crew were determined we were to have a good time.

This level of attention continued throughout the week. The monsters were treated like lords everywhere we went, rolling from one trough to the next.

Finally, the wedding happened, by which time the congregation was better acquainted than most jailbirds sharing a cell. These Irish hadn't been so happy with Italians in America since Giant Stadium in 1994.

We don't want to go home. The elder has already started calling the Missus "Mom", and the younger is revelling in the luxury of our leather-clad, rented SUV, which we could buy for the price of a Fiesta in VRT-riddled Ireland. We have bought into the dream, apple pie dripping from each of our chins. You can sign us up, Uncle Sam.