The media had it all wrong. Don’t tell me the Steelers didn’t win that A.F.C. championship game with the Patriots. It just goes to show you to what lengths the lackeys of the press will go to distort the truth. 

While they may have their facts, I have my alternative facts, far more persuasive if you’d just hear me out. It all began when a Belichick operative set off the fire alarm early that Sunday morning in the hotel the Steelers were staying at, prompting them to jump out of their beds, risking injury. No wonder Le’Veon Bell had to come out of the game early with a groin pull.

I was jolted out of my bed once, and it can be very disconcerting. We were in a fleabag hotel on the Left Bank, and the clerk told us after we’d all trooped down the narrow staircase in our robes and whatnot that the good news was there was no fire and that the bad news was there were still three hours until breakfast. That’s the French for you. Patriot fans too for that matter. Very smug. 

And did you read that the Steelers’ coaches’ headsets were jammed throughout the game with Trump’s inaugural speech? No, no, I’m sure you didn’t.

I can’t tell you to what lengths Belichick and his apparatchiks will go.

Of course I didn’t watch the game. (Well, that’s an alternative fact if truth be told.) I was not about to be snookered by the media so easily. Instead, I drank margaritas and read about Odysseus’ return — posing as a vagabond, biding his time, and brimming with alternative facts — to Ithaca, where Penelope’s suitors were (like the Patriots) banqueting in his hall and lording it over everyone. 

So today, as dawn’s rosy fingers parted me from honeyed sleep, I refused to credit the verdict of my own eyes when I picked up the paper. 

“Such scores simply do not exist,” I said to Mary. “I’ll have my coffee now.” 

Later, with loins girded in Terrible Towels, I offered up a burnt offering of 10 pounds of chip chop ham to Hephaestus.

By the time Bernie Sanders swept the New Hampshire Democratic primary and urged voters to go to Bernie Sanders.com to make online contributions to his campaign, Barack Obama had long since revolutionized presidential fund-raising by using the internet in the 2008 race to seek donations and to gather information and organize the ranks. (Time and Twitter moved on.)

It will come as no surprise if I say I admire Mr. Obama. These last few weeks of his tenure, and his eloquent farewell address — in particular, his willingness to address the topic of race head-on — have secured his place in my mind as an exemplary president and a fine human being.

So it was a bit annoying on Tuesday to receive an email, purportedly from him, asking for $1. Anyone who has gone to a political website in the last few years is likely to be familiar with the experience of inadvertently signing up for innumerate emails from candidates running for national office and, naturally, asking for signatures on petitions as well as, of course, money. 

As Trump supporters are wont to say: Isn’t it time to move on?

The small print at the bottom of the Obama email noted that it wasn’t actually anything to do with a presidential campaign, or really much to do with Mr. Obama, but was from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, although that wasn’t spelled out in the body of the text. The name of the organization is in any event somewhat misleading because it assists only those in or seeking to be in the House of Representatives.

The subject heading of the email — “unfortunately,” with a lower case “u” — drew me in. In part, it read: “Helen, I’ll make this quick — I’m emailing for $1.” It went on in what were supposedly Barack Obama’s words: “As my time in office comes to a close . . .” and so on.

What I find annoying about these emails, in addition to the $1 thing they always try, is that I don’t remember ever having given money to the D.C.C.C. before; in fact, I’m quite sure I never have. As a rule, and as a journalist, I have never registered in any political party. Nevertheless, it seems I must have made some sort of donation in the past that flagged me as someone who could profitably be entered into the email pipeline, forever to be tapped on the shoulder and asked. 

Whatever side of the political fence you fall on, it is likely that you, like me, have received many insincerely personalized messages in the last year, with pleas from candidates whose names you barely recognize, from all over the country.

But really, do any email recipients in 2017 still believe patently silly statements like this one in Tuesday’s email? “We still need 35 more Democrats from 11937 to step up before Friday.” Still need 35 for what? I get the Zip code, but why Friday?

I know the word “algorithm,” and can throw it around, but I don’t have a clue about algorithmic procedures. Which brings me back to the internet. If an email from an organization with which I have no quarrel and which is signed by someone I admire contains information that is less than 100-percent factual and reliable, how am I supposed to believe information that comes from it at more important moments? And what am I supposed to make of the email promises of those whose points of view I do not even share?

A new house is going up across the street from mine. It is large, with separate two-story sections joined by a steel-framed atrium or what might be a barn-like social space or indoor swimming pool. It’s hard to say. 

When my parents first moved the small cottage that would be my boyhood home onto a waterfront lot that had come down through the Edwards family, theirs would be the easternmost winterized house on Cranberry Hole Road. The stink rising on an east wind from the Promised Land fish factory made living any closer unthinkable until the bunker boats sailed away for good in about 1968, and the migrant laborers who ran the giant steam boilers moved on in search of other work.

As kids, my brother, sister, and I were allowed to roam in the vast unspoiled sandy heath across Cranberry Hole Road, which extended, interrupted only by the railroad tracks and the thin strip of Montauk Highway, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Fragile shells and rounded stones were proof that the low dune landscape had once been a beach, presumably at a time of higher sea level or before the Napeague isthmus reached out from what we know as Hither Hills to join with the Devon highlands.

After a rain, we knew to check a place in the lee of a dune where bits of Native American pottery and charcoal were likely to have been exposed. I collected them and quartz fragments that my father explained had been left over from one of the original inhabitants’ toolmaking. 

There were two spots in the wind-scraped dune where clay fragments and stones had accumulated, only a few feet from where my neighbor is putting up a weekend place. I realized much later that the lithic debris had come from a day’s or even just a few hours’ work. Over time, as I accumulated pottery shards, it became obvious that they were from a single, unusually thin-walled vessel. Marks made with a scallop shell in the soft clay before it was fired were the only decoration.

The remnants of the fire that might have been under the clay pot were small. They were perhaps from a night’s rest or single meal taken on a break from toolmaking rather than a long encampment in the dune. 

Early Saturday, after a cup of coffee and piece of toast, I put on my coat and walked to the ocean. The route from the end of my driveway is roughly south-southeast, over a portion of town nature preserve into Napeague State Park. For a while, I followed an abandoned fish factory rail spur then crossed the main Long Island Rail Road tracks and the highway. 

Deer bones lay in several places in the dry leaves. I followed deer trails through the pine woods south of the highway before coming into the open grassland and onto the ocean dunes.

On my way home, I heard music and the sound of hammering as I stepped off the rail spur. Workers at the new house had arrived. A percussion-heavy track with Spanish vocals floated over the bearberry. I waved to a man on a ladder as I passed and thought about the last people who had worked on this spot a couple of hundred years ago, or a couple of thousand.

The man waved back, and I went on my way.

Jay I. Meltzer, a revered nephrologist and retired professor at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, used to warn his patients, and I dare say still does warn anyone who will listen, about the urgency of having an ongoing relationship with a doctor. You need to know your doctor well, he always says, and your doctor needs to know you, especially when you become ill. 

I was reminded of this advice when my stepson Bob was stuck in an UpIsland hospital for four days, beginning last week, during which neither he nor his family could figure out who was in charge of his case: the emergency room doctor who admitted him, a surgeon, or a consulting gastroenterologist. 

Bob had wound up in this hospital not far from his home after symptoms of an undiagnosed complaint became hard to bear. It never is good to be sick, but it is absolutely awful to be stricken unexpectedly and wind up in a hospital you never heard of without a doctor you rely on. 

I don’t need to describe his condition, but standard tests — a C.T. or CAT scan, X-rays, blood tests — did not seem to provide good answers. It’s hard to be objective when someone you care about is suffering. In this case, the possible causes and potential treatments were described incompletely, and that added to the anxiety and unease. 

Worrywart that I am, I headed straight to the internet to see what the hospital’s ratings were. What I found out was scary. The hospital, and I quote, “reported 13 MRSA infections in 73,752 days its patients spent in the hospital between 01/01/2015 and 12/31/2015. This is 364 percent worse than national rates.” The hospital also reported 83 C. difficile infections during the same period, and the report said, “This is 57 percent worse than national rates.” This information came from Consumer Reports, which I have to assume is reliable. 

Checking further, I found that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called C. difficile “an urgent threat to patient safety,” while MRSA infections, despite not always being serious, can be life-threatening. C. diff and MRSA? I really started to get anxious.

Despite the lack of any definite diagnosis, by Monday morning, the fourth day Bob was there, he was scheduled for surgery. The next thing we knew, however, that decision had been overruled by the consulting gastroenterolo­gist. The about-face and confusion were enough for Bob, his wife, and other members of the family to agree he should be moved to Stony Brook University Hospital. I had held off telling anyone about the Consumer Reports statistics until that morning, after hearing that the doctors couldn’t agree on surgery. On the fifth morning (actually it was the middle of the night), Bob was transferred, and as of this writing is being treated at Stony Brook, with reassuring results. 

All of this got me wondering what Dr. Meltzer might have to say about the Affordable Care Act and its imminent repeal. Not being able to select and keep the doctor of your personal choice has been one of the main bones critics have picked with Obamacare. Of course, with the new administration and the anti-Affordable Care factions in Congress still totally mum about what their alternative plans might be and how they could do better, we have no idea what the future of health care in America will be. 

One thing seems certain, though, and that is that the insurance companies, released from some of the Affordable Care Act’s rules and safeguards, will have more power to control our choices. I’m not sure this bodes well for maintaining long-term relationships with our physicians, but I’m pretty sure it is going to stir up a fair amount of anxiety and unease among the millions of Americans who might be left out of the bargain.

On a cold and slippery afternoon this week, I found myself immersed in conversation about an idyllic summer house. And this time I could understand — or, I should say, almost understand — why some people who have tons of money would pay unbelievable sums for a summer rental. It really was gorgeous, with a long history, miles of lawn, and miles of white oceanfront sand.

The house being discussed was advertised last year at $450,000 for the month of July or $800,000 for the summer. I’m not sure people from other parts of the country would even believe that prices of such enormity (and I recognize that the word “enormity” conveys moral judgment) were really real.

It’s hard to talk about individual wealth without Donald J. Trump intruding. So I looked him up on the 2016 Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans. Poor Donald. Forbes places him only at number 156, tied with Steven Spielberg, with net worths of $3.7 billion. Sad.

Other South Fork homeowners are higher on the list, including Ira Rennert, of the notorious Fairfield residential compound in Sagapon­ack, as well as Katharine Rayner of East Hampton and Ralph Lauren, who has a place in Montauk. I have the feeling they don’t rent out their summer houses. 

Trump has taken to calling Mar-a-Lago, his place in Palm Beach, Fla., the “winter White House.” He is reportedly heading there tomorrow for a vacation, two weeks into his new job. I don’t know if he ever rents the house out, or how he manages to live there part time while doing this, but the estate is now home to something called “Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club,” which is described on its website as “the epicenter of the social scene in Palm Beach.” (Like most of what our new Commander in Chief says, I take that boast with a grain of salt. “Membership at the club,” the marketing materials continue, “provides the highest privileges and an elite lifestyle reserved for a select few.” (Mm-hm.)

In 2012, The New York Times estimated that the net worth of America’s top 1 percent — and we heard a lot about the 1 percent during the presidential campaign — was nearly $8.4 million, or 69 times the median household’s net worth of $121,000. And that is only $8.4 million, with an “M,” while everyone on the Forbes 400 list counts net worth in billions, with a “B.” I have no idea what percentage of the populace the 400 represent, but it has to be infinitesimal.

But back to the East End. The gap between poverty and wealth here is not more extreme than in, say, New York City, but I think you could say that the relationship between the rich, the not-sorich, and the poor here is more intimate. And the gap is more extreme than it used to be. Who would have thought 20 or 25 years ago that there would be seven active food pantries between Bridgehampton and Montauk? 

In a recent Star story, Joanne Pilgrim reported that East Hampton’s pantry helps feed 260 families every week. If I were a New York State legislator, I would introduce a bill proposing a fee on exceedingly expensive rentals. A morality tax. Say, 1 or 2 percent on top of rentals above $100,000 per month? Surely the community could find a good use for the money, in meals for shut-ins, hot lunches for school children, scholarships for community athletic programs.

But wait, you say: The existing 2-percent tax on most real estate transfers, from which the five East End towns reap millions for land preservation and, more recently, for water quality improvement, is evidence that the wealthy already do contribute to the community’s well being. That’s true, but when you are throwing around $450,000 just for a July by the ocean, I doubt you’d notice a few thousand more for the neighbors who mow your lawns and wash your socks (and, in some cases, come from families who once owned the land that mansion sits on).

Well, it is true. I am a liberal and I sleep in. But so did my father, who was a Vermont Republican. As in politics, so in dress. I still have his black linen tie, which he often wore with a white shirt and a dark jacket, to such an extent that a woman once said he “shrieked of conservatism.”

He was also very funny. Yes, the two can go together, though I agree that liberals, less concerned with original sin and all that, tend to be funnier.

I mean, life is pretty absurd when you think about it, so why not laugh. 

“Let No One Untrained in Absurdity Enter Here” is over my portal. And now, to complete the picture, I have a chair fitting my rank and years of service to swivel in. I saw the high-backed, leather (wait, let me smell), yes, leather throne downstairs yesterday. Affixed to it was a yellow Post-it with the name “Russell.”

And so I asked him. “Russell, is that your chair? If so, it’s a fitting reward for all your years of service.”

“It’s yours if you want it,” he said, acknowledging that when it came to hoariness and force of habit, I had him beat.

We trundled it upstairs and squeezed it through the doorway and set it down. I, in turn, took the low-slung, sprung ripped ersatz leather thing I’d sat on for God knows how long downstairs and, with some sheepiness, put it where the regal one had been.

I’ve just gone down to see if anyone happening to plop on it might risk injury and found that the back is now well adjusted and offers more support than I once thought it did. 

“Buyer’s remorse?” Russell asked. 

“No, no,” I said, “it’s just that I’m having trouble keeping up with all his change.” 

“Here today, gone tomorrow. . . .”

“Or the day after tomorrow. . . . The inauguration, you know. . . .”

And of course that reminded me of the film by the same name that Mary and I had watched during the recent all-night snowfall. Disasters can lighten your mood, I remember thinking at the time. At least fictive ones.

As for the non-fictive kind, one of which appears to be looming, at least I’ve got a plush seat to hold on to.

This week’s snow notwithstanding, this winter has been a letdown, at least as far as ice goes. For skating the only option has been to pay for time on one of the local rinks. Likewise, the chance that there will be iceboating this year declines every day that we get closer to March.

In the mid-1970s, when my father was given our first iceboat by George Fish, a doctor and family friend with a house overlooking Three Mile Harbor, it seemed that every winter would dependably produce enough ice to sail upon. Mecox Bay was the center of a considerable flotilla of boats, some large two-seaters, most, like our second boat, DNs, so called after the Detroit News, in whose shop the first of the relatively inexpensive, light and nimble craft were built. 

Many of the freshwater ponds were good. Memorably, one glorious season, homeowners in the Georgica Association let us use a landing on Georgica’s west side to get to its beautiful glassy surface. Three Mile Harbor froze as well one year or two. We sailed from Hand’s Creek across to the main navigation channel and back again, passing baymen spearing eels through holes they had cut in the ice. We sailed on Montauk’s Fresh Pond and on Poxabogue, anywhere that had a big enough slab. We don’t get ice like that much anymore.

The iceboat that came from Dr. Fish’s garage was a Mead Glider, a two-seater probably built in the 1930s and repaired and altered over the years. We called it the Bat, for its batwing sail, which had a single batten that ran from the mast out to the leech, or loose, edge. Its hard ware was largely cobbled up from toolbox assortments and not necessarily up to the stresses of sailing over a hard surface. 

One winter day at Fresh Pond, in about 1978, the Bat struck a pressure ridge in the ice, and the mast came down on top of my father and my friend Mike, who, as he tended to do, and still does from time to time, howled in protest.

It was last year or the year before, on a Monday in early March, that we last sailed in the Bat. I had left it at Mecox after the weekend, and my friend Jamey and I met there to take it out for a ride as a light snow began to fall. 

By the time we lifted the sail, the snow was falling in heavier clumps; sailing through it was marvelous, we could not see the edge of the horizon nor tell the difference between ice and sky. More snow came down, and as we rumbled along, we had the sensation of flying through space and that the clumps of icy flakes were stars.

The bat and the DN are stored in the barn behind my mother’s house. As I said, it would surprise me if we sailed this year, but the boats are ready, and so am I.

Time was that people here bent small oaks to mark property lines. They were called lop fences, and more than a few remain visible on roadsides if you know where to look. Or not look; what seems to be a lop fence can be found at the edge my house lot in Amagansett on a plot of land that has been in the family since the 19th century.

Best I can figure, these particular bits of work were not fences exactly. Rather, they were an easy way to mark boundaries that, if done correctly, would last for years. Trees grow vertically; a horizontal half-trunk is likely the work of human hands long ago, a kind of Bonac bonsai.

Old books that mention lop fences suggest that, in fact, they were just that, fences, or at least parts of fences made from brush. Stone walls, like those found as near as Connecticut across the Sound, are almost never seen here, appropriate rocks being hard to come by on the glacier-sourced sandbar that is Long Island.

The lop fence in my side yard should have been obvious to me. Growing up, it was a favorite climbing tree, and at one point I got in trouble with my father for taking an antique pew door down from the attic and nailing it unknowingly into its branches as a down payment on a tree house.

It does not look like all that much, a scrub oak of about 20 feet high with a trunk that divides about two feet off the ground. The lopped portion, called that presumably because some kind of axe-work was involved, juts out horizontally almost due south from the main trunk, and is nearly as thick.

It was only recently, walking around the property with an old survey, that it occurred to me that the climbing tree was most likely a marker like those I liked to go see from time to time in Northwest Woods. While not precisely on the line, as shown on the paper I carried, the tree was close enough. That the branch that had been split and bent more than a century ago ran from north to south sealed that conclusion.

My lop fence is a small one by local standards. If you take a drive along Springy Banks Road you can see quite a few of them, including the largest one I know, near where Hand’s Creek Road runs in. This lop fence tree is worth pulling over into the small town parking area nearby and getting out of the car to see. The portion that follows the ground seems as big around as a rhinoceros. Whoever made it must have been showing off, or at least had a lot of time on his or her hands.

“In Aleppo Once” is a 1969 memoir by Taqui Altounyan, who spent most of her young life in the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo, where her Armenian father and grandfather were doctors and her grandfather was revered because he established its only hospital after World War I. He had studied medicine in New York, coming to the United States with the help of American missionaries he had met during the Armenian genocide. Altounyan’s mother was an Englishwoman.

Why my husband happens to own a copy of “In Aleppo Once” is another story, but noticing it recently on a bookshelf I could not help but take a look. 

It has been widely reported that Aleppo and some of its World Heritage sites have now been demolished. Many of its surviving residents have scattered as refugees, and Christian Armenians, such as the Altounyans, are prominent among them. 

Aleppo had a population over two million before this latest war. It is one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the world. At one end of the Silk Road, it was occupied by people over the centuries from all over the East and Middle East. By the time Taqui arrived there at the age of 2, it might well have been called a melting pot. Armenian, Turkish, Arabic, French, and English were commonly spoken on the streets.

The Altounyan family came to Aleppo after Germany lost World War I, in the twilight days of the Ottoman Empire. Syria was put under a French mandate at the Treaty of Versailles, at the same time that Palestine was put under British control. Uprisings followed, but the Altounyans lived an upper-class life, with a fine house, servants, a mountain retreat during hot weather, leisurely sailing, riding, and tennis, and trips to the countryside, as well as extended periods in England.

The book vividly describes the life of Aleppo’s elite a hundred years ago. Taqui and her siblings, for instance, went to tea with a neighbor named Dr. R, a French doctor and diplomat whose house was grander than theirs. “There were rare carpets on the floor and on the walls; the furniture was the typical Damascus work, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl, but very delicately done. There were brilliant Aleppo silk cushions on the hard sofas. We had an uncomfortable but delicious tea . . . with eggshell porcelain and filigree silver, and handmade lace mats. After tea we were shown his collection of gold coins. Drawer after drawer was carefully taken out and we were allowed to handle, weigh, and breathe on the gold discs gleaming dully from their black velvet cases.”

Despite this pleasant life, and sorties out of Syria to boarding schools, the troubled history of the country did not escape their notice. The children saw “beggars who sat on our step all day; usually on one side was a mother holding a baby to her withered breast, the child very dirty and its eyes black with flies; on the other side sat a man with one leg.”

In 1959, long after World War II had ended, the Syrian government, by then under civilian rule and after a series of coups, expelled the Altounyan family without warning. The hospital Taqui’s grandfather had founded was turned into a school, their house was razed, and the street, which had been named in their honor, was renamed. At the time, Taqui’s father said Syria had become “a modern fascist Arab state,” which probably was true. 

Today, given the ascendance of Bashir al-Assad and the ongoing brutal war that has destroyed Aleppo, all of this has a very bittersweet, indeed tragic, air. President Trump has attempted to ban all Syrians — including medical students on education visas, families traveling to see relatives on legal visitors’ visas, and refugees escaping immediate physical peril — from coming to America. If this had happened a century ago, the Altounyans would have been banned, too.

The day after the election, I was so freaked out that I moved all of my furniture around. I get it: the need to make myself feel safe, nesting in a time of crisis, etc. Well, it worked out, but not completely. 

Because of this ongoing uproar, I find I have a continuing and mighty need for personal control over my environs, so, a week ago, I took the baloney by the horns and decided to have the inside of my house painted. 

I know what you are thinking, and trust me, I should have listened to you, but I did not. My vague reasoning was that it had been 15 years since the one and only paint job and the rooms really needed freshening up. In reality, I was looking for a light in the darkness, and a road through the chaos, post-election. Chaos. In the midst of chaos, I created more chaos. What was I thinking? 

Well, it turns out I wasn’t thinking at all. Whatever you think I was thinking, I was not thinking that. I was just reacting, in that reptilian, back-brain of flight or fight that helped our ancestors survive in a hostile world. I guess my hope was to create warmth and comfort and a predictable world for myself.

However, what this paint job did instead of immediately giving me a bright and shiny future was to have me turning back time. 

I was experiencing the political version of Cher’s song “If I Could Turn Back Time,” and at the same time preparing to be painted. I began to  see my life flashing before me, running backward. Time is relative, relatively speaking. I found pictures of relatives I had forgotten I had. On Facebook there is this Throw Back Thursday thing where people visually recollect by sharing photos from the olden days a few years or a few generations ago. I found I was doing that while sitting on the floor amid shopping bags and bins ready to be filled with the stuff that I live with every  day. 

Taking things off shelves was particularly interesting. I found things I had forgotten about, things I didn’t care about at all and things I was really happy to find. Having found these things, I also immediately lost them in the deconstruction of their longtime hiding places. 

The dialogue with my things went like this: “Where have you been?” “Who/what are you?” “Wow, look at this thing?” “What was I thinking?” “What/ where should I put it now?” “Oops, where did I put it? It used to be over there. I just put it in with the. . . . Where did I put that? Where will I put it if I ever find it again?” And on and on.

What I found: a photo of myself in high school after I bleached my hair with peroxide and before it all broke off; a picture of the man who broke my heart, also called “the Crush” if you read my other “Relays”; a copy of Rolling Stone with John and Yoko saved in a glassine sleeve; four copies of “Eros,” and a very old copy of “Black Beauty” printed on cotton. And that was just from one bookshelf. I found interesting books I meant to read but will never get around to and interesting books I plan to get around to soon. 

I found that taking everything off the walls makes me not want to put anything back up, that rooms have really odd echoes with the rugs rolled up, that I do not have to put pictures of my late husband’s mother (whom I never met) on my family picture wall, and of course I found that I have way too much stuff, which I already knew. I have been drawing stuff (for magazines and lately coloring books) and I have been photographing stuff for this newspaper. 

I am known in shopping circles as Hunter Gatherer because I shop for stuff to photograph and publish in The Star. Stuff is the staff of life, in my opinion . . . but I digress. 

What I also found, aside from newly empty places on my walls, was an appreciation of the life I have lived and how much I have enjoyed it so far, broken hearts be damned. 

Had I not decided to be painted (and that was a clear reaction to the election and the inauguration), I would not have stirred up my personal pot. And in turning back time, and considering other family photos to go in the empty frames, I would not have found, tucked into an album, a letter to me from my aunt Sara Henderson Hay, a poet. 

The date of the letter is part of the interesting timing here: It was written on Jan. 29, 1964. Turning back time, it would have been delivered to me on the day I am writing this, Jan. 31. Sent to me in my freshman year of college, it referenced a fella, new to my social life, and a fella she thought I was done with (who amazingly stuck around until 1979). Since boyfriends were on her mind she included a poem in the letter that she said had been written a long time ago, but which she thought was “a slightly ironic little comment which you and your roommates might find amusing.”

Perhaps the proximity to Valentine’s Day inspired the timing, then and now. Who knows? 

Advice to Young Ladies

by Sara Henderson Hay

Love the proper man, my sweet,

At the proper age. 

When he stands upon his feet

Matrimonially complete,

When his assets all appear

Matrimonially clear.

Till that proper stage,

Keep your silly heart secure.

If a lover passes

Find him as devoid of lure

As he is when viewed through your

Mother’s glasses.

She sent it with love, and though she is in heaven, I share it with you with her love.

I am so happy that I got painted so that I could find this letter and turn back time, if just for a little while. And now to the putting back of all that I have torn asunder. Maybe there are more goodies to be found. Stay tuned.

Durell Godfrey, a contributing photographer for The East Hampton Star, is also the illustrator of two recent coloring books that address the comforts of home and the creativity of chaos, “Color Your Happy Home” and “Color Me Cluttered.”