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!”

   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.

   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.

   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.

   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.”

   I’ve always been fascinated with all things medieval so I’m just as surprised as anyone that I had never even heard of a Renaissance fair until I was at least 35 and never attended one until I was past 40. Growing up in New York City exposed me to all kinds of people from all walks of life, but I don’t remember a lot of them walking around in armor or wimples. But maybe I just wasn’t very observant.

    It was about six years ago in New Hampshire that I became aware that the Society for Creative Anachronism was taking over the huge Hopkinton fairgrounds for a weekend. Since it was just down the road a bit, I took the kids to have a look. I had no idea what it was, but the name implied that the members seemed to be able to poke fun at themselves.

    By that time I had met someone who made “Ren Faires” her second life, or possibly her primary one, and she took it very, very seriously. But that was not what I found with the S.C.A.

    A visit to the Web site will tell a reader, “The S.C.A. is an international organization dedicated to researching and recreating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe. Our ‘Known World’ consists of 19 kingdoms, with over 30,000 members residing in countries around the world. Members, dressed in clothing of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, attend events which feature tournaments, royal courts, feasts, dancing, various classes and workshops, and more.”

    Although all of the people at the Hopkinton fairgrounds were in costume — or garb, as they call it — they wore watches. They answered cellphones. They smoked. In other words, they were being creatively anachronistic. Even though there was the occasional “What ho!” and “Good morrow” talk going on, it was said in a normal tone instead of a creepy fake British accent.

    One man in a tunic got out a pair of wooden swords and had a spirited duel with my then 6-year-old son. There was a staged battle to watch. There were vendors selling everything from period clothing to baby dragons to weaponry. There was a feast — smoked turkey drumsticks and bread rolls, I remember. Everyone was very friendly and wanted only to educate us on what they were doing to keep the Middle Ages alive. We expected to stay for an hour. We stayed for eight.

    But it wasn’t until this past summer when we watched the very funny movie “Role Models,” which features a teen­age dweeb who is obsessed with a re-enactment world called “Laire” with knights and elves and kings — that my son, Bingham Warner Lancelot Johnson (yes, that is his real name), turned to me and said, “Remember that sword fight in New Hampshire? Do they have something like that out here?”

    The answer is, they do. We have now been lucky enough to connect with the S.C.A.’s Suffolk County chapter, and on Saturday attended a “Spring Schola,” a medieval arts and sciences event in Centereach. It was focused on workshops, which were held on the subjects of spinning, weaving, belly dancing, archery equipment repair, and more, along with “a hearty day board,” faire talk for food. There were also introductory get-togethers for newcomers, like us, where we learned that we are now part of the Barony of An Dubhaigeainn, which is Celtic for “black abyss,” presumably what you would fall into if you were to continue past Montauk Point.

    Everyone in the S.C.A. has a group name and persona usually accompanied by a pretty detailed backstory. We newbies heard of an African-American member who likes to don Viking garb. His tale is that he was shipwrecked near a Viking encampment filled with blind Vikings, who raised him as one of their own.

    It may be a little over the top, but at least the members know and accept that, unlike some other festivals at which everyone just takes themselves way too seriously. On Saturday, young boys looked on in awe at the spears and swords grasped by men clad in leather doublets, girls admired the fine long-sleeved gowns and head attire worn by the ladies. Who cares if it was at an American Legion hall? We certainly didn’t.

    There is the upcoming “pennsic” in August, which we learned of this weekend. Apparently, this is the Cadillac of medieval re-enactments, held for a week in Pennsylvania with a cast of gabillions and several encampment sites. Since I don’t camp out no matter what the era, we may go and stay in a hotel, or “roadside tavern,” if you want to be cute about it.

    But for now, I doff my crown to the fine ladies and lords who leave their daily grind of work and families to create a sort of tangible magic for the rest of us. Chivalry is not dead. It’s alive in Suffolk County.

    Bridget LeRoy is a reporter for The East Hampton Star.

   Out of the blue, our older daughter announced last week that she wanted a pig — sorely. This was not an ordinary pig, mind you, but some sort of supposed mini-breed she learned about on the Internet, which could be hers for $850, shipping from Indiana, or wherever, extra. I said no, of course, which set off a fit of wailing unprecedented for its length, if not for volume.

    My rationale against adding to our household in this way is simple: I don’t want any more responsibilities. When it comes to animals, the fact that I get up at least an hour before everyone else in our house means that I end up taking care of the three dogs: a pug, a small, curly-haired mixed breed, and a rangy Lab mix. Next it’s outside to the chicken coop to check the eight birds’ water and feed, and to open the door to their run.

    For whatever reason, it’s my job to pick up the poop in the yard, trim the dogs’ nails and the shaggy one’s coat, put the anti-tick stuff on them once a month, and so on. I collect and wash the eggs the hens produce and shovel their bedding a couple of times a year into the compost heap, which I drag over to the garden. Though I’ve managed to turn the garden, it has yet to be planted, and I have no idea what I am going to do to keep the deer out of it this year.

    The foregoing more or less was what I told the pig-wanting daughter, and her mother, who was somewhat sympathetic to her pleas. Moreover, it always had been understood that the middle child was the next member of the family in line to get her own pet. I had to draw the line.

    But the pig talk continued unabated. “I’ll take care of the pig!” our daughter howled. “You won’t have to do anything.”

    “I’ve heard that before,” I said.

    “I’ll prove it to you,” she said.

    So a couple of times this week, I have not had to feed the dogs. Lulu, the shaggy mutt (or, in other words, a Cavachon — half cavalier King Charles spaniel, half bichon frisé), has been given a bath that I did not have to initiate. The keening pleas have diminished somewhat.

    The answer about the pig is still no. But I worry that some members of the household may be plotting to move me out into a sty.

   The other night Mary realized she was missing the news.  “That’s good news,” I said, knowing that for her but to think is to be full of sorrow.

    (Keats said that by the way, not me, but I like it.)

    We are, as this is written, about to be transplanted temporarily in the ersatz environs of Palm Springs, where one of our daughters is to be wed. The weather ought to be good. Of course, it’s good here too, as it’s been all winter, inclining one to stay put, but at the end of the day filial ties win.

    In regretting an invitation to our college class’s 50th reunion recently, I said I rarely made it over the Shinnecock Canal anymore, and while that may have been a slight exaggeration it is true that I feel more and more at home at home. Bluebirds at the backyard feeders would make it perfect, but Bruce Horwith told me they prefer open areas such as you find around the airport and Napeague Meadow Road to the woods. We do have woodpeckers, though, goldfinches, flickers, nuthatches, and soon, I expect, irrepressible Carolina wrens that often nest in our flower boxes or in the outdoor shower.

    There are so many moles in the front yard that it would take a weapon of mass destruction to rid us of them, and so they, making themselves very much at home, continue to fluff things up. Walking on our mossy lawn is like walking on a lumpy mattress, a not unpleasant sensation.

    While I won’t be at the college reunion in body, I will be in spirit, in the form of a rather cheery essay on the passage of time. I should rail against it, but, for the moment, I can’t complain. And, as a result, I’ve begun to call myself the Pollyanna of the class of ’62. I told one of my college roommates that to remind me life was not all wine and roses I have a copy of Kafka’s short stories lying on my bedside table, and that, of course, I’d not yet read them.