Guestwords

When I was 40 I began the previously forbidden search for my birth father.

June is L.G.B.T.Q. Pride Month, presenting an opportunity to celebrate and reflect, causing me to ponder if my awkwardness playing team sports was intensified because I was a gay kid.

I read the sign’s words out loud: “Grand Army of the Republic Highway,” adding, “I love that about America. You’re never far from our history, and we’re still fighting the Civil War.”

Why do so many men of a certain age suddenly take up gardening?

One summer evening in 1943 I ran to Dad with a big request: It was time for a Daisy air rifle.

Memories of heavenly dates at Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor in Queens trigger thoughts of the recent loss of Scoop du Jour here in East Hampton.

Time spent on the beach with a father, and the details a daughter remembers.

I think my interest in history, as in the history of the Presbyterian churches in Springs and Amagansett, is an extension of looking into my history. Who am I?

Science can’t prove or disprove God, but I nevertheless believe that its findings can contribute greatly to our quest for meaning.

Lessons from a tumble down a flight of stairs, a hospital stay during the height of Covid, and 90 isolating days in a less-than-desirable care center.

Some variation of your life partner getting on your last nerve is inevitable. This was especially true in 2020, the year we rolled back the clock to 1918.

How a slotted space for newspapers in an old Main Street store’s cabinetry came to symbolize something more — an arrival.

Whenever my daughters complain about lugging an extra bag of groceries, climbing an extra flight of stairs, or enduring yet another Covid-related frustration, I remind them to “think about Shackleton.”

Long Island is in a precarious situation in terms of meeting growing energy demands. So how will the construction of offshore wind farms affect the grid?

What childhood traits and experiences promote an adulthood commitment to the natural world? A sense of wonder.

I’ve roamed 23 South Fork graveyards, from Southampton to Sag Harbor. I dig surprises, and what has more surprises per square foot than a cemetery?

We have a new president. The virus cases are receding, hospitalizations and deaths, too. What is keeping me from yodeling in the streets? Could it be Post-Traumatic Virus Reprogramming Syndrome?

Though alone since my husband passed away this year, I don’t feel lonely inside this lovely snow globe.

My introduction to the art of Prudence Punderson came in 1976 in Connecticut, when I took up embroidery and checked out a book on the subject that contained an example of her work. But an East Hampton connection? That came as a surprise.

A two-mile stretch of road between two ponds in East Hampton has provided Treasury secretaries for F.D.R. and four Republican presidents in the 20th century, and now a secretary of state for Joe Biden.

It is easy enough to absent myself for apartment showings. Would that I could take the furniture with me. Since it must remain in all its dated glory, a stager will come in to “freshen it up.” But there are consequences.

The newest strain of MAGA, the one that was evidenced at the Capitol, seems not only more contagious, but also immune to the vaccine of coalition that President Biden is attempting to inject into the body politic.

A market-based strategy to mitigate climate change is embodied in a bill now before Congress called the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. The expiring Congress did not pass it, but it will be reintroduced in the new one, where it may have better prospects.

While poring over The Star, just as I was breathing a sigh of relief that the year was finally ending, I spied a piece of news that felt like the final slap in the face after a year of low blows: Scoop du Jour on Newtown Lane was closing for good.

The lily of the valley I planted after my husband died took me back to a time and place when my mother and her brood were happiest, and in particular back to a Christmastime shopping trip to the city.

When East Hampton resident Philip Whitley Churchill-Down, age 63, died last month in a freak clam-shucking accident, America lost its foremost oenological bibliophile and I lost a dear friend.

One of the ways that a human being can be traumatized is to have their reality doubted, and now more than 81 million people who voted for Joe Biden are being told at least once a day that what they’ve seen and done is a fiction.

Offer me coffee and I feel special. A chance to shine, to be heard. Inevitably, all eyes turn to me when I announce, “No thanks, never had a cup in my life.”

Tired. So tired . . . I want to lay my head down. So heavy. 

It’s 1947, a hot, late-summer afternoon in Bethesda, Md., where I’m in first grade at Bradley Elementary (named for Omar, the World War II general). I’ve walked my bike home on the path through the woods, past the spot where we kids hunt and eat wild strawberries at recess. Too weak to pedal. I’ve made it home by holding on to the handlebars and lying across the seat. A few steps. A few more. Another.

Every year about this time, I would go through the same litany of worries. That gosh-darned turkey gave me no end of heartburn. But this year is something else entirely.