I was trying to persuade Mary to look at the big picture during a recent late-afternoon ritual at the Campbell Apartment in Grand Central, but she, whose compassion can be worrisome, demurred.

    “Of course it’s not so hard for me,” I said, “because I don’t care as much as you do.”

    “I wish I could be like that,” she said.

    “Don’t be fooled by my equanimity, though — it’s simply self-absorption. That and the fact that I’m a bear of little brain.”

    We were at the end of our Big Day, a day in the city during which we had spent four hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, mostly with the Steins of 27 rue de Fleurus, and were, in the Campbell Apartment’s large dark-paneled room, inclined to be reflective, if not elegiac, and relieved to be off our feet.

    A half-hour later, on our way on from Grand Central to our Jitney stop at the side of the New York Public Library, I said that the teatime glass of wine had been restorative.

    “I’m no longer twittering with the swallows in the skies — I feel like trilling again. You know, like the nightingale.”

    “Better that you trill than twitter — it sounds happier.”

    Her derailed sleep cycle had impelled me a few days before to buy for her a bag of valerian root at Mitad del Mundo, an Ecuadorean store on North Main Street.

    She was immediately repelled by the smell. Cooking it up that night as she slept, our augmented Cape was transformed into an odoriferous hut high in the Andes.

    I added a good bit of chamomile and honey, as our daughter Georgie had instructed, to make the valerian root more palatable, and left beside the cup a note saying, “Drink Me . . . If You Can.”

    I didn’t think the valerian was that overpowering, but of course I thrill, nay trill, to runny Camembert.

    The next morning I learned that a sip of the tea — she was touched by my concern — along with the warm milk she usually takes had been effective. But, boy, did it stink up the house. And what dreams she had had!

    “And all for only $3.50!” I chimed in, full-throatedly. “But perhaps I ought to get the gel caps.”

   Shellfish fans in the Town of East Hampton got a reminder this week of just how lucky we are — for now. The State Department of Environmental Conservation ordered a huge swath of Shinnecock Bay closed on Tuesday until further notice after the detection of a powerful biotoxin there.

    According to a press release, the D.E.C. found saxitoxin in mollusk samples from Weesuck and Penniman Creek in Southampton at levels that could lead to paralytic shellfish poisoning. The ban covers 3,900 acres. Some 90 acres in Mattituck Creek were closed after the biotoxin was detected on April 3.

    Saxitoxin is dangerous, and can cause death in untreated and extreme cases. It gets into filter-feeding shellfish during some algae blooms. And when certain predatory fish, crabs, and snails feed on contaminated clams, mussels, or oysters, they accumulate it, too, and it can climb the marine food chain. In 1985, 14 humpback whales that died during a five-week period off Cape Cod were found to have symptoms associated with saxitoxin.

    Algae blooms of the sort that carry saxitoxin and other harmful single-cell organisms may or may not always be linked to excess nutrients in road and septic waste runoff into surface waters. It appears to researchers that weather changes that lead to temperature and/or salinity spikes could play a role.

    Shinnecock Bay is no great distance from East Hampton’s surface waters. While residential and commercial development there exceeds that development here, conditions are similar in some places, so we cannot assume we are not also in danger of harmful blooms. Saxitoxin can be detected only in a lab, and the D.E.C., which has suffered deep budget cuts, is really the only line of defense.

    Semi-stagnation, for example, othe sort that could occur if Napeague Harbor’s east inlet remains closed this spring, could be a risk as well. Lake Montauk, which is under tremendous environmental stress and has low rates of tidal exchange at its southern reaches, might be another place the toxin could emerge, particularly as the climate warms. This is something that regulators need to take very seriously.

   Who knew we would need a chemist last weekend, when I tried to make matzoh balls for our Passover seder? True, it was the first time I had hosted a seder in a very long time, but I had managed to find my mother’s recipe for matzoh balls, and there is nothing particularly daunting about making them.

    Unfortunately, things got a bit complicated.

    First, when I went to find my mother’s recipes and other Passover items — which had been stored away for years — I got a shock. Mouse dung and little seeds clung to the items in the storage drawer! The edges of a silk cloth and some of the Haggadahs and pamphlets had had their edges munched away.

    I forged ahead: I was looking forward to having a seder at home, and didn’t take this as a sign of trouble ahead.

    Matzoh balls are controversial. There are those who love them round and heavy, and those who complain that if they are too compact you have to eat them with a knife and fork. Some recipes call for letting the dough rest in the refrigerator for a while; others say that is a waste of time. I always liked them fluffy, the way my mother made them.

    Everything else about the meal went according to plan. I had set two days aside for getting the house, the table, and the food just right. Things were spinning along nicely until it came time to make the matzoh balls.

    Among the prized household items Chris brought along when we got married is a big copper bowl. Most knowledgeable cooks, especially those who bake, know that a copper bowl is best for whipping egg whites, especially when you chill it. (Chris had whipped a lot of them for soufflés in a former life.) Making matzoh balls is generally an easy process, once you’ve stopped arguing about what kind is best.

    One of my culinary achievements, if I say so myself, is good soup. A chicken soup for the meal had been under way all day, with an Iacono chicken purchased especially for it. The aromas were promising. Although some people cook their matzoh balls right in the soup they will be served in, I prefer boiling them separately in salted water.

    Waiting until every other part of the meal was almost ready, Chris and I got at it: I separated the eggs and he whisked the egg whites enthusiastically. I beat the yolks with a little salt, and we folded them into the whites once the whites were stiff. I had a big enameled pot with boiling water ready on the stove, and we started shaping the balls with a spoon and dropping them in.

    And then. And then? And then, as they cooked, they starting turning a distinct grayish green. If not exactly snow-white, matzoh balls are supposed to be at least in the realm of white. Ours looked like a science experiment. I tasted one and thought it was fine, if a little salty. Chris stood by, nonplused. Then, one of my sons, who had arrived for the seder, came into the kitchen, took a look, and pronounced them off the menu. What had gone wrong? A reaction between the copper bowl and the whites? Some sort of oxidation? Copper-polish poisoning?

    When it came time to serve the soup, I took an informal poll, but recused myself. The matzoh balls had to go, all agreed. The soup was good enough to stand on its own, thank goodness, although a few of those at the table, the hungrier ones, tossed in some pieces of plain matzoh for bulk.

    My granddaughter Evvy volunteered to ceremonially carry the gray matzoh balls one by one in a ladle to their respectable demise in the compost bin. On a night filled with traditional ritual, her matzoh-ball interment was something of a humorous and unexpected ritual. But one — unlike, say, the Four Questions — I hope we don’t have to repeat.

   My ex-husband came to Shelter Island to deliver the remainder of boxes I had stored in his basement, my former residence on the North Fork. “You have a lot of love letters in there,” he said. “Really?” I asked, surprised both by the information and the fact that he had apparently read the letters, which were not from him. I had been wondering what might be contained in the delivery that might be interesting, useful, or exciting, but did not consider love letters. Life is rarely anything similar to what I expect these days.

    Not just love notes, there were cards, drawings, and best of all, photographs of my various past lives. The interesting ’80s and ’90s hairstyles and outfits were pictured, along with every boyfriend I had in those two decades. I flipped through, flooded with memories such as a cruise to the Bahamas and trip to Las Vegas that my parents never knew I took. Now they will. Sorry, Mom and Dad. I am glad they survived raising four girls; it could not have been easy.

    Some of my relationship choices were considered mistakes by my family and friends. I admit that one or two were odd and even dangerous choices, but if I had not dated those that I did, I would have missed out on some amazing experiences. Many seem like a dream now. I would have never lived on Fire Island, barefoot on the beach for an entire spring and summer season. I wouldn’t have traveled to London and Amsterdam, or have spent six weeks in Key West. I would have never been part of Army life in Clarksville, Tenn.

    A few of the experiences were definitely not amazing in the euphoric sense, but were important in the grand scheme of life. They had to be. Take, for example, a terrorist attack with a resulting war that sent my husband to the Middle East, while I lived in the Hamptons opposed to the whole idea.

    I expected the trunk full of wedding memorabilia, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I put on the fancy wedding hat, looked at a few of the cards from friends and family, and was thankful to have an attic. “I’ll think about that tomorrow,” I told myself, one of my favorite Scarlett O’Hara lines.

    I did take the empty bottle of champagne from our first toast to the recycling center, a trip made to the soundtrack of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” As I drove away from the dump, my iPod randomly landed on my wedding song. One of the men pictured in the box of memories always said that there was a “spiritual D.J.” that sends messages through the stereo. I believe it. He is an example of a guy nobody could understand why I dated.

    Over all, positive memories poured from the box, with kind words and professions of love, as well as a picture of a tattoo with my name. Maybe I do want some of that again. Seeing all of the boys in the box together, most of whom I thought were “the one,” confirmed the validity of destiny to me. There is not “one,” not for everyone, anyway. I was in love for a time, and so were they, according to the letters. When the relationships ended, it felt wrong and painful, but the pain went away, and if there were no ends, the others would have never wound up in the box.

    Carrie Ann Salvi is a reporter at The Star.

   What a long strange trip it’s been.  

   I’m talking, of course, about Mary’s uncanny success in The Press’s N.C.A.A. tournament pool.

    Although this is written before the final outcome is known, I think she’s already merited accolades. I told Cailin Riley, The Press’s sports editor, the other day that it was “the sports story of the week.”

    The fact is neither Mary nor I was eager to take part in March Madness inasmuch as neither of us knew what we were talking about. But don’t let that dissuade you, said my mother-in-law, who will bet on absolutely anything, and whose best results were achieved in her inaugural try, when she knew nada.

    With the deadline for submissions fast approaching, I ripped out the predictions of Newsday’s sportswriters and followed their advice down the line, including the upsets they’d forecast, and made out my bracket just to get it done and over with. Meanwhile, Mary deputized me to fill out hers also.

    I did, but later that day she called to say she was making some changes.

    Apparently, she was having second thoughts. And, as her suitable-for-framing final entry, replete with erasures, smudges, and X-ings out attests, she was having some third thoughts as well.

    This, I should add, is all well and good, for as the book on the brain I’m reading now says, our gut instincts are often wrong, and that it is only upon reflection that we can be said to be really thinking.

    In contrarian fashion, then, Mary went with the teams I hadn’t. And that was how she came to be at the top of the heap, bestriding numerous prostrate sports-savvy males, as Kentucky and Kansas prepared to meet in the championship game Monday night.

    “My father used to say that a $2 bet would get you off the fence mighty quick,” she says as we settle in for yet another televised roller-coaster ride.    And then, of course, there’s the head and the heart. Her heart said Chapel Hill and her head said Kansas in the quarterfinals, “though N.C. State was the key.”

    The downside to all of this is that I, an early casualty, have watched her undergo three — nay, four — meltdowns ending in utter despair in the past couple of weeks. On Sunday, I was left to keep vigil after she had, in her words, used her head (“Ohio State’s a better team than Kansas”) and had gone to bed.

    Around midnight, my partisan passions having been further inflamed by draughts of triple-distilled tequila (a birthday gift from my mother-in-law), I joyously took note that there was not a dry Buckeye eye to be seen throughout the Superdome and ran to give Mary the news that Kansas, which had trailed by as many as 13 points near the end of the first half, had come back to win 64-62, but she was sleeping the sleep of the blessed.

    What a long strange trip it’s been.

   The girls were sick this week with one of those things that were going around, and so I got to spend a fair amount of time at home. With one child throwing up and another confined to bed, I stayed close, but that did not keep me from paying attention to the wildlife in this early spring.

    It would have been difficult not to. A pair of wrens decided early Monday to start nest-building in our stove exhaust, thumping and clunking in the sheet metal. As sorry as I was to have to shoo them away, I cleared out the grass and skeletal oak leaves, shut the vent properly, and hung a birdhouse in a tree nearby.

    The pair, one mate far larger than the other, hung around for a while, then moved on. As I watched from a kitchen window, a chickadee inspected the birdhouse.

    An osprey arrived a while later, soaring a couple of hundred feet up and whistling shrilly. A cardinal sang from the top branch of a tree. Red-wing blackbirds uncoiled their metallic, spring-like voices in the swamp.

    On an unrelated note, Stuart Vorpahl phoned Friday to say that an old Bonac word, “muxing,” had been changed in his letter in The Star on March 29 to “mixing” somewhere along the way. Muxing, he said, came from mux, a Colonial-era term for a drill that was traded to Long Island’s native residents for making wampum.

    In my grandmother Jeannette Edwards Rattray’s “East Hampton History and Genealogies,” she wrote, “ ‘Mux’ is an old Long Island word meaning to putter, to do odd jobs. . . . Anyone familiar with this neighborhood has heard that.” Stuart more or less made the same point.

    Prominent in the 1648 deal that the English colonists made for much of what is now present-day East Hampton Town was the payment of 00 muxes in an arrangement with Wyandanch, the Montaukett chief.

    Reading Stuart’s letter as it was readied for print a week ago Monday, I paused at the phrase — “On this day we were mixing around with Harvey and Jonathan in the chicken coops” — but did not take the time to find his handwritten original to check.

    What’s called a captain’s chair has been in the kitchen of the Rattray house in Amagansett since the 1960s. I’m not sure of the exact date it arrived, but I have never forgotten how it got there. My first husband and I had sailed over to Gardiner’s Island one summer’s day and gone ashore for a wander without being detected. The chair was in a small, tumbled-down building, exposed to the elements. I guess I must admit we pilfered it, yes, but at the time it seemed only right to save it from ruin.

    We owned a cruising catboat at the time (one of several we had over the years). They are centerboard boats with shallow draft and relatively broad cockpits. So it wasn’t particularly difficult to carry the chair aboard and take it home. Now, so many years later, I am amazed that it hardly shows any signs of wear. Visiting my son and his family, who live in the Amagansett house now, I couldn’t help but ponder how well built the chair was. It wasn’t new 50 years ago, and I don’t believe it has ever had to be repaired.

    Gardiner’s Island loomed large in our lives in those days, in part because the house is on Gardiner’s Bay and in part because the island’s future was uncertain. Robert David Lion Gardiner, who fancied himself as the Lord of the Manor, was the principal beneficiary of the trust that owned the island. He said contradictory things about what should happen to it. Because he had no heirs, his niece was in line to own the island, and, to thwart her, he went so far as to try to adopt a man named Gardiner from the South who may or may not have been a relative at all. It was all quite dramatic, and rather entertaining, too.

    One of my happiest memories of those summers long ago involves Gardiner’s Island, or to be more precise, Cartwright Shoal — a sort of sand archipelago that stretched into the bay from the south side of the sland — where we would go for picnics. We took a few friends there several times in a small Beetle catboat that we kept just offshore of the house. Beetles, which are raced in season on Georgica Pond, are uncommonly commodious and sturdy small boats. Ours was the only boat I was truly confident of sailing by myself. I remember the joy once of being at the tiller, heading back to shore with a grown man, his young son, and our big dog aboard.

    Cartwright was little more than a low stretch of sand with a lot of seagulls and a nice view; it used to come and go, disappearing under the water, depending on wind and weather. But I was shocked recently to learn that it is now totally gone. Storms and the rise of sea level have put it three to four feet under.

    There are other furnishings in the Amagansett house besides the Gardiner’s Island chair that I am sentimental about. There’s a heavy-duty hutch in the kitchen that we bought the year my son (who lives there now) was born. There’s an oil painting in questionable shape and in a simple black wood frame of a woman holding a bouquet of red and white flowers. An older generation had discarded it, and we needed something for the living room walls. There are lightweight chairs with remarkably short legs, and what may be a Dominy blanket chest that was badly refinished before we were given it. There’s a trypot, belonging to my late husband’s maternal ancestors, the Edwardses, which I believe was used to render the fat of whales caught off Amagansett.

    I am beginning to think it is time to put the history of these things down somewhere for the youngest generation. I was about to say put the history down on ink and paper, but that would have dated me.

    Time has flown. Sea level is rising. But family roots just grow longer.

   If you were told you only had one day left to live on this earth how would you spend it? It’s a question a friend of mine is writing a documentary about, and it got me thinking.

    I would have a helluva day and gather my favorite people around me to max out my credit cards doings all the fun things I haven’t been able to do for lack of money. I might even buy a few new outfits from my favorite expensive store in Montauk to wear for the last day, which I’m assuming would be a hot summer day.

    I would start this day by not brushing my hair. Even when I brush my hair it doesn’t looked brushed anyway, so why bother? I would set up a blanket and barbecue area on the beach at Ditch Plain and not wear sunscreen. We’d go way down to the west and sit under the crumbling cliffs to be away from Them. (Locals know who I mean by “Them.”)

    I’d swim, maybe even wearing a bikini, which I haven’t worn for years, because, really, who’s going to bad-mouth the cellulite on a woman who will disappear from the face of the earth at the end of the day? I’d eat as much junk food as I’d like, hot dogs, cheese doodles, chips, and chocolate bars. I’d drink beer, lots of it. And then I’d take a nap while the sun beats on my back. I’d even turn my face to the sun so I have a little color on my last day and not have to worry about wrinkles or skin cancer.

    We’d stay at the beach until sunset, and while everyone else goes home to shower, I’d go to church. I’d like to remind the good Lord of who I am. Although we talk every day, I don’t often go visit Him at His house and I think He needs to know what I look like these days. I wouldn’t have to tell Him all the good things I’ve done because like Santa and the Easter Bunny, He already knows if I’ve been bad or good. But I’ve been good, for goodness’ sake!

    On my last day I would stop saying hi to people who really don’t like to say hi back. You know, the ones who do everything they can to avoid you at the post office or the I.G.A. I don’t understand why some people do that since I’m not a big talker and am too busy myself to stop and chat. I’ve just been taught that it’s polite to say hello to someone you know, but if it’s that hard for others to reply they won’t have to worry about it anymore.

    When everyone else was showering for dinner, I wouldn’t bother. As I said earlier, my hair is pretty complicated so why waste time trying to tame it into submission on my last day? I’d pile it in a bun on the top of my head. As I write this, though, I’m realizing maybe I should just shave it all off. It’s not like I’d need it anymore.

    We’d go to my favorite Montauk restaurant overlooking the harbor and eat a broiled lobster that they cook like no other place in Montauk. We usually eat and run but since it’s my last meal I might linger a bit longer at the table and just keep eating. Once I filled up on the lobster I might go for an order of shrimp scampi, another item my favorite restaurant makes really well.

    Afterward, I’d pile my loved ones into my Jeep and we’d all head down to John’s Drive-In for a banana split or hot fudge sundae. Yum, this day is sounding better all the time.

    I just hope that when I do enter the garden gate that St. Peter will be there to meet me with my beloved grandparents and all the animals I’ve loved and owned. There’d be Jake, a chick magnet for my guy friends, who would borrow him because he was so weird looking that girls would stop to talk about him and pet his head. My cat Bauble would be there too. We almost lost Bauble on one of my first trips to Montauk when we had to go through Riverhead. We stopped for gas and the wily cat got out of the car in the middle of the traffic circle there. Many hours later we coaxed her back into the car and continued our journey to Montauk.

    Surely, Jack the Whack would be waiting to greet me as would Suzie, Muggs, Pugsley, Winnie, Patches, another Muggs, Kelly, Puffball, Ivy, Rosie, and many others. Maybe even our iguana, Nora Hewitt, named after my husband’s sister, would be slithering about.

    After this amazing day during which I would spend a lot of money on my credit card, I only have one concern. That I’d be resurrected! That might get me in a bit of trouble. But if all went as planned, it would totally be worth it.

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

   There was a time when he walked me; now, I walk him. I’m speaking of Henry, our dog, who has, his legs giving out, vaulted beyond me.

    He’s 84. How fast it’s all gone. Just the other day I couldn’t hit him enough tennis balls. He was insatiable in that regard, as insatiable as he’s always been when it comes to eating.

    The other he’s not inclined to do, the result of an excision early on that I think has transmogrified what would have ordinarily been a healthy appetite into one that at times is grotesquely ravenous. But that’s the good news, I tell Mary. The scent of food still puts a youthful spring in his step, especially when her mother, who has slipped him things under the table despite our remonstrances ever since I can remember, is involved.

    The only thing I’ve found that he’ll eschew is olives. Anything else — avocados, broccolini, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kiwis, bananas, plantains, cashews, almonds, bok choy, rutabaga, parsnips, artichokes, wilted spinach, peas, peanut butter, even lettuce — he’ll eat, and with relish. I always tell people who ask if they can give him a treat to watch out for their hands.

    Beauty is treats and treats beauty, and where he’s got them is all Henry needs to know. (I’ve been reading Keats’s odes lately.)

    I say I walk him, and yet a friend who saw both of us abroad the other day said we both seemed stooped by age. “Life is the struggle against entropy,” Mary says. Excuse me while I struggle against entropy for a moment to look it up. . . .

    Ah, “an inactive or static condition.”

    Neither one of us is putting up much of a struggle against entropy these days. I invariably sleep late, and he invariably will be lying on his L.L. Bean bed in the kitchen in the morning sun, a soup bone emptied of its crammed store of peanut butter beside him, when, jangling his collar, I approach and say brightly, “It’s time, Henry, time to go to work. . . . You not want to come? You want to stay here? Come on, Hen, come on.”

    Slowly, and with considerable effort, he’ll rise, and lower his head a bit so I can put his collar on.

    “Okay, Hen,” I say, one hand on the doorknob, the other at the end of his leash, “here we go. Here we go. . . . Next stop Damark’s!”

   You know the summer season is approaching when the national media stories start appearing about places like East Hampton. This week it was a brief ripple in the Internet blogosphere that the village’s 2012 nonresident  permits for beach parking were selling out earlier than usual.

    A senior editor at CNBC.com wrote that the fact that the maximum number, 2,900, sold quickly this year could be a positive indicator for the housing market.

    Never mind that sales of luxury goods, such as these $325 parking permits, have been strong despite the prolonged recession. Another factor in the preseason rush could be mass e-mails sent out by real estate agents warning those who want East Hampton Village permits to get their orders in early lest they be reduced to biking, or, shudder, beaching it in the town.

    I was surprised recently to see in a town justice court report that a man who had placed a forged village sticker on his Range Rover and was caught back in July had gotten off easily. Andrew Taiani of Blauvelt, N.Y., had been hit initially with a felony, but on Feb 23 the matter was adjourned and will be dropped altogether if he stays out of trouble.

    The allegation itself was interesting, though. Police said at the time that the suspicious-looking sticker on Mr. Taiani’s Range Rover had a plate number on it that corresponded to a Lexus. No one was around when they made this discovery, so the cops hauled the vehicle to the impound yard. A couple of days later, Mr. Taiani turned up at police headquarters to turn himself in — and pick up the Range Rover. I was curious about what Mr. Taiani had to say about the allegations, but he never returned my calls.

    Certainly the nuisance of returning to East Hampton for a court appearance, and, presumably, hiring legal representation, was punishment enough for Mr. Taiani, but I was surprised that the prosecutor agreed to a no-fine deal.

    The Taiani affair perhaps illustrates the lengths to which some might go to obtain one of the village’s coveted passes. There was no word from Mr. Taiani as to whether he was among the 2,900 lucky car owners who managed to secure one this year.