It’s comforting to me how we scoot along each year marking the calendar by holidays. January is cold and dark, and after the enthusiasm of the New Year wears off, I feel a bit of a letdown. February gets more exciting with my birthday and Valentine’s Day — seeing hearts everywhere makes me smile.

    I’m a big fan of St. Patrick’s Day, even though my family has been in this country for five generations. As spring arrives, everything is a bit brighter and the dreariness of winter is forgotten as we celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. 

    Mother’s Day is always quite an event. Flowers are sent, shiny jewelry purchased, breakfast is served in bed, and maybe Mom is sent to a spa for the day.  Poor Dad isn’t given the same attention. Father’s Day is often pretty boring. Maybe there’s a barbecue in the backyard, but Dad does the cooking. Most dads I know are given a small simple gift to mark the day. Why does St. Patrick’s Day get a parade and fun hats, but dads get a boring store-bought greeting card for their special day? Why are most Father’s Day cards either blue or brown?

    I know that Father’s Day was a month ago, but it bugs me that dads get so overlooked. I’m not suggesting we get our fathers two ties instead of one to show our love. I’m suggesting that we put some effort into our appreciation. 

    Remember when you were a child and you made your mom or dad a macaroni necklace in art class? The necklace took some effort and multiple steps were involved. Noodles have to be painted and laid out to dry. There’s serious consideration about which yarn color Dad might like best. The macaroni noodles have to be strung with care, and somehow there always seemed to be glue involved, though I can’t figure out why. Macaroni necklaces are a serious commitment, as far as gifts go.

    That effort and consideration somehow disappears as we get older and less creative. We run to the nearest department store to buy dad a shirt or tie or some other lame gift. And we buy a brown or blue greeting card with a sailboat or fish or mountains on the front.

    My mother died at age 29, and so Dad juggled a career in banking along with raising two young children in the ’70s. I might have been the more challenging of the two children, and it probably wasn’t­ easy for Dad to talk about “girl things” with me. But we survived. We did more than that — we flourished. Dad raised us without the benefit of after-care programs or support services for single and/or working families.

    How did he manage the house, laundry, meals, sports, scouts, homework, bath time, and broken bones, all by himself? I’ve asked him many times, especially since I’ve become a mother myself. He says he doesn’t remember. Sometimes I hear myself complaining about how busy I am and I try to shut my mouth and count my blessings. Life isn’t perfect, but you’ve got to play the cards you’re dealt.

    Dad and I are such different people. We have lively political discussions, really dissimilar ways of parenting, and flat-out opposite personalities. Neither one of us will admit it, but people say we’re also the same in many ways. My children will comment, “Grandpa says the same thing!” when they ask me about how they might handle a situation in their lives.

    My dad is a heck of a guy who is sweet, generous, and kind. He’d never describe himself that way, of course. He really doesn’t give himself enough credit. So here I am, telling all of you. My dad is the best! I admire him, even when we don’t agree. He raised my brother and me to have a strong work ethic and to set and meet goals. He was strict, but he loved us and told us so, even when we weren’t so easy to love.

    This year on Father’s Day my dad and I canoed the Peconic River with my two young boys. Next year? We’ll be making macaroni necklaces, of course. I think Dad will like a blue string best.

   I ran into a close relative, my double in some respects, in A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” this week.

    I picked up a copy of the play, which comes with “The Golden Age” and “What I Did Last Summer,” at BookHampton after seeing a beguiling Hampton Theatre Company production of his “Black Tie” at the Quogue Community House.

    “He’s got you WASPS taped,” Mary said as the groom’s father’s teenage daughter was sent out on yet another message-delivering mission to the cheeky bride-to-be on another floor of the Lake George motel, an assignment that prompted her to ask the audience, after gathering her breath, if messengers ever got to kill themselves.

    It’s a WASP tradition, at least it’s been my tradition, often not to speak frankly of what matters most — to do “end-arounds,” as I call them, deputizing others to carry my water — or, in the alternative, to write a note or letter when a face-to-face confrontation or phone call is called for — though Mary, who is of a more sanguine nature and less inclined than I toward diffidence, has brought me along wonderfully in this regard: our very rare and resonant differences of opinion having become the stuff of legend.

    But back to Andy Ladd III, the letter-loving letter writer in “Love Letters,” it strikes me as tragic that it is only at the play’s end, after Melissa, his reluctant lifetime correspondent, who often urged him to cut himself free from his beloved form (and from his parents’ and class’s constraints as well), has died, that he finally speaks his heart . . . in a letter of condolence to her mother.

    One — if one is a WASP, though I’m sure we don’t monopolize reticence or politesse — can become too wary of emotion to speak it plain, too enamored of smoothing things out on the page, more wedded to writing than being.

    When we used to visit our family psychologist en masse, and with no little frequency, he would say, hands clasped and smiling, “Ah, the literary Graveses.”

    Funny he, a theater lover, didn’t tell me to go see some A.R. Gurney plays, or to read them. Maybe he thought they’d be superfluous. I don’t even need a script!

    This is all by way of saying that I, who also was a member of the same frat and secret society as Andy at Yale, escaped his fate, eventually mindful, as Don Quixote said to Sancho (he did, didn’t he?), that “faint heart never won fair lady.”

   Monday, late for dinner, in my opinion, two houseguests and I walked into South Edison, one of the relatively new Montauk restaurants, hoping to get something to eat. A few minutes before 10 p.m., and the place was ringing with conversation. Nearly every table was full, and, after the flustered hostess said something about a big order and how they probably could not seat us, we headed to the Hideaway over on the lake for some Mexican food.

    This has so far been the summer of food, or, more accurately, the food business. Wherever you look a new purveyor is opening or an existing one has been renovated top to bottom. It is really astonishing when you consider just some of the gastronomic news in East Hampton: the Red Horse Market, Hampton Country Market, Hampton Seafood Company, 27 Seafood, Swallow East, Sotto Sopra, and Whole Foods, not to mention the blooming farmers market scene.

    I had my taste of restaurant work years ago and to this day can’t really imagine why anyone would get into it. I was a busboy for a couple of summers at Georgette’s, where Andrra (also new this year) is on Three Mile Harbor Road, and at the Sea Wolf, where Harbor Bistro is today. It was hot, sweaty, and frenetic in those kitchens, the pay was minimal, and, though I actually enjoyed it, I got out as soon as better prospects emerged.

    Wil Van Hazel, a high school friend with perhaps a more highly evolved work ethic at the time, spent years in the old Laundry restaurant kitchen. His tales of thrown knives and wild, drunken fights were enough to make me swear off commercial kitchens for good. He has since gone into the film business, where a different kind of toughness is required.

    Cutting back to this summer, another friend has been in the throes of opening a new restaurant here. I have not come straight out and told him I think he is off his rocker, but I’ve come close.

    So on Monday night, as our order arrived hot from a kitchen ready to call it a night, I raised my glass in a private toast to all of the people who make it possible — and thanked my lucky stars I was no longer among them.

   Concerts by the Choral Society of the Hamptons are sources of pleasure for our audiences, and they receive wonderful reviews. But for me, the Choral Society is more than that: It is a personal delight — and a good cause. I sometimes call myself a defrocked soprano, because I once had all those top notes, but now am an alto. No matter. I can head into a rehearsal feeling tired or out of sorts, and it falls away as I concentrate on the score in my hands and the collective sound of music-making. “Zen and the Art of Singing?”

    The society is in high gear now for our big summer concert on Saturday, and I can’t think of anything I would rather be doing this week than going to the rehearsals. I admit that I was skeptical when I first heard about the Choral Society in the 1970s. I had sung with the Rutgers University Chorus and several of New York City’s best groups, and I really didn’t know what to expect. It wasn’t until I recognized the name of a bass (Dinwiddie Smith) as a member of the chorus who, like me, had sung at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan, that I deigned to give it a try.

    The pleasure was all mine. I even was the Third Witch in a performance of Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” once. But time and an emotion-consuming family illness caused me to drop out in the 1980s. I didn’t return for about ten years.

    Nowadays, although we are an amateur group, we boast a good number of professional musicians as singers. Peter Martin Weiss and Jane Hastay, a bassist and pianist who perform American standards and jazz at local venues, often at Pierre’s restaurant in Bridgehampton, are in the bass and alto sections. Tom White, the organist of the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, sings with us, as does Janet Fensterer, an organist for two South Fork churches, and a Ross School teacher. Suzanne Nicoletti is head of middle and high school vocal music in Sag Harbor, and Christine Cadarette is a soloist, pianist, and voice and piano teacher.

    Then there is Peter Ludlow of Bridgehampton, who will accompany the orchestra at the organ on Saturday in the place of our regular accompanist, Thom Bohlert, music director of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. Many of our singers also play instruments and a few are in the bell choirs of local churches.

    We are a proud mix. We have at least two members who have been with the chorus since its founding in 1946, and three new members who are high school students.

    If we keep getting better it is largely due to our music director, Mark Mangini, and to some of the newest singers, like the woman who is singing with us for the first time and who Mr. Mangini says has the most naturally beautiful voice among the sopranos.

    Saturday’s program honors Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee. Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, two of Handel’s Coronation Anthems, and an orchestral piece heralding the Queen of Sheba’s entrance at court from Handel’s oratorio “Solomon” are on the program. It will be preceded with British style at a benefit high tea at the Living Room at c/o the Maidstone, the East Hampton restaurant and inn. (The Choral Society’s Web site has all the details, choralsocietyofthehamptons.org.)

    Saturday night is one of the busiest of the summer. Guild Hall will host Mandy Patinkin and Patti LuPone; the Bay Street Theatre will present a revival of “Men’s Lives”; fireworks will be seen over Gardiner’s Bay, and, of course, myriad parties, public and private, are on many calendars. Nevertheless, we expect a crowd. The concert begins at 7 p.m. at the Parish Hall of Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton, and promises to be over in time for you to go out for dinner or to see the fireworks — humming a tune.

   There are no happy stories in this place, at least not for me.

    Sure, there are weddings. Weddings are happy. Brides are pretty, grooms dashing. I don’t cover weddings. Weddings don’t make the front page and they don’t sell newspapers, unless they’re marrying two super-size flavors of the month, or unless it involves local royalty.

    Me, I get the aftermath, the wives beaten, orders of protection violated. Wife stabs husband in self defense? That will sell newspapers.

    Many of the criminal defendants and victims I write about from the East Hampton Town Justice Court are black or brown, Latino or Hispanic. Most of the people arresting, prosecuting, defending, and judging them are white. Maybe that means something, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know. I’m just a reporter.

    There are two judges in this town. They alternate week to week, Lisa Rana and Catherine Cahill. One is a Republican; one is a Democrat. That stuff shouldn’tmean anything in a small town, but it always does, except in here, on Thursdays, when the calendar reads criminal.

    Cahill has a wry sense of humor. After presiding over five arraignments resulting from a Montauk brawl, she looked at the court officer and said, “Any more?”

    Rana is sterner, but both can be nurturing, when called for.

    You can see it in both women when a young repeat defendant comes before them.

    Cahill recently arraigned a 17-year-old charged with trespassing.

    “My mother’s in prison, and my father’s deported,” he told her.

    She spoke with him at length, exploring his home life.

    “You have very little ties to this community. You have no one willing to stand up for you. You don’t even know the name of your boss,” she said.

    She released him without bail, warning him to be back in court that Thursday.

    He was.

    Rana recently had a kid who had plea-bargained out of an aggravated D.W.I. He would however, have to wear a collar, which detects even minute levels of alcohol consumption. One drink and he’d be back in jail.

    She spent five minutes talking to him, trying to reach him, warning him about the temptations he was about to face as he returned to his world.

    “Your friends will tell you it’s okay. It’s all right. One drink’s not going to hurt.” She paused. “They’re not the ones going back to jail. If you violate this, you’ll be back in jail quicker than a New York minute.”

    He seemed to get it, but who knows?

    Both women have watched troubled kids grow into troubled men and women. The same faces keep going through the criminal justice revolving door — petty, minor stuff, until one day they graduate, they commit a crime serious enough that they’re transported to county jail and indicted by the D.A.

    No more trips to town court. Now, it’s the big time, county criminal court.

    We’ve already had a couple of graduates this year.

    Of course, before any of that happens, there has to be an arrest.

    A reporter’s relationship with the cops can be tricky. My job is to ask questions. Detective Lt. Chris Anderson, East Hampton Town Police’s liaison to the press, has a different job — he has to catch suspects. That conflict leads to some clipped, cryptic conversations.

    “So, Lieutenant, do you think he acted alone?”

    “The investigation is ongoing.”

    My translation: Maybe yes, maybe no. You figure it out.

    Which is what I try to do, in my own way.

    My competition is tough, Virginia Garrison of The Press and Taylor Vescey of Patch. Sometimes I beat them to a story, sometimes they beat me.

    They’re both pros, and they both know people, and the people they know, know people, and that leads to leads.

    I don’t know anybody, so all I can do is knock on doors and ask questions, and hope to get lucky.

    “O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees.” Shakespeare. Not much has changed.

    I’ve met very few lawyers over the years who didn’t think that they were smarter than I. Some of them are. Many of them aren’t.

    Lawyers and reporters are after two different things. Lawyers want facts. A good lawyer can walk in with a valise filled with facts, lay them out on the table, and convince you that up is down and day is night.

    A reporter wants the truth. If you can get to the core truth in a story, the facts, the pieces of the puzzle, will fall into place.

    I recently was in court, waiting for an arraignment. Seated next to me was a New York attorney, Michael Paul. He was in court that morning defending a client accused of a theft.

    I was speculating about the seeming rise in crime.

    “Desperation,” he said. “People are desperate.”

    When you’re desperate, you do dumb things. Bad for a small town, but good if you’re a criminal defense lawyer, or a reporter on the beat.

    T.E. McMorrow is a reporter for The Star who covers police and courts as well as East Hampton Town planning and zoning matters.

   I’m full of beans this week, having made enchiladas — the third meal I’ve cooked, I think, in the past 27 years.

    My mother-in-law still remembers fondly the flounder in orange sauce I did in ’85 or so, and then there was “the green meal” for one of Mary’s birthdays — artichokes, asparagus with hollandaise, pistachio ice cream, brandy Alexanders. . . . After which I, a self-described “wokaholic” as a bachelor, dropped the ball big time cuisine-wise as Mary began to hit the ball repeatedly out of the gastronomic park.

    As the flavor and zest of her dishes increased, the more spoiled rotten I became, unto the point where I was ready for composting. And so, my conscience having been pricked by my failure to step up to the plate, I recently went to Georgie, our daughter, who knows a thing or two about cooking herself, and asked if she could run me through that enchilada recipe she had mentioned. As she did so one evening, I paid rapt attention, and even made notes — don’t burn tortillas, take stems and seeds out of ancho chiles, don’t drown enchiladas in sauce . . . that kind of thing. After which I put the recipe and my notes in the table beside my side of the bed — for safekeeping.

    “Don’t think I’ve forgotten,” Mary said out of the blue a couple of weeks later.

    “Forgotten what?” I said.

    “The enchiladas.”

    “Ah, yes! Well, I’ll do them this Saturday, I promise.”

    I even insisted that I do the shopping.

    As it turned out, the Amagansett I.G.A. had everything except the anchos, which I got at Chiquita Latina. I borrowed Georgie’s blender and began. Mary’s mother was to come over for dinner — this being such a momentous occasion.

    The sauce takes the longest, and when I dipped a spoon into the full blender of tawny purée — I was doubling the recipe — I found it a tad more pungent than Georgie’s had been. “Dios mio!” I said when I could speak, and asked Mary what she thought. She took a sip and ran for a glass of milk and a Zantac.

    She was appreciative though, very appreciative. I phoned Georgie and asked her what I could cut it with. More limes, advised her husband, Gavin, a chef in his own right. Georgie said I should mix it with the bottle of sauce left over from the cooking session that she’d given me.

    I took great care once I’d made the filling (black beans, sautéed onions and zucchini, and Mexican cheese) to put just the right amount into each of the lightly fried corn tortillas, flipping them over with the seams facing down in the baking dish. And I took care as well not to pour over them too much of the sauce.

    Long story short, the enchiladas and accompanying salad were a great triumph. “The best meal I think I’ve ever had,” said Mary after we’d all fallen to. “Can you think of anything I’ve ever cooked that’s been better?”

    “You’re just buttering me up,” I said. (Though I did feel as if I had at last attained a state of grace.) Enchiladas para siempre!

    To which Mary added, “A reporter is only as good as his sauces.”

   Havens Beach in Sag Harbor was closed by order of the Suffolk County Health Department yesterday and the day before that after heavy rains raised the possibility of bacterial contamination. But you wouldn’t have known this had you stopped by for a swim.

    Once word comes from the county that the beach is to be closed — as happens from time to time — the village has the lifeguard hang up a generic “no swimming” sign, and they leave it at that.

    The general source of the problem is known: an 880-foot-long ditch that wends its way up toward Hempstead Street and its road drainage. But just where the bacteria associated with human waste come from is far from obvious. The ditch eventually crosses the beach, presenting an inviting rill to children who like to splash in its water.

    When I was still the father of just one child, in ignorance, my wife and I allowed our 2-year-old daughter to plop down and play in the ditch. In fact, I only learned of the risk when a man who lives near Havens Beach happened to notice what we were doing and walked over to clue us in.

    Since then I have watched with growing frustration as plans to do something about it — or at least issue honest and explicit warnings — fail to be made by successive crops of local officials.

    For more than a decade now, successive Sag Harbor Village Boards and East Hampton Town officials have fumbled several variations of a remediation project. A few years ago, fences were extended along the ditch, and signs put up noting possible bacterial danger. These are routinely ignored. So far, that’s about it.

    Two years of study by engineers hired by the Village of Sag Harbor have produced a plan to install a system that will capture contaminants before they can cross the bathing beach and reach Northwest Harbor. The project will include the installation of sponges laced with an antimicrobial compound that should kill most of the pathogens.

    I hope the project goes forward, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

   During the 20 or so years when we rented our winter house in town every summer and moved to one five miles away, on Gardiner’s Bay, we had the drill down pat. Even when the kids were young — when we had a dog and a cat or two, plus assorted pets like Ginger, the goat, and Peeper, the aggressive goose — the process worked. Patterns developed about what had to be done. I knew which china to store away and which to leave for the tenants. Never mind that when we got to our summer house it was chaos; the tenants, at least, weren’t left with a mess.

    That ritual came to an end after one of my sons got married and took over what had been our summer house as his year-round home. Nevertheless, I have often wondered if the system could be revived, somehow — perhaps if we moved out of our village house and into one owned by my husband’s family, down by the ocean, for August. Or, maybe, by playing the real-estate domino game, renting something smaller for ourselves for a month and still making a bit of money on this one.

    Last year, I decided I needed to take these idle thoughts more seriously. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I discovered just what it would take to get the house ready to show. Suddenly, it seemed, everything from the window shades to the front steps needed fixing or upgrading. Nevertheless, I dove into the process with this summer in mind. I told myself that even if we didn’t rent out the house, it would be nice to have it shipshape again.

    If you live in one place for many years, you are bound to find a task such as this overwhelming. Plenty of things around the house had worn out or gently fallen into disrepair. My daughter says the concept of  “shabby chic” could have been inspired by our family.) Would tenants be happy with our 1960s Le Creuset pots and truly ancient cast-iron pans? Would they be comfortable with our old cotton-poly-blend sheets, or would I need to buy new, matched sets? Would they mind the shelves that were overflowing with books? Certainly, the empty jars and forgotten staples in the pantry would have to go; and probably the toys in the grandchildren’s playroom would have to be boxed up and carried to the attic, as well.

     Then, of course, there would be the closets. When they are small and stuffed, as ours are, it is incredibly dreary to empty them. And what should I do with the antique Chinese bibelots in the corner cupboard, which were brought home from Shanghai in the 1920s (and have practically never been moved since)?

    Photos of gorgeous houses — in shelter magazines or on the pages of publications like The East Hampton Star — can be insidious. I don’t dare spend too much time poring over them, because I am afraid of being infected with Martha Stewart syndrome: an obsessive compulsion to reach for impossible-to-meet standards of organization and spiffiness. As far as I’m concerned, it’s akin to the unreasonable beauty standards young girls are burdened with by ubiquitous media images of super-skinny fashion models and surgically enhanced Hollywood stars. (My laundry room just doesn’t measure up! My towels are too thin!)

    So now it is the end of June, and I’ve long since missed the potential summer renters who start looking in February or March. I’m reconciled to reality. A long trip in August is not in the cards. But there’s still next year. And the house is indeed shaping up . . . except for just one thing: The brokers tell me if I really want to rent I’ve got to put in a pool.

   While everyone in America is celebrating the Fourth of July on Wednesday, I will take a moment to celebrate my dog, Brodie, an incredible golden doodle who looks like a platinum blond, purebred golden retriever. Sounds silly, I know, but read on nonetheless and you too might celebrate him. He is my hero.

    I promised in my Christmas column that I would never again write about my very painful knee problem. But it’s not fixed, so I’m breaking my promise. Yep, that’s me, Janis the promise-breaker. And besides, everyone I know in Montauk is probably wondering why the hell is she walking so funny with that grimace on her face?

    I’m one of those people who write what they know. And I know my knee is screwed! I believe I damaged it on all those long walks I used to take daily in Montauk, through the woods, to the cliffs at Camp Hero, and to the Montauk Lighthouse, which is exactly one mile from my home. But I’ll tell you: It hurts like hell, folks, and even after two knee surgeries and visits to countless doctors I still walk with a gait. It’s noticeable, not just by pedestrians, but by Brodie, who has helped me in many ways that all the doctors I’ve seen have not. He helps me walk.

    The first time it happened I didn’t really know what he was doing, nuzzling my butt and leaning on me as I walked down the hallway of my house. I thought he was just horny. But then I realized, oh my God, he’s trying to help me! (And I’m welling up with tears here at the memory.)

    Usually a big, fluffy goofball, always laughing and smiling at us, Brodie saw from his dog bed that I was having trouble, clutching the wall as I walked, and he jumped up to support me. He leans very gently on my left side and I hold on to him while he walks me step by step down the hallway with a very serious look on his beautiful face. I note his beauty because everyone who meets him thinks he’s a she. He’s a pretty boy. I wonder how he even knew that it was my left leg that’s been giving me so much trouble. He has shown a side of him that I didn’t even know he had.

    I always wanted a golden retriever, as I’ve heard that they are amazing dogs. But I resisted because of their shedding problem and an allergic child. When I was offered this adorable little golden doodle puppy, I was told they don’t shed. Wrong! He sheds so badly I could make a blanket out of his fur. That is, if I were handy, and I’m not, or if I were inclined to sleep under a dog blanket, which I’m not, because though he’s my hero he still smells like a dog.

    At the end of my hallway is the bathroom to the right and bedroom to the left. Wherever I’m heading he guides me there and then waits either outside the bathroom door or in the hallway outside the bedroom to take me back to the main part of the house. The first time my husband saw him do it he couldn’t believe it. He now calls him my therapy dog.

    And so I think Brodie deserves an award for heroism. I imagine the pretty boy walking to the stage, guiding me, head held high and proud, to accept his award, but that’s only in my fantasy.

    In reality Brodie wouldn’t make it to the stage for an award. He’d be greeting and jumping on everyone along the way. He’s a jumper and that’s one thing we haven’t been able to contain. He can’t help it. This dog is so full of love it oozes out of him and he treats everyone from complete strangers to the gas station attendant as his long-lost best friend. If he sees a human far off, he’ll stand on his hind legs and prance toward him like a gazelle to show the love. But dogs were meant to be a man or a woman’s best friend, so we have to allow him that.

    And while you’re watching fireworks and raising a glass, please make a toast to dogs everywhere. They are amazing creatures, even if they sometimes don’t look it.

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

   When one of my tennis partners the other morning asked what I did, I told him I wrote sports for The Star, and had worked at the paper for such a long time, going on 45 years now, that I was probably fit to be embalmed.

    “But first,” I said, “I’m to be enshrined!”

    I have thought seriously lately of changing the greeting on my voice message machine from “I’m either at a game, going to a game, or coming from a game” to “I’m either being enshrined, going to be enshrined, or coming back from having been enshrined,” but Mary and my eldest daughter, Emily, have turned thumbs down on that.

    “I couldn’t believe that no one could think of anything but nice things to say about you,” Emily said, after she’d read the piece Cailin Riley wrote about my East Hampton High School Hall of Fame induction in The East Hampton Press which I’d sent her.

    “Well, you have to suspend your disbelief at times like this,” I said. “I may cheat at backgammon, making me a candidate for the Hall of Shame, but you have to admit I do write well. One has to take the chaff with the wheat — assuming there is any wheat! As to the piece, I’ve always depended on the kindness of sportswriters.”

    “I like what you said about being in ‘the joy department,’ ” Emily said. “I am too. It’s a joy to teach first graders. They’re little experts when they come to you. Each one’s alit passionately on subjects in preschool that they love — trains, dinosaurs, bugs, whatever. I was reading them “Charlotte’s Web” the other day and was saying that Charlotte had gone off to lay her eggs when one of the kids began sobbing. We all looked at him, and then he said, “When spiders lay their eggs, that means they’re going to die.”    

    “A future entomologist,” I said.

    Teaching first graders and then having the summer off puts Emily in the joy-squared department, I guess, while plain old joy will have to suffice for me.

    Getting back to Cailin’s article, Claude Beudert said he had hoped she’d put in the nice thing he’d said about Mary, who, he assured Cailin, had quickened my pulse and got me breathing again. (These weren’t his words — I’ve been writing lately about Jean Carlos Barrientos’s brave save of a drowning man in the ocean off Napeague, but it’s dawned on me that these medical terms describe well what Mary did . . . cardioimaginative resuscitation.)

    I would have continued on living, yes, and working ably, and being cordial, but I would not have experienced the joy that I have in these past 27 years were it not for Mary. It’s because of her that I can say blithely that I’m in the joy department, and can promise solemnly never no more to cheat at backgammon.