One of the more frequent questions I get these days when talking to someone whom I have not been in touch with for some time is how the beach in front of our house survived the winter. Hurricane Sandy set the table, as it were, for the ordinary winter storms that followed, so it is reasonable for friends to wonder whether we, too, suffered badly.

    The answer is mixed, as it is along the whole South Fork shoreline. Sandy was not the end of the world, but it sure came close. 

    That October day, my friend Jameson Ellis and I headed down to the house as the wind and seas of Gardiner’s Bay were rising. My wife and our children and pets had already fled to her parents’ house off the Sag Harbor Road. Jameson and I wanted one last look.

     When we reached the top of the dune, we saw that the bay, turned a yellow color from all the suspended silt, was rushing east to west, like a river about to overflow its banks. We stayed for a while, took a few pictures, then left, taking a few things out of the basement in case of flooding. Though neither of us said anything to the other, we confessed later that it seemed as if the house itself could be threatened this time.

    Well, everything more or less turned out fine. We were cut off from electricity for about a week, but the dune held. Even our stairs down to the beach remained in place. By spring, however, the sand had been scraped down about three feet, leaving a considerable jump from the bottom-most step. When taking the dogs for a walk, I have had to give a hand to Yum Yum, the aged, three-legged pug, and Lulu, the diminutive mutt, in both directions. All in all, though, it is not so bad.

    Some of our neighbors did not fare as well. One property, all but one bad storm away from having its foundation exposed, is supposedly going to be on the market soon. I heard this from a Chicago friend who had been phoned by a local broker, who, one hopes, was not prospecting for a sucker from the Midwest. In the other direction, a cottage is maybe two storms away from the brink.

    For me, Sandy’s legacy, and that of the storm season that followed, is that moving our house back toward the road or putting it up on stilts is going to be our problem, not our children’s. We are lucky that when my parents built the house more than 50 years ago, they chose a site well away from the water. That has bought us some time — not as much as we would like, perhaps, but time enough.

   Two of my gal pals and I have been doing yoga together now for 10 years. Ani, our teacher, insists we’ve only just begun — that it takes years and years —  and years — to get good at it.

    Be that as it may, we three got our start somewhat earlier, when we indulged ourselves in trips to Rancho La Puerta, the laid-back spa in Mexico, where I distinctly remember Phyllis Pilgrim, a longtime yoga and tai chi instructor there, telling us that as we got older there were just two physical activities we needed to pursue: yoga and walking. What a comfort that thought is now, by hindsight.

    Not long after the three of us began Ani’s classes — in a room at the house of a friend who didn’t much go for yoga and quickly dropped out — two more joined us. Husband and wife, they invited us to use a perfect studio at their house. We’ve been together ever since.

    For quite some time, the four women in the troupe were able to say we were a decade apart; the youngest was in her 50s, the oldest in her 80s, with the others in-between. (I never did think to ask how old the lone male in the class is.)

    Thinking back to my early practice, I remember being sure that I would never be able to do certain poses, even the triangle, for example, which is basic.  It’s amazing to contemplate how far we all have come, although I continue to wobble in such balancing positions as the half moon, and my tree still has a crooked limb. No matter. As Ani says, it takes years. And there are many who prove it.

    Take Natalie Dessay,  the coloratura soprano who was an amazing Cleopatra in the Metropolitan Opera’s recent production of “Giulio Cesare.” Ms. Dessay, who The New York Times, in a review, said was not always at her vocal best, nevertheless was an extraordinarily nimble Cleopatra, dancing with arm thrusts and head swivels that few other sopranos would attempt, let alone execute with aplomb. Between acts, she told Rene Fleming,host for the HD performance, that she does yoga every day. And she rolled up the sleeve covering her right arm to show its muscle.

    Well, developing muscles isn’t exactly what our class is about, and we don’t do headstands, which require strong arms, either. It seems to me, although Ani might deny it, that she has softened the class over the years, as we have gotten older. But we have been growing more agile while, at the same time, we seem to have figured out how to let our bodies relax, or, as Ani describes it, melt.  

    When reminded in class recently that we had begun 10 years ago, I said we deserved gold stars. Ani suggested we wait till we had been at it for 20 years.  One of our number  is now 88,  however, and not so sure about that. Nevertheless, undaunted, she is a role model for us all.

   Ah, Memorial Day, how did you come upon us so quickly? I don’t know about my fellow locals, but I’m just not ready for you.

    I’m already missing winter’s empty stores, quiet checkout lines, and roads that were not yet filled with pedestrians and bike riders who don’t seem to get that there are vehicles in their midst, people rushing to their jobs, people in a hurry. The bumper sticker that says, “We’re not all on vacation,” says it all.

    I’ll miss my Sunday afternoon drives with my husband, which will now end as he starts fishing every free chance he gets, leaving me alone to fight the crowds on beaches, in parking lots, the supermarket, and just about everywhere else.

    On our winter drives we often see other long-married couples taking their afternoon drives, which makes me feel old and almost makes me want to stop taking them. But we won’t because there’s nothing else to do at that time of year, and that’s how we like it. Sacred Sunday, we call it. In a perfect world no one would have to work on Sundays.

    When we drive through the quiet streets of Montauk we see the new houses under construction, many of them much bigger and grander than my own year-round residence. How do these people get to come to my town and build a bigger house than me? I, too, want a gazebo attached to my house or an oceanfront view. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem fair that those of us who live here year round often live in small houses, well smaller, anyway.

    But I’m also jealous of those who are finding Montauk and the Hamptons for the first time. I’m jealous of the ones who have yet to find the secret beach that is littered with conch shells and driftwood that I take home for my collection, or the horse ranch high on a hill where Montauk horses graze and gladly take handfuls of carrots. I’m jealous of the first time they see Oink, our resident pig who roams as freely as a dog and has become something of a tourist attraction.

    I’m jealous of the adventure they are about to embark upon and the friends they will meet. When I first came to Montauk as a young recent graduate of a business high school, which allowed me to receive a diploma as long as I promised not to type for a living, I, too, found many adventures, some not too cool. Ironically, I now type for living and am actually not too bad at it.

    There was the first time my friends and I decided to walk from the downtown area to the Montauk Lighthouse, not realizing it was about five miles of tough road. We ended up turning back when we thought it must have fallen into the brink. “It really couldn’t be this far, can it?” we asked ourselves. Ironically, I now live near the Lighthouse.

    So we hitched a ride, thinking that there was safety in numbers. Of course, a weirdo picked us up, the same weirdo that I see nowadays and know as a local. As we sat in the back of his car, we held hands and prayed for our safe return to the motel we lived in. Ironically, that guy is now a friend of mine.

    Then there was the time a newly-met friend and I decided to embark on a bike ride after she took some Ex-Lax. She had asked my unprofessional opinion of how many she should take to get her bowels moving again and I told her about two or three. Hey, they were chocolate flavored, that’s all I knew. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone pedal so fast and furious to the nearest restroom. There is no irony here; I still love chocolate.

    On our first summer out here, my close girlfriend, who grew up next door to me on City Island, was hit by a car in front of the Montauk movie theater. She was fine, took a ride in the ambulance to the hospital, but became agitated when a reporter from this newspaper got in touch with her for more information. “I don’t want this in the paper,” she told the reporter. “My parents will make me come home if it gets out.”

    I do look forward to the warm days of summer and lazing on a beach all day. I look forward to eating steamers, lobsters, homemade chowder, and fresh corn on the cob. I look forward to outdoor dining and family boat rides. I look forward to having a whole afternoon by myself while my husband fishes. I look forward to people-watching and watching summer blockbuster movies at the Montauk Movie. But what I really look forward to is September.

   Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

   Yes, spring may be here, but, besides the dazzling gold­finches and cardinals, there is the oaken semen dripping on one’s windshield, pollen-suffused air, allergies, tick bites, the wretched antibiotics required to treat them, and, sports-wise, it’s been a bit of a slog — the great majority of our high school’s teams not being playoff-bound.

    Still, lushness is to be preferred to slushiness.

    Presumably, there will be growth next spring, but then I wonder will I, a weekly sportswriter perhaps overly dependent on the winning drug, be here to enjoy it?

    “. . . Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day / To-morrow will be a-dying.”

    Of course, Robert Herrick was addressing virgins of the 17th century, not herniated geezers with total knee replacements of the 21st, but I hear what he was a-saying.

    Long before Herrick, of course, there was Horace: “Dum loquimir, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.” Carpe diem. Pluck the day. Though not so roughly as to forget the future, which, while it is not ours to know, we can try our best to shape. Which is why am I going to p.t. every week trying to strengthen, after 70-some years of slouching, my shoulders so I can stand erect.

    It was my late mother-in-law’s express wish that I not hunch. Thus I’ve made it my mission to straighten up and fly right.

    “Yet, it’s the process,” my inner voice reminds. “Don’t get so hung up on Ws, give the kids a break, treat victory and defeat as the imposters they are and have some fun while you’re at it. In short, be plucky, and pay attention.”

    I had to admit I was right: Keep moving, keep improving, that’s the ticket. Did the kids learn, did they have fun? Those are the main questions.

    In the end, though, why not simply settle for fun, for the movement that embodies life, and let self-improvement take its course.

    The other evening at my brother-in-law’s Derby party, watching the kids — there must have been at least two dozen of them — playing dodgeball in the backyard as the sun went down was enough, more than enough.

   “Whose Garden Was This,”  an evocative song by Tom Paxton, who lived in East Hampton for many years, came into my head this week after I drove through the railroad underpass on Narrow Lane in Bridgehampton and was suddenly startled, not by an approaching vehicle (although that is a real concern), but by a stand of some two dozen wild lupines. I had forgotten how stunning their blue-purple flag-like flowers are.

    Like Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” Tom’s song  was an anthem for the fight against environmental degradation. At the time, though, the lyrics spoke to places far away, at least as far as I was concerned; I never thought the day would come when they struck home here on eastern Long Island. 

    Lupine, which used to follow the bird’s-foot violet in flowering along local roadsides, are just about gone now. They had held on for quite a while despite inappropriate public mowing in the name of road safety. Some years ago an effort was made — in East Hampton, at least — to convince the  Town Highway Department to schedule its mowing in keeping with botanical seasons, but it didn’t take. Changes in accepted government procedures require public insistence, and the voices for the protection of roadside flowers were too muted.

    Lupine wasn’t the only flower that used to grace the roads. Later in the summer, grass was punctuated by orange butterfly weed. Like the lupine, butterfly weed was pretty much taken for granted until it was too late.

    Of course, there are still flowering plants and bushes in out-of-the-way places here. A hidden forest of mountain laurel is breathtaking in June. Rosa rugosa, from which you can make rose-hip jelly, continues to thrive near the beaches, and goldenrod and asters pop up in August. Beach plum bushes put on a pretty show in good years.

    There also are members of the orchid family on Napeague’s wild lands. If you know when and where to look, you can see lady’s slippers and orchis, although they are much rarer than they used to be. These Napeague plants have been subject to neither mowing nor overdevelopment, but some of them are pollinated by bees, and bees are in serious decline.

    The disappearance of native flora is to some extent an aesthetic matter, I suppose. (That is, if you don’t consider the protection of biodiversity to be important as a general principle.) But such is not the case where shellfish are concerned. I remember the 1960s and ’70s, when people from away, unfamiliar with the South Fork, would ask whether it was safe to eat local clams. Of course! we told them, with exclamation marks in our voices. It never occurred to me in those days that in 30 or 40 years our waterways would write a different story.

    Today, shellfishing is banned either temporarily or after rainstorms in some of our harbors, and a few prohibitions may turn out to be permanent. If roadside mowing was death for many wildflowers, an overabundance of nitrogen and of chemical pollutants is the obvious cause of contaminated shellfish.

    The good news is that if you love lupine and butterfly weed you can buy seeds and plant them in your garden. Meanwhile, scientists seem to agree that it is not too late to reverse the downward trend in our harbors and bays. We will just have to make our public outcry louder and more persistent this time.

   With apologies to Sarah Palin, our family’s pet pig, Leo, went rogue last weekend. In fact, he did it twice.

    With 50 fast approaching, apparently my mind is not what it used to be as on both Saturday and Sunday mornings, I left the gate to the path down to Gardiner’s Bay open. Leo, whom I will describe a little more shortly, took advantage of this, sauntering out that way, and as best as I can figure, slipping off into the woods for parts unknown.

    To be honest, I did not even know he was missing in the first instance. My wife, Lisa, found him walking around in the driveway when she got home from some Saturday errand or other. The second time it was not until I was in the house making lunch for a couple of kids on Sunday that I noticed he was not in his usual place at my ankles — poking at me with his snout in the hope of a bite of something, anything. It is not for nothing they call them pigs.

    Leo is a source of great entertainment in our household. His personality is somewhere between the studied indifference of a cat and the food-mad nature of a dog. When he is not eating or looking for food, he is asleep. Most of his snoozes take place under a blanket in one of the dogs’ beds, or, if he can manage it, on someone’s lap. Outside, he is prone to sudden and inexplicable sprints around the fenced yard, which usually end with his going back to munching the grass.

    In a week or so, Leo, still less than a year old, will top 20 pounds. This is something that I find highly amusing, as Lisa and our older daughter, Adelia, had bought the come-on of some Texas Internet pig breeder who swore up and down that its pigs do not exceed 10 pounds when fully grown.

    I had said that the pig would likely hit 40, kind of like a small Labrador retriever, but with shorter legs. Lisa and Adelia insisted he would stay small with the same vigor they insisted that I would never have to lift a finger to help take care of him. Well, you can just guess how that turned out. Lisa threatens every now and then to send Leo back to the breeder. I think she wants to do that so she doesn’t have to listen to my telling her I told you so anymore.

    The truth is that other than the occasional wet spot he leaves on the bath mat, he doesn’t bother me a bit. In fact, I like him just fine. I even enjoy putting together his meals of fresh spinach, carrots, fruit, oats, and yogurt when I have to. And, frankly, it gives me no end of pleasure to remind Lisa that I was right on all counts. Hey, honey? Hah!

    So it was with no small measure of panic that I responded to Leo’s second disappearance. With the kids’ help, I circled the house calling for him and shaking a plastic container of dog food, an otherwise sure-fire way to get his attention. We went to the beach; he was not there. I took to the woods; he was not there either. I phoned the East Hampton Town police and left my number.

    Then, moments before my father-in-law arrived by car to lend a hand in the search, there he was, calmly trotting up the driveway.

    Later that day, since his second escape had been my fault, I said that I would deal with all the ticks he had accumulated while on his wayward jaunt. We sat down together on the kitchen floor, me with tweezers, and Leo with his eyes shut, dreaming, I suppose, of his two days on the run.

   Let us now praise all things good about Memorial Day weekend. It goes without saying that those who live here year round usually stagger away from the first onslaught of the season complaining: “Oh my God,” or, “Help us! It’s begun,” or, yes, “It’s never, ever been worse!”

    So what good things, you ask?

    Let’s start with the State Department of Public Works having filled most of the potholes and smoothed out the main artery into and out of town. Huzzah! The gods of traffic, I observe, have favored East Hampton over Southampton, where delays for road work continued into the week.

    And how about the rain . . . which didn’t cease until the weekend was almost over? Okay, rain may have put a hex on outdoor barbecues, but, on the other hand, it probably kept day-trippers, and the traffic they create, to a minimum, right?

    I’m not entirely certain restaurateurs or hoteliers would consider a steady downpour a good thing, but various shopkeepers have told me over the years that when it pours, people hide inside the stores. So that cloud had a silver lining, right?

    The rain also pushed the trees and bushes, finally, into full leaf. Home gardens are now overflowing with all the plants that survived the winter and the voracity of the deer. Bambi and company have just about destroyed the few rose bushes left in my backyard, but, on the other hand — I’m trying to stay on the bright side — I don’t remember the lilacs and narcissus and the irises ever being as lush.

    Memorial Day is also a traditional time for old-home get-togethers. My husband and I swam against the tide this time, traveling away to spend time with family elsewhere. Getting out of town is nice, too.

    As far as I am concerned, though, the absolutely best thing about Memorial Day weekend, rain or shine, is the reopening of farm stands and stands and farmers markets. Goodness, this is a land of plenty. Produce grown right here is suddenly abundant. Beautiful rhubarb, tall asparagus, big, bouncy lettuces . . . it’s almost impossible to resist any of it.

    Some years, when spring has been warmer, local strawberries were ripe by Memorial Day. They weren’t ripe yet this year, true. But isn’t it pleasant to reflect that we don’t have to settle for hard, tasteless red orbs from — far, far — away? (Caveat emptor: If you notice your local gourmet grocer selling strawberries labeled as local later than mid-July, ask to see the crate they came in; false strawberry advertising has become a bit of a scourge.)

    Another good thing about Memorial Day is that people who rent houses are past their annual rush, and can breathe for just a moment or two —at least long enough for a glass of wine on the porch. And the tradesmen who have been up to their eyeballs in stress trying to finish up plumbing jobs, pre-season landscaping chores, and the like, might possibly have a few hours free to work for their year-round customers again. I like that.

    Another thing nice about the end of May is the fact that the days are just about as long as they will get. The summer solstice is only three weeks away. And it’s all downhill after that.

Dear significant-others of the comb over guys,

    I know you are suffering, and I am here to help. Trim this part off and leave the rest of this article around the house for the gents to see in the sanctity of the room where they do the comb-over.

The Comb-Over

    Do the gentlemen with seven hairs 11 inches long that stretch from left ear to right ear really think that that looks like a healthy head of hair? Really?

    Do they think the viewing public doesn’t notice the high sheen between the wispy strands and instead think: “Wow, that’s a handsome head of hair on that man!”

    No, gentlemen, we are not fooled. No one but the comb-over (C.O.) is fooled by the comb-over.

    On the street a comb-over, if noticed, and they often are (and for the wrong reason, especially in a high wind) is thought of thusly:

1. That guy is in major denial.

    2. That guy with the “C.O.” is not a C.E.O.

    3. That guy is vain for the wrong reasons.

    4. He is delusional.

    5. He is going to the wrong barber.

    6. He embarrasses his family on a windy day or coming out of the pool.

    7. This is a guy who thinks the Donald’s hair looks healthy.

    8. This guy is insecure about his looks. (And who wants to wed an insecure fella?)

    Consider the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani. Plenty of 9/11 pictures show him with an egregious comb-over. He’s a rugged fella and that vanity distracted from his cool.

    Years later he remarried and the comb-over was gone. He is all the better for it, a good-looking man with a perfectly fine head of head.

    If the hairline the higher power gave you is . . . er . . . unfortunate, consider a full Kojak, a full Bruce Willis, a full Yul Brynner, Vin Diesel, or Ben Kingsley. Lack of locks never hurt these guys! Remember that a full Kojak is not painful. (Ask your dame friends about a bikini wax, and you will be strutting your stuff plenty quick.)

    Still a little worried? Try a moustache or a European stubble, a hipster under-lip thingy, a Panama hat or a boater. Try some fab new glasses. People might notice a change but they just might think you look less like grandpa and more youthful — maybe you lost weight? A great big confident smile is always a good accessory, and it doesn’t get in trouble in a wind! A big smile and the last thing anyone remembers is the hair, or lack of it.

    A comb-over telegraphs “insecure” which is high up on my personal list of aesthetic deal-breakers. (Along with hillbilly teeth.)

    And please no more comb-overs pretending to be a ponytail.

    Wake up, thinning guys. It is summer. Jon Hamm is famous for going commando in one way (and you may already be “going commando” like Jon Hamm); consider going full-commando, from top to bottom. (Remember the movie “Commandos Strike at Dawn”?)

    Okay, let’s be reasonable. Gentlemen, if your head is a terrible shape or if your career requires it, then get yourself a great toupee. If you go in that direction, please get a better set of toupees than that famous actor-Scientologist. Realism is key.

    Really.

   Durell Godfrey is a photographer for The East Hampton Star and keen observer of comb-overs (and many other things).

   “Happiness is the only sanction of life,” Santayana says at one point in his discussion of reason and how it comes to be, adding that “where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.”

    I’ll drink to that, to happiness . . . however you want to define it. For me, mainly, it’s having the freedom to be your own person, or the freedom to be able to create yourself.

    “When should I stop?” an elderly man asked Sharon McCobb at the Y the other day as he was working out with weights.

    “Never!” she said.

    And so I continue on my way, reading for no particular reason books about reason (hoping something will get through), exercising my First Amendment right to be flip, and running — staggering is more like it — until I flop.

    “The knowledge that a clock striking two has struck one is a big thing, Santayana said,” I said to Mary the other night. “To know that two’s antecedent is one is a sign of progress, of forward movement.”

    But she, who has been wading through a miserable swamp of details having to do with an estate lately,  was not one to be impressed. “Frankly, I think that progress for me,” she said, “would be utter stasis.”

     Existence for her lately has been a mad and lamentable experiment, I would guess, if not worse.    

    She doesn’t have the leisure to be at leisure, to reflect, as I have been, on what it’s all about. . . . I suspect, though, that she may already know damn well what it’s all about, and that that may be the problem.

    At any rate, I am sympathetic, which, as Branch Rickey says in “42,” is a word derived from an ancient Greek one for suffering. 

    I would be in error if I left it that happiness for me lies solely in creating myself, for I cannot be myself, I don’t want to be myself, if she is not herself. Her horoscope in El Diario said recently concerning Geminis: “Todo se resolvera,” which is to say everything will work out.

    It didn’t say when, though. I hope it’s soon.

   It was rather exhilarating to see some 600 fifth through eighth graders dash across Main Street one morning last week on their irrepressible way toward the Main Beach pavilion some three miles away.

    “It must be the funnest day of the year for them,” I thought, as the kids, from Montauk, Springs, Amagansett, and East Hampton, cavorted at the edge of the cool ocean, remembering how I had always looked forward to the Collegiate School’s field day in the spring. (It just occurred to me that I’m wearing Collegiate’s colors today, orange and blue.)

    There were very few couch potatoes to be seen in the high-energy Bonac on Board to Wellness horde. To the contrary, many of the times were impressive; and some, in the high school’s boys varsity track coach Chris Reich’s view, were even “phenomenal.” He is eyeing in particular three seventh-grade middle school boys who ran the 5K that day in the 19s, “what I did when I was a freshman.”

    Lea Bryant, the middle school’s health teacher, who, with Barbara Tracey, the school’s nurse, oversees the wellness curriculum there, said that during the course of the school year the students were encouraged to make “healthy choices having to do with fitness and nutrition, and to set personal goals. We feel camaraderie is important as well. We try to encourage them to feel high naturally.”

    “It’s such a spectacular day on so many levels,” she said. “The time of year is wonderful, and it’s great that they all get to do the same thing, and that they’re all striving to do their best. . . .”

    My late stepbrother, who lived most of his life in France, said on returning from a brief visit to the Springs School once years ago that he didn’t know if the students were learning much, but they were having fun — a Descartean critique that he probably would have extended to American education in general.

    I’ll bet, though, that if they were having fun they were, indeed, learning something. Fun may not be the sole prerequisite, but it can play a big role — as was abundantly evident to me at Main Beach the other day — in awakening the imagination and in encouraging the mind to examine just how one comes to live a good life.