At some point in the run-up to Irene we thought the hurricane might make landfall here in the small hours of the morning, and I was quite worried about what might happen — while we were sleeping — to the huge, old tulip tree in our side yard. In 2007, our favorite tree was estimated as 104 feet tall and as having a spread of about 70 feet. At the time, we also learned it was already in decline, or “overmature.”

    I thought about moving the computers and printer and even the wall of books that could have been in jeopardy if one of the tulip’s heavy branches fell on the house. When we learned the worst of Irene wasn’t due till after daylight Sunday, I relaxed. The tree might not weather the storm, but at least I wouldn’t be crushed in my bed.

    I wish I knew how old the tulip, Liriodendron tulipfera, is. It’s very old, but not as old, apparently, as a tulip in Queens that is said to have stood for 350 to 450 years. I can’t venture a guess, but the Queens one is apparently only 30 feet taller than ours.

    And our tulip has stood fast through many a hurricane.

    Trees as old as these must be horticulturally adapted to weather storms. The Queens tulip goes back to the 17th century, for goodness’ sake, and, although I’m not the best Web researcher, Atlantic tropical cyclones are estimated to have claimed as many as a half-million human lives between Columbus’s arrival in the New World and 1994 (and no one was counting Spaniards at sea, slaves, and Native Americans in those earlier centuries).

    At any rate, our tulip stood its ground admirably during Irene. The same cannot be said for a nearby locust that swayed sideways for hours, then came down, or another tree that fell off its apparently rotted roots at about 6 a.m. Sunday, before the winds had even reached maximum speed. That one crashed down all across the patio, barely missing the roof over my bedroom and the sun porch windows.

    Because our tulip tree shares the property line with the East Hampton Library, it is a quasi-public behemoth, worth taking a look at.  Four years ago, it was estimated to have a diameter at breast height of between 74 and 80 inches, although the expert who studied it noted the tool he used to measure diameter “doesn’t account for such a big tree.”

    Dennis Fabiszak, the library director, and I took a walk around the tulip on Tuesday with the library’s own tree man, who said it needed some pruning and cabling, in addition to repair of the small breaks wrought by the storm. The tree is worthy of tender loving care, to be sure.

    The library had been looking after  another oldie, a multi-stemmed white mulberry just a few yards from the tulip, which also had been studied by the visiting expert in 2007. Like the tulip, it was big for its species, with a height of 40 feet, a spread of 50 feet, and a diameter at breast height of 30 inches. Unlike the tulip, much of it was decayed, and Irene managed to take down one of its powerful limbs. By Tuesday afternoon, the downed branch had been cut into chunks.

    Mulberries are not considered valuable landscape trees, although the library’s mulberry was a beauty. On the other hand, tulip trees, which are also known as tulip poplars, are coveted. Their yellow flowers are large and pretty, resembling tulips, at least a little. They self-seed, and, as a matter of fact, I know of a seedling about 12 inches high that looks promising. If you would like to nurture it, let me know.

    Monday morning’s helicopter traffic at East Hampton Airport began at about 6:12, at least according to the clock on my computer screen.

    Because of the hurricane, Lisa and I had evacuated the dogs and the children to her parents’ house on high ground off Route 114, about two-thirds of the way from East Hampton to Sag Harbor. I was up before the sun on Monday, trying to post updates on the storm on The Star’s Web site. The door to the back deck was open, so the dogs, confused about being in the wrong house, could go in and out.

    The skies above East Hampton were relatively quiet, at least for one of the last weekends in August. Had at least some of the helicopter crowd not opted to stay elsewhere, I expect the roar would have been more like that on the Monday the Dow Jones Industrial Average fainted after the United States’ credit downgrade. I had been at Georgica Beach at about 7 a.m. that day, and let me tell you, the choppers had a certain urgency about them. One after the other came and went, ferrying the titans of Wall Street back to watch their portfolios do the lambaba with the ratings agencies.

    I don’t mean to make light of the irritation that many residents feel about helicopters. Frank Dalene, who lives in Wainscott, sent round a short video he made last week from his deck, showing what he said was Ira Rennert’s chopper, which appears to be only a couple of dozen feet above his house.

    Mr. Dalene, whom I have met several times and consider very reasonable, said he thought the pilot was deliberately trying to harass him and his family. Mr. Dalene has been a formidable critic of East Hampton Airport operations and is a co-founder of a new group dedicated to limiting helicopter noise. He said the Rennert overflight shook his house more violently than the Aug. 23 earthquake. Watching — and listening — to the video, I was inclined to agree. The group hasn’t said much, if anything, though, about the noise jets make as they home in to the airport over East Hampton Village.  

    Of course, because this is an important election year in East Hampton Town, with Supervisor Bill Wilkinson hoping to hang on for a second two-year term, it isn’t surprising that the airport controversy has come up again and become clouded by politics. What really will get clouded in the back-and-forth is the fact that some people are being driven crazy by all the noise. It doesn’t seem right.

    “The end is near, the end is near!” I said, running through the village last Thursday afternoon on the way to East Hampton Wines to buy a three-day supply of Mudhouse’s sauvignon blanc.

    What else? A whistle. Newsday said in its preparedness list that I should have one. It’s more impressive if you have a whistle when you run through the village shouting “The end is near (Tweet)! The end is near (Tweet)!”

    What else? It’s time to think of final things, Jack, such as taking a remedial course in math.

    It’s always bothered me that I did so poorly in algebra, and that then, after being told those who failed algebra would in all likelihood do well in geometry, I failed geometry too.

    If I were to retake these courses now, I would apply myself, I think, just as I am applying myself today to being prepared for Hurricane Irene. Oddly, Irene was the Greeks’ goddess of peace, and irenic — ain’t it ironic — means peaceful. The word is every now and then in The Times’s crossword puzzle. It comes from the ancient Greek, which, like Latin, is said to be a dead language. Dead maybe, but beautiful. I should take courses in them too.

    As for my mathochism, an Op-Ed piece in The Times last week comforted me somewhat when it proposed that we jettison pure, abstract math courses in favor of linking math to more practical applications so that we can make better choices — the most pressing one on my mind at the moment being where to park the cars, in the front yard or the back.

    But wait. Didn’t someone, a college classmate of mine in fact, win a Nobel Prize for discovering that when it comes to personal economic decisions it’s irrationality that holds sway?

    And speaking of swaying, I did the other day on a stool in The Star’s back shop as I was proofreading my pages. I turned and looked quizzically at Matt Charron, who was on the same page, as it were, and faster than you could say “Shines for All” we were all standing around outside, giddy but a little shaken.

    And then I remembered Henry was still upstairs. Even a sneezing fit will prod him to look nervously for cover. I found him splayed out, hugging the rug and looking up at me with those almond-shape brown eyes when I arrived at my office, and apologized to him for wanting to save my skin first.

    Earthquakes, hurricanes. . . . What else looms. . . ?

    Ah, how could I forget. Eternity.

    But first, the Hampton Classic.

    All I want for Labor Day is for my power to come back on. It’s my turn this week to write this column and though I have several columns waiting to be published, how could I not write about the hurricane? I’m told we could be without power for 6 to 10 days!

    I live in a neighborhood that is right near the Montauk Lighthouse, which means we’re on the most eastern tip of Long Island, the windiest area in Montauk. Our power went off on Friday night, actually, at about 8 p.m. just when my husband and I were sitting down for dinner and two days before Hurricane Irene was scheduled to hit our area.

    It’s as if the Long Island Power Authority were giving us a test run. They said it would be on by 10 p.m., but that didn’t happen. I got up at 1 a.m. to hit the bathroom and bing! the lights went on.

    I stupidly thought that since the lines were already fixed and hopefully secured we wouldn’t lose power again when Irene came to visit, but on Sunday morning the lights sputtered and went out.

    The wind was howling like I’ve never heard and we could hear the ocean churning up from a mile away. LIPA is saying it could take days, if not weeks, to restore the power out here. We have no phones or cellphone service, either. Just check on us once in a while, okay?

    It’s amazing to realize how spoiled we are. You learn that when you lose power. I walk into a room and immediately flick the light switch and nothing happens. I open the refrigerator and everything’s starting to warm, and smell. My precious ice cream is melting as quickly as the witch in “The Wizard of Oz” when she was doused with water. I’m reading books and writing this by the sunlight that is streaming through my bedroom window.

    My hair is a mass of frizz, knotted and matted! There is no coffee or toast in the mornings. I can’t vacuum the dog hair from my carpets. Dishes are piling in the sink because I have forgotten how to wash them — the dishwasher usually does that. There are lanterns and candles in jars, tapers and votives littering my coffee table in the living room. I’m hoarding matches. And I’m bored.

    All over my neighborhood cars are parked with surfboards on roofs or stuffed into hatchbacks. Cars with surfers in them are driving up and down our usually quiet block all day long looking for an access to the best waves this summer. They have been blocked from using their traditional spots. Since almost everyone who lives here in our area is a surfer or has a surfer in the family, most of us don’t mind. Vicariously, I know the thrill of a good wave.

    The grounds around the Montauk Lighthouse and Turtle Cove have been blocked since Saturday by state park barriers and police. I imagine, although since I don’t have a phone I really am guessing, that the water is unsafe because of the huge waves. But what a drag for those of us who don’t surf to not be able to drive to the Lighthouse and see the ocean at its roughest.

    I adopted a kitten on Friday, a little black female that needed a home. We named her Storm. I always had cats but one of my daughters is allergic so I had to hold off for a while. She was home for the summer but has since left to go back to Hawaii. We have mice in winter and I felt a cat could help keep them from scurrying from my woodpile into my warm house, plus I love a cat snuggled on my lap. Storm was frightened by the storm, the howling of the wind and the branches that scraped our windows like in a horror movie. She’s still hiding under a bed, but I hope she joins our family soon.

    I had two funny things happen to me during Ms. Irene. First was I stood next to Julianne Moore in Herb’s Montauk Market. I have wanted to apologize to Ms. Moore for two years, ever since she narrated a ballet performance at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center. Playhouse officials had called me and asked me to come and take pictures of her for this paper. And so I did but I got there late after it was announced that pictures weren’t allowed. As I snapped away a man finally came over to me and said, “You know you’re being very rude. They said no pictures.”

    And instead of my telling him where to go or to explain that I was with the house I just humbly sat down and then slithered out. I was mortified because I abhor rudeness and am not rude at all. So Ms. Moore, I didn’t bother you in Herb’s, but I apologize. I didn’t know.

    As the wind blew ferociously on Sunday afternoon I took my Brodie Boy, a sweet golden doodle, out to play ball. I threw the ball and he fetched until a car pulled up on my side lawn. A good-looking guy, one whom my husband has yelled at me about for telling everyone how good looking he is, approached me to see how he could get back to Camp Hero through all the police blockades. I told him a secret path and then realized he was an actor from a show I used to love that was recently taken off the air.

    The excitement of hurricanes is one that can’t be avoided. You never know how it’s going to turn out. Except for power losses and a lot of downed trees, we made out okay this time. So goodnight, Irene, and may our paths never cross again.

—

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer at The Star.

    Mayor Kenneth Wessberg, a man with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, was the first local who befriended me when we arrived in East Hampton from Pittsburgh in 1979. As mayor, he had a vested interested in the success of the Maidstone Arms, the venerable inn we had purchased, and he also had a special fondness for the place. When he was young, he and his friend Shep Frood, whose parents owned the hotel during the ’30s and ’40s, used it to expand their body of knowledge. Others might have frowned on “window peeking” had they known what the boys were up to, but Kenneth and Shep thought of their activity as being strictly educational.

    After learning of my planning background in the heavily Democratic city of Pittsburgh, he warned me that locals controlled East Hampton politics, and locals were Republicans. Tapping my chest with his middle finger, he clarified: “You’ll never become a local. If you join the Republican Party, that’s the closest you’ll come to being a local. Someday you’ll need a variance for your hotel, and, in East Hampton, Republicans get variances.” Then he reiterated, “Even if you give up being a Roosevelt Democrat, you’ll never, never be considered a local.”

    When you’ve been excluded from a club, it makes you want to join, even if it’s a club you’d never aspire to get into under normal circumstances. But it wasn’t possible to be a local so I lived with the longing, while at the same time I adjusted to the fact that I was an outsider.

    Years after my conversation with the mayor, after we had sold the Maidstone and bought the J. Harper Poor Cottage, on a Sunday evening in August, my wife and I pulled out of the inn onto Main Street, forced to travel southwest when we wanted to go northeast. The traffic going the way we wanted to go was bumper to bumper. Drivers were hunched over their steering wheels with enough menace to prevent any attempt to crowd in front of them, so I drove our dented station wagon to the first left turn at the head of Town Pond, where I’d have only one line of traffic to buck, and furthermore where I’d not have to ask anyone to give up 12 feet of asphalt so I could be in front of them.

    We sat there with the turn signal blinking. Annoyed drivers behind us honked then slid into the ditch to pass on the right. I tried to make eye contact with the approaching drivers, but they avoided me to make sure no one, especially me, violated their right to that 12-foot piece of tax-funded pavement.

    Then a silver sport coupe was in front of me, and the driver was looking down — tuning his radio, stroking a small pet; I’m not sure — and he failed to claim his part of the roadway so I swerved in front of him. He looked up just in time to see the rear of the station wagon, with a taillight dangling from its wires, drive over his space. In the mirror, I saw him stand up in the seat, poke his head out the open sunroof, and, with his middle finger thrusting toward heaven, he shouted, “You fucking goddamned local piece of shit!” I couldn’t believe my ears. I was stunned.    

    “What did he say?” I asked my wife.

    “You fucking goddamned local piece of shit.”

    “That’s what I thought.” I slammed the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. It vibrated like a guitar string as chills went up my spine. “Do you know how long I’ve waited to be a local? I wish Mayor Wessberg hadn’t died. I’m going to his grave tomorrow and tell him what that guy said.”

    “That driver’s not really qualified to confer any status like that,” she reminded me. “He has Jersey plates. He’s from New Jersey.”

    “I know, but still. He thinks I’m a local.”

    By then we had made a second left turn and were headed north in a new line of traffic beyond the green, where Main Street becomes four lanes wide. The houses and stores facing Main had been set back on purpose by the original locals so their cattle, herded communally, could be driven down it and kept at night in the pasturage around Town Pond.

    “Look, there’s our boy,” I said to my wife, pointing at the coupe five or six car lengths ahead. “I wonder if I could get him to say it again.” She looked skeptical.

    “That is so not you,” she said. “You don’t like confrontations.”

    “Yes, you’re right. I had no idea he’d react that way when I turned in front of him back there. Totally out of character of me to do it on purpose.”

    By then, we were only two car lengths behind him. My heart fluttered; I felt a little sick in my stomach, as if I were being possessed by another power. And just like that, we were beside the coupe. From the corner of my eye, I saw the driver looking down again, and then there was the 12-foot gap, and, as if the devil himself were driving, the steering wheel jerked left, a foot pressed the accelerator, and the station wagon jolted over in front of the guy from New Jersey in the silver sports car. I put my head out the window so I wouldn’t miss a word.

    “You piece of local dog shit!” he shouted. I pulled my head back inside and slumped against the headrest, closing my eyes for a few seconds as the traffic moved ahead and the horns honked behind me. I couldn’t believe how good I felt.

    In East Hampton Village there are no leash laws. So Ruxford, a dog of mixed heritage owned by a man who was then head of the planning board, often visited Main Street and has his paw prints in the sidewalk near the fancy shops because he failed to observe the sign, “Wet cement.” Every two or three years, some outsider in a new pair of Guccis stepped in a little dog doo-doo, got riled, and started a petition to control dogs, but so far those efforts have been defeated.

    When asked why he opposed a leash law, one local board member responded, “If people insist on being people, I believe dogs should be allowed to be dogs.” The fact that I was not just a generic piece shit but a piece of local dog shit seemed to magnify the honor given to me by the guy from New Jersey. I opened my eyes in time to see him open his car door.

    He was a heavy man, late 30s or early 40s, red-faced, in a suit and tie, undoubtedly on his way to a fund-raiser. He could tell his compatriots how some “goddamned fucking local piece of dog shit” had delayed him. And everyone could have a good laugh and agree that all you needed locals for was to fix your air-conditioning, clip your privet, and take your unwanted guests into the hospitality of their B&Bs. Some of the people around him might secretly check their soles to make sure they had not stepped in anything, because what was that odor, anyhow?

     “You better get out of here,” my wife said, “he looks really mad.” But it was too late. He was outside my window. Before he could say a word, with more ferocity than I thought possible for a timid man, I blurted out: “Thank you, sir, for the honor! I’m proud to be a local!”

    I gunned the old wagon, and she did not hesitate. We rounded the curve toward the post office, squeezed in front of a dark-green Bentley, and headed out Accabonac into the heart of Springs, where the locals live, where I felt welcomed, although I was still an outsider. Where no one in a silver sport coupe would find us, no matter how angry he was.

_____

    Gary Reiswig is the author of the novel “Water Boy” and “The Thousand Mile Stare: One Family’s Journey Through the Struggle and Science of Alzheimer’s.”

      The grandfather clock is ticking again. A clock expert, an East Hampton summer resident, cleaned and adjusted it this week and set it going for the first time in three years.

    It had stood with its pretty old face askew all that time after some hapless housepainters, clearing the furniture before setting to work on the living room, had laid it down, flat, on the floor. We were dismayed that it had been damaged, but hadn’t acted to get it fixed till now.

    Unfortunately, when Stan Bitterman, the expert, first arrived, the door of the clock case was locked, and the key, which we all remember as being attached to a Champagne cork that was left in a hiding place at the top of the case, was nowhere to be found. After a few days’ search, and after trying several ancient hollow-ended skeleton keys from antique dressers and such, I gave up and called a locksmith.

    Bob Bennett, the locksmith, wasn’t home, and his mother wasn’t encouraging about whether he would be able to help. I thought of trying someone else when I hadn’t heard from him in a few days, but made another call to the Bennetts anyway. This time, Annamae Bennett said she was about to go to the village on an errand and would stop by.

    Stop by she did, bringing three big bags of old, hollow-ended keys. Mrs. Bennett suggested we try them. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I brought out a small white table, and we began spreading out the keys. There were perhaps 200 of them. With a laugh, Mrs. Bennett suggested I work on it and left them in my care. She didn’t tell me how long I might be able to keep them.

    Daunted, I nevertheless tried two. The first didn’t slip into the slot. The second broke off in it.

    That was it. I would need to call Mr. Bitterman, who, I hoped, would be able to make a professional distinction between them. But later the same day, Mr. Bennett himself arrived. He had the clock opened in short order. He wouldn’t sell the key, though, saying it might come in handy elsewhere and, anyway, there was really no reason to lock the clock.

    Then came another hitch, however. In the years that the clock stood without ticking, I had forgotten that it has to be wound.

    “Do you have the crank?” my new friend the clock man asked, gently. He was able to wind the clock with a crank of his own, and promised to find me one of the correct size when he was next in New York.

    Just how I could have misplaced, or more likely hidden purposefully, the original key attached to a Champagne cork plus the original metal crank with a wooden handle, is unclear. But meanwhile, the clock, which may be 150 years old or more, has been put to rights.

    You sometimes hear complaints from city folks about local tradesmen here. The fact is, I was glad I had chosen to call a locksmith with a local name. Where else but in a small town with colonial roots — and from whom but a locksmith whose family, on both sides, goes back to its founding in the 17th century — would you be lent three big bags of antique keys? (Who else would even have them?) I was enthralled, and have been telling the story ever since.

    There is something about grandfather clocks that makes people wax poetic.

    The clock man put it simply. “It’s a matter of the heart,” he said.

    My family had a chance to see the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaleship in existence, at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut last weekend. We had been to New Hampshire to pick up Adelia, our oldest child, at camp, and made our way back to the New London ferry by way of a water park, a visit to the college I went to, an amusement park, the Mystic Aquarium, and the Seaport.

    I did not think about the personal significance of the old hulk until we were there, but it dawned on me that the Morgan was about as close as my kids were going to get to the life that their East Hampton ancestors knew. And this is true not just for us, but for quite a number of South and North Fork families whose forebears went to distant seas as whalemen.

    A son of Amagansett, Joshua B. Edwards, the kids’ great-great-great-grandfather, shipped out of Sag Harbor in 1850 aboard the Ontario. He did not return until April 1854. Later the same year, he sailed on the bark Oregon out of Greenport. Another voyage began aboard the Susan in 1857, and another on the Parana in 1860. His final trip, on the Jireh Perry, began in 1864. By December of that year, he saw icebergs off the south island of New Zealand, and was at Pitcairn Island in February 1865.

    Exploring belowdecks on the Morgan, the girls were fascinated by the cramped sleeping quarters and impressed by the captain’s almost-posh accommodations by contrast. I told them that Joshua was a tall man by the standards of the day but that he, like the rest of the crews of which he was a part, had to cram into the bunks as best he could. It was clear that a four-year voyage on a ship like the Morgan was something well beyond their comprehension. They get fidgety on a four-hour car ride.

    In all honesty, I think it is difficult for contemporary observers to really place themselves in the shoes of these whalers — the monotony, the lack of privacy, the dubious bathing options. Still, as the girls tromped around the ship, I could see sparks of understanding.

    A photograph of the Morgan hangs in our house. It was taken by Joshua’s son Everett J. Edwards south of Noman’s Land, off Martha’s Vineyard, in August 1913. The Morgan was en route to Bedford, Mass., that day when it passed E.J.’s bunker steamer. In its holds were 3,000 barrels of sperm-whale oil, the oil of one right whale, and a quantity of ambergris. The ship made its last commercial whaling voyage in 1921, when, for the eastern United States, the pursuit of whales was beginning to fade into memory.

    Today, the Morgan sits on dry land, a three-year, $5 million restoration ongoing, masts resting prone in the shipyard. I hope to take the kids to see it when it has been returned to the water.

On Channel 13 the other night the economics reporter, Paul Solman, was standing outside a theater in New York City showing people pie charts of three countries’ economies and asking them to pick America’s.

    In the top one (which didn’t exist), there were five equal slices. In the middle one, the top 20 percent had 36 percent of the wealth. In the bottom one, the top fifth controlled 84 percent.

    As I recall, no one picked America’s pie except two laborers, who had no trouble at all in pointing to the economy that to many appeared as if it were a third world one as ours.

    Why, I wondered, were all those people so dumb? Had they been reading the papers at all lately, they wouldn’t have mistaken Sweden’s economy (the middle one) for America’s.

    Actually, it just wasn’t the small group standing in front of the theater who were dumb. Seven thousand Americans sampled by the pie charts’ progenitor, Dan Ariely, a psychologist at Duke, proved to be equally as clueless.

    “Ninety-two percent of the Americans picked Sweden over the U.S.,” Ariely told Solman at one point in the “PBS NewsHour” piece. “When we broke it by Democrats and Republicans, Democrat, it was 93 percent, Republican, it was 90.5 percent.”

    Ah, there’s the answer, I thought at first: Nobody (Congress included) knows anything in this country! But, wait, maybe we’re all on to something inasmuch as we secretly think of ourselves as Sweden!

    Warren Buffett, of course, knows we are not, and so I was drawn to his Op-Ed piece in The New York Times — and to his comments on the Charlie Rose show — in which he told of how he and his super-rich confreres, all of whom, he said, owe some measure of their financial success to this country’s fostering of the entrepreneurial spirit, continue to be coddled. Please, raise our taxes, he said, and is saying.

    Leveling is not the answer, nor, by the same token, is grossly unequal wealth distribution.  

    Taxes should be raised on the wealthy, and that money should be used by the government to put people back to work. Then, once our mammoth foreign adventure drains have been stanched and the economy has revived somewhat, the budget deficit should be addressed.

    Meanwhile, that Swedish pie looks tempting to me — and apparently to the great majority of those Democrats and Republicans surveyed.    Jack Graves

    P.S. Last week’s column had a major error. (Aside: I couldn’t have made it, could I?) I was not saved from fun by Ev Rattray, Barbara Johnson, and Mary: I was saved for it! Oh well, it’s summertime and the proofreadin’ ain’t easy.

It was only last Thursday that Barbara Strong Borsack, deputy mayor of East Hampton Village and a recent addition to Southampton Hospital’s board of directors, set her eagle eye on me as I sat waiting to scribble my notes just prior to the East Hampton Village Board meeting.

    I noticed, as a few people came into the room, that Ms. Borsack was handing out pretty blue T-shirts. I wanted one, and let my wishes be known.

    “They’re for my Ellen’s Run team,” she said. “If you want one, you have to join my team.”

    A little background here. In 2007, I participated in Boston’s 60-mile, three-day Walk for the Cure, which raises money and awareness for the Susan G. Komen Foundation and its involvement in fighting breast cancer.

    Being somewhat — how shall I put this delicately? — fat, I spent almost seven months training for that event, and as soon as it was finished, took up residence again in my comfy chair and haven’t moved since.    So a 5K, to my warped brain, sounded pretty easy, even though I had no idea how long five kilometers actually was. I just knew it was generally less than five miles. If I could do 20 miles a day (completely forgetting that I had ferociously beaten my body into shape and that four years of comfy chair-sitting then followed), less than five miles should be no problem.

    A pretty blue T-shirt was bestowed on me. I signed up that night for Ellen’s Run, which was to be held on Sunday. Then I took up residence in my comfy chair and thought no more about it until 7 a.m. Sunday morning.

    That morning, I met with my great good friend Gaye Campbell at Starbucks. I was in full race regalia (pretty blue T-shirt, fat girl yoga pants, socks, sneakers, and a powerful bra that could probably hold in the Hoover Dam). Gaye, as always, was dressed in an adorable workout get-up. This morning it was tennis wear.

    “Oh, I’m doing it with you,” she said.

    This coming from a woman who, in spite of the clothing, has told me that her idea of exercise was “having a brisk sit.”

    “I’ll follow your car,” she said. Then she was off.

    If Ellen’s Run were Ellen’s 500, Gaye would be the winner, hands down.

    We arrived at the hospital and met with Barbara Borsack and the rest of the “Strong Connections” team, almost 80 of us all together. Sheila Dunlop, known by many from the East Hampton Library, took our group picture.

    I was sweating buckets already. Not a good sign.

    When Gaye got back from registration, she was number 921. I was amazed at the level of participation in the race.

    There were over 1,000 of us at the starting line, ranging from ancient tiny women in straw hats to dog walkers, stroller-pushers, toddlers, people in wheelchairs, cancer survivors, those left behind by cancer, and regular folk.

    When the air horn blew, Gaye and I were immediately passed by old ladies in straw hats, stroller-pushers, and, not long afterward, toddlers and dog walkers.

    I haven’t decided yet which is more humiliating, being left in the dust by a 2-year-old or a Pomeranian.

    Gaye could have picked up the pace, but she stayed at my side. Because of the good conversation with an old, dear friend, it wasn’t long before we passed the one-mile mark. Then the two-mile.

    At exactly one hour, we were within yards of the finish line.

    There was a photographer there. “Let’s sprint it,” Gaye suggested.

    Using up the last carbohydrate in my body, I performed something between a sprint and a hobble across the finish line. Gaye looked the photographer head-on, flashing her pearly whites and  giving a big thumbs-up.

    The photographer almost rolled his eyes. “Okay ladies, you can stop now,” he said.

    I’ve continued to use the somewhat nebulous phrase, “I finished Ellen’s 5K Run” to my friends, which is ever so much more impressive than, “I barely finished Bridget’s three-mile walk.”

    But to be part of the camaraderie, the intention, the awareness, the help, the excitement, and the service of all the good people involved in raising money for Southampton Hospital’s Ellen Hermanson Breast Center was more rewarding than a trophy for first place (I can only imagine). And most rewarding of all was doing something worthwhile with a good friend, instead of filling our bodies with caffeine and pastries.

    I’m going to start training for next year right now.

    Just as soon as I get out of my comfy chair.

—

    Bridget LeRoy is a reporter at The Star.

    I never played with my children. I took them to museums, plays, puppet shows, movies, and bowling and I read to them, but I never just sat down and played with them. My energy level fell to zero handling the everyday tasks of raising four kids after a long day in the office. I just couldn’t motivate myself to make forts with them out of Legos.

    As they got older I was an enthusiastic spectator at their wrestling matches, baseball and football games, and swimming meets. I clapped so vigorously at their school performances that the palms of my hands stayed pink for days. But that was the thing — I was always an observer, not a participant in their playing.

    I guess the truth was that even when I was a child I never really just played. I was always going somewhere or doing something with a purpose. I made potholders so that my family members and neighbors would ante up a few pennies for one of my creations. My friend and I produced and acted in little vignettes in my garage in the hope of receiving praise from an audience. I guess that was why when my son asked me to watch my granddaughter overnight I was extremely nervous at how we would spend the time together.

    After six days riding the waves, the beach had lost its allure. I feverishly racked my mind for things that a 7-year-old would enjoy. We started the day by playing miniature golf, followed by a visit to a toy store, and then lunch in a Chinese restaurant. I was tense as I realized it was only 12:30 in the afternoon. Half a day hadn’t even passed.

    Luckily two children’s movies were playing back to back in the theater in town. Comfortable that more than four hours could be taken care of, we nestled into our seats to watch talking animals and wizards. We gorged on junk food and emerged from the theater in time to wolf down some slices of pizza before stopping at the supermarket to buy a last sugar rush. Finally, we headed for the video store to finish our day with one more mind-numbing movie.

    After trying several times to start the DVD player, the realization hit me that I wasn’t behaving like the grandmother idealized in storybooks. I always said I would teach my grandchildren the proper foods to eat and entertain them with scintillating interactions. The fact was that I was selfish and bored with the idea of building sand castles and drawing pictures. I had my first child at 19 and still had one at home. I had been a school principal and had spent my entire life with children. Is it possible to be burned out on all things relating to children? I was feeling guilty and decided to do something about it.

    It was still too early to sleep, so I virtuously asked my granddaughter if she wanted to do a puzzle or read together. Unfortunately, I had picked the two things that she least liked to do. I resisted the temptation to spend the evening interrogating her about her mom and dad. Memories flooded into my mind of my mom baby-sitting for my children and then chastising me about the “bad” things she had discovered about me from my kids.

    Suddenly, an idea popped into my head. We could talk. She could tell me about all the things she loved, and maybe there were some things in my life that she might find interesting to hear about. She had gone clamming with her dad the day before and was less than enchanted with the experience. At the end of the week she would go fishing with him on her first party boat.

    It occurred to me that both of these events had been significant milestones in my own children’s lives. To a 7-year-old the word “tradition” is fairly meaningless. I held her close as I told her how her daddy’s grandfather and later his father had taken him on a fishing boat many years ago. Someday she would have a child and someone special would take him or her on a fishing boat or clamming. She will tell her child about the first time that she went with her dad, and a family tradition will continue.

    As she listened to me she became very quiet and snuggled even closer to me. We kept telling each other stories until I looked at the clock and realized that it was way past her bedtime and I hadn’t actually played with my granddaughter once. As I was tucking her into bed she looked at me and said, “Nana, I had so much fun with you today.”

    Maybe my idea of playing was too limited in scope. If it simply means having fun, then I guess that I’ve been playing for most of my life but I just didn’t know it.

    Sandy Camillo, a previous contributor of “Guestwords,” spends summers at her house in East Hampton.