The difference between good and evil seemed straightforward when I was a child. Call it what you will: the Judeo-Christian ethical code, the Golden Rule . . .

    As a Jewish kid growing up during World War II, I thought the world had only one set of evil people: the Nazis. I learned to revere those Americans who died in that war, who fought not only for us but for the Jews of Europe. I didn’t ponder the role of Stalin’s army, or where an ally like Stalin might fall in my simplistic good-versus-evil mental filing system; and that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor didn’t figure much in my parents’ or grandparents’ thoughts, much less mine.

    On Monday, Memorial Day, I will again remember those Americans who sacrificed their lives, but my absolutist understanding of good and evil has considerably changed. Although nations do sometimes sway, in mysterious ways, toward one or the other, as an adult, I certainly don’t think any country has a monopoly on either.

    The United States is one of the most religious countries in the developed world. According to Wikipedia, a 2002 study by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found the U.S. to be “the only developed nation . . . where a majority of citizens reported that religion played a ‘very important’ role in their lives, an attitude similar to that found in its neighbors in Latin America.”

    With Memorial Day approaching, I have been wondering what American children, these days, are being taught by their religious elders about how to do good in the world. I think about the men and women we have sent to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And about Abu Ghraib (where a few of those men and women committed acts of humiliation and inhumanity). We know that the violent exigencies of fighting in a war have extreme effects on those who take part, but can they destroy a soldier’s gut understanding of right and wrong?

    The killing of Osama bin Laden on May 1 probably will be heralded in speeches on Memorial Day as a victory against evil. However we personally received the news of his death (relief, jubilation, fear), we should not because of it be tricked into condoning the “harsh” interrogation of alleged Al Qaeda prisoners — waterboarding, for example —  on the theory that torture led to a tip about Bin Laden’s whereabouts.

    We are also apt to praise the Central Intelligence Agency for tracking down Bin Laden. But we should not forget that since 2001 the C.I.A. has hidden and interrogated alleged terrorists in secret prisons from Afghanistan to Thailand and has engaged in what is called “rendition,” sending prisoners to Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, where human rights activists report torture has been routine.

     A terrible World War II image of Jews crowded into railroad cars on their way to concentration camps came to my mind’s eye when I read recently that in the winter of 2001 “Afghan generals” with whom the U.S. was allied crowded so many captives into metal containers that some died of asphyxiation.

    It is time for the United States to dedicate itself to a document it signed in 1994: the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. To do so would be a true memorial to those Americans who have died for liberty, on American soil, in Europe, and beyond.

    The six of us were the only Americans flying to Havana from Miami on a chartered flight in March. The others were Cuban, many with packages of goods purchased to take home. The mood among the Cubans was festive. I was excited in a more interior way, looking forward to seeing friends in Guines, the town southeast of Havana where we were going.

    We were Dennis and Barbara D’Andrea and Patricia Wadzinski, members of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church; John White, Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church; Steve Calo, the Shinnecock Presbyterian Church, and me, pastor emeritus of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church.

    U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba for religious purposes do so legally with a license from our Treasury Department. The process of getting the license has been simple, but the rules change. As of this April religious travel will no longer require a license.

    I’ve been to Cuba eight times, and I’m usually asked upon my return if I’ve noticed changes. Yes. Two things of note: economic hard times in Cuba and the government’s initiative to permit some private enterprise.

    One Cuban pastor told us there are now half a million unemployed in Cuba, and the number is expected to rise to 16 percent of the population of 11 million. Food is also a problem. There is not enough.

    The government had provided free lunches to children at school, but it can’t do that now. There has always been some food rationing. It’s not like refrigerators are stocked or you can run up to a supermarket to get more. There are no supermarkets. I spoke with the Rev. Ismael Madruga one morning on his way to a neighborhood food store. He is the retired pastor of the church we visit. He was on his way to buy eggs, and he showed me his ration book. There is some good news here. He can now buy five eggs a week, up from four!

    One recent change in economic policy was to allow people to lease uncultivated arable land from the government and split farm proceeds 50-50 with the government. The government also encourages small business ventures, though it’s difficult within the structure of a socialist economy.

    We were given one example. An individual or a family can now go into the bakery business, selling bread. Cubans get their daily bread in the morning, long or short loaves (like French bread). The difficulty is this: There is no wholesale level of business to handle the private bread shops. What happens then is that the owner of a private enterprise goes to a government bread shop and buys up bread to sell privately. This has two effects. It creates a shortage of bread at the government shops, so there are now long lines to get bread where there hadn’t been previously. And the private shop will charge more because of the expense of running the business, however modest.

    The business is also taxed. One long loaf of bread at a private store costs 10 Cuban pesos, which is the equivalent of half a day’s wages. A short loaf of bread is 5 pesos. I don’t know the price at a government store, but obviously it’s less. There are two currencies, one for Cubans, the other for visitors to Cuba. The latter is called the convertible peso, or CUC. On this trip the exchange was 86 cents American to 1 CUC. In the domestic Cuban currency, 1 peso is equal to 8 cents.

    We were guests of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Guines. We were legally able to take cash to the church for capital improvements and to augment the church’s outreach into the community. One new program is a weekly lunch for senior citizens. We also legally took with us over-the-counter and prescription medicines. The latter are distributed by the church with medical supervision.

    The pastor of the Guines church is Yampier Sanchez, a young man who visited East Hampton last year. He just got a new car — a 1955 Ford! Purple, diesel engine. One night Yampier took me for a ride. We rumbled through the streets, windows down in the warm tropical air, people outside after work and young people in the streets. Having come of age in the early 1950s I felt like a teenager again myself, cruising around town.

    Yampier’s car does not have a title because the purchase of it was private, “on the left,” as the expression goes. Purchases through proper channels, as with daily bread, are “on the right.” To ask a Cuban (or anyone else) how the Cuban economy works is to get a shrug of the shoulders. Who knows? Yampier quoted Leonardo Padura, a Cuban writer: “In Cuba it’s better to live it than to explain it.”

    The people do enjoy free medical care and free education. On the downside, political debate is not open, outside Internet access is blocked except for professionals like doctors, and travel is severely limited. E-mail is open for those who have computers, but few among those we know in Guines have them.

    There is of course underground political comment on the slant, or sotto voce. I was speaking with some men and women after a Sunday church service (where I had preached). Informally I commented on our government’s rules to get a license to travel, and I said in Spanish that it seemed one office didn’t know what another office was saying on the same subject. One Guines woman said quietly in English, “Not just your government.”

    With all the complexities and hardships, the people live their lives. Men and women go to work, children go to school, churches thrive as social centers, there are fiestas or parties, youth flirt and date, the old gossip in their doorways. What else is new, the world over?

    I have become especially close to one family, and I visited them in their home. Olga is the grandmother. Her son, Lazaro, works for the rum company Havana Club. His wife, Hilda, is a teacher. They have two sons, Yadiel, age 15, and Yassiel, 11. Lazaro gave me a bottle of Havana Club. Strictly speaking we’re not to bring rum back to this country, but since it was a gift I thought I’d take a chance, and it got through.

    All of us in our group went on pastoral visits to church members. The homes are modest, to put it mildly, and vary greatly in appearance and repair. Some families receive money from relatives in the U.S., and a visitor can see that assistance in the upkeep of those houses. Other houses are old wood structures that look as though they might fall down.

    In that mixed context, church is a vital social experience. Churches are thriving in Cuba, where in the 1960s through the ’80s churches were repressed. Things opened up in the early ’90s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Sunday school of the Guines church has 80 children, the adult congregation close to 150, with a good choir. The morning service lasts two hours, broken into segments: study, worship, and a break with juice and cookies outside. Singing is lusty; open prayer is heartfelt.

    I enjoy the slower pace of life in Guines. Many walk or ride bicycles to work. Children walk to school and play in the street afterward. There are very few personal computers, and our American cellphones have no reception — oh, the bliss of that quiet! As with the old Ford, I felt I’d been transported back into the 1950s. It’s pleasant, and bittersweet, because at the end of it we return to our hyped and hooked-up society, a jarring contrast.

    The Rev. Thomas Schacher of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church will be taking a group of young people to Guines in July. And I look forward to next year when I will again see my Cuban friends.

    About a year ago, thinking about the young, impressionable minds living under our roof, I realized we had to do something about certain words that were in too-common usage. I don’t quite curse like a pirate, but there were occasions that I did utter the F-bomb, and once Lisa and I began to catch the kids saying it, I realized something had to be done. I didn’t know at the time how much it was going to cost me.

    One morning while driving the kids to school, we talked about how there were things, one thing in particular, that you shouldn’t say. One of the girls pointed out, “But, Daddy, you say it all the time.”

    She was right, of course, and it was agreed among us that I would pay them each $10 every time I dropped the forbidden word.

    As time went on, the plan worked well. My use of that particular imprecation dropped off sharply, to the point that the girls tried to sneak other bad words into the bargain. It was funny to negotiate with Evvy, who’s is 6 going on 7, about whether a “dang” uttered during some kitchen mishap or other was a payable offense.

    I noticed that my language in the office and when out with friends was a lot less salty, too. I started saying things like, “What the heck!” a lot, going suddenly all 1950s-corny.

    What I had not counted on was my eldest daughter’s prodigious memory for numbers. Though I should have: Money was at stake. She kept close track each time I let one fly, ticking off the $10 increments and remembering the running total, which she lumped in with her belated allowance remittances. By the time the tally got over $500 — payable to each child separately — I was beginning to sweat.

    In the end, I got off lightly. Adelia, the older one, had wished for a new Xbox Kinect videogame system and hit on the idea that she would agree to erase the growing debt if I bought her and her sister the coveted device so they would not have to wait for their birthdays in June or, worse, the December holidays. I agreed quickly, lest the girls do the math and change the terms.

    I haven’t checked whether they think the original deal is still in effect, but I haven’t used the F-bomb lately, just in case.

    A beautiful afternoon in New York is a holiday for me regardless of why I’m there. It brings back the years when I was single and living and working in the city. I remember discovering, counter to expectation, that it was possible to slow down outdoors and find a pleasant breeze on a hot day in summer. The city is quieter then than in other seasons, which is a plus in itself.

    This week I was in the city as an advocate for my husband, who was scheduled for surgery. I know that sounds about as enjoyable as having toothpicks stuck in your eye, but it was fun being there, anyway. The streets in his Greenwich Village neighborhood are full of college kids in the spring; New York University and some of its dorms are nearby. Late at night we can hear them drunkenly singing as they move in gangs up University Place.

    When I meandered out to find us some lunch today, I bypassed a curious hybrid of a restaurant called Jackson Hole, which — I don’t quite understand this in the context of its name — serves Indian food. It was entirely empty. A little farther up University, though, the Grey Dog was hopping. I’m an impatient sort, but (the unconscious feeling that I was on vacation slowing me to a dawdle) I went in for takeout sandwiches. Usually, I stay away from crowded, noisy restaurants, especially the “hip” kind, but this time I had no problem with the long line or the loud music, and I smiled as the servers moved to a heavy beat as they went from kitchen to table. Despite the long line, my order was ready before I had time to finish an iced cappuccino. I enjoyed being there even though I was obviously the only person around who was over the age of 35.

    Isn’t that what vacations are about? Getting to new places, away from the everyday preoccupations that have become routine?

    The last time I accompanied my husband to New York-Presbyterian Hospital for surgery, only about five weeks ago, he tried to convince me a day or two after the operation that I should take off on a little excursion, just for me. He suggested that I go to the Metropolitan Museum and was incredulous when I insisted that keeping him company in a hospital room felt a bit like a vacation to me already.

    This time around, during our next petite sojourn at New York-Presbyterian, I’m going to take along “Villette,” a novel by Charlotte Bronte that had passed me by until recently. Its first few pages are promising. I will have to bring my laptop, but I’m planning to mostly resist the workaholic temptation to switch it on to do some editing for The Star. (Even I can’t convince myself I’m on holiday if my computer is humming.)

    Okay, there are more glamorous places to get away from it all, I’ll admit.

    But making the most of circumstances beyond your control is always a good idea. And, like most of us, I don’t often find myself with a good excuse to put my feet up and unplug myself from the electronics. Have you ever been out at the ocean beach on a sunny Saturday in July or August and noticed people in their bathing suits sauntering up the sand with cellphones clapped to their ears, shouting over the sound of the surf about real estate or the stock market? I have. They don’t let you do that at the hospital.

    Driving home from the office on Tuesday evening, I was surprise to notice that I was in what amounted to a traffic jam — well, for East Hampton Village, at least. Cars were backed up at the Newtown Lane light and jockeying to merge left to get onto North Main Street. A truck had earlier run into the Accabonac Road underpass and become stuck, adding to the confusion.

    There’s a renewed rumble outside the Star office windows on Main Street as Memorial Day weekend gets closer. There are more cars on the roads, more people, longer lines at the lumberyard and at Bucket’s when I go to get a sandwich.

    A year or so back, when things were at their worst, economically, the lunch line would have been served and out the door by 10 minutes after noon. This spring, there are customers ahead of me when I get to the deli as late as 1 p.m. Does the sandwich line mean the difficult tide has turned? I hope so.

    Those of us who live here year round experience a mild sense of surprise every year at this time, tinged, we have to admit if we’re honest, with just the littlest twinge of resentment. While they were away, we kept everything running, and here they arrive as if they owned the place! The faces on the lunch line are unfamiliar. The cars lined up to turn at Egypt Lane are different.

    It is funny that in a semi-suburb such as this, we know one another as much by what we drive as anything else. Subconsciously, we catalog the familiar among our social surroundings, recognizing people according to which 2,000-pound assemblage of metal and plastic they are in.

    That white van, the one with the guy yakking on a cellphone? The one with the city-style padlock on the back? No, I definitely have not seen you before, nor most of the other vehicles in this traffic jam.

    And so I went east on Pantigo Road, feeling a bit like a visitor my self.

    Before Osama bin Laden built his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, he spent a few harried years looking for the perfect property while looking over his shoulder. One wife liked France, another Marrakesh, another Afghanistan, another Dubai, and so on and so forth. Fortunately, he had an excellent broker at Corcoran who showed him many fine locations in many countries before he decided on the half acre less than a mile from the National Military Academy of Pakistan.

    The original estimate for construction was $600,000, but it went slowly and ran over bud­get. When the cost hit $1 million, the general contractor went missing. Turns out he was building two other mansions at the same time, on the other side of Abbottabad, and was overextended. Pakistani officials say they are searching for the poor fellow, and the U.S. reports that no Navy Seal team has been dispatched to find him. (Real seals, in this instance, might have better luck.)

    One of the properties Osama bin Laden seriously considered before settling on Abbottabad was in Southampton, N.Y. (The exact address is being withheld for obvious reasons; it would hurt the summer rental.) While initially balking at the suggestion, his excellent Corcoran broker reminded Bin Laden of all those years spent in desert tents and in mountain caves, so why shouldn’t he spend some quality time with his family near the ocean and enjoy the peace and quiet of Southampton?

    Additionally, his agent told him, Southampton suited his needs for modern connections — satellite television, optic-fiber Internet, Twitter, Foursquare, iMovie to edit his videos — in order to keep in touch with his minions, who hated everything about modernity. Except Boeing 737s and Kalashnikov AK-47s.

    Among the fascinating items found at the Osama bin Laden compound in Abbottabad was a scratchy audiotape of his one and only appearance before the Southampton Town Planning Board in May of 2003. (We would thank Wiki­Leaks for the tape, but we don’t want to get anyone in trouble or see The Star hauled before a government subcommittee.) Apparently, Bin Laden was accompanied by his attorney, Al Keida, who insisted that his client disguise his identity and came up with the alias “Obama Lin Saden.”

    The record shows that they arrived late for that morning session at Town Hall. We must assume they did so in order to skip the Pledge of Allegiance ceremony that starts each day. Obama Lin Saden did most of the talking through an interpreter.

    This is the unexpurgated reprint of that initial meeting with the planning board of Southampton.

    Good morning, Mr. Lin Saden.

    Good morning, gentleman of the planning board. Salam-alaikum. And you two women too.

    Your elevations are very well executed.

    Allah be praised.

    Are we looking at a single-family dwelling here?

    Yes. But you must remember that I have many wives, too many children, and 34 security guards. Not to mention a live-in cook and an organic farmer.

    Bodyguards? Do they sleep at the residence?

    I hope not. I pay them to stay awake.

    You said farmer, right?

    Yes. He interned at Quail Hill many years ago. He is fantastic. He can get blood from a stone.

    Will he be growing anything on the premises?

    We are very green, if that is your concern, no pesticides, no chemicals. We envision some raised beds in a modest garden. Potatoes, kale, cabbage, basil for pesto, and a bushy plant with a pungent Afghan smell and delicious taste which my people dry in the sun and smoke in rolling papers. I prefer Zig-Zag. Some people think I look like the Zig-Zag guy. I laugh when I hear this. It is quite a compliment.

    Why are you growing your own vegetables?

    We don’t go out much. We are on the lam.

    On the lam? What do you mean?

    (The attorney, Al Keida, breaks in here.) “Mr. Lin Saden meant to say he likes lamb, but cannot find it in Southampton.”

    We like lamb kabobs very much. This is true. We don’t like to go out to eat much. Except for lunch. Love the salad nicoise at Silver’s. A little pricey, but very satisfying. I usually share one with two wives. My third wife on this trip cannot handle roughage.

    The plans for your new house indicate it is rather large and sprawling, more like a compound than a house. Is that right?

    My excellent Corcoran broker has been driving me around the area and showing me impressive mansions much larger than my own. Can you believe the Rennert spread in Sagaponack? Allah be praised. It has 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms, a basketball court, a bowling alley, two tennis courts, two squash courts, and a hot tub that can accommodate 72 virgins, comfortably.

    We see no hot tub or swimming pool in your plans.

    I cannot swim. I have nightmares that I will end up in the water, unable to see land.

    We also see no basement, no laundry room, no wine cellar.

    Nothing underground, please. I have had it up to here with dark and dank places. Besides, basements always leak. No leaks, please. I have had it up to here with leaks. I drink no wine, Allah be praised. I drink Pepsi Max. I like very much Pepsi Max with a sirloin cheeseburger at Silver’s.

    It looks like you have enough open space in this compound to land a helicopter.

    A helicopter? That thought never entered my head.

    How do you plan to use all the empty space?

    We will be burning our trash so we don’t have to haul it to the dump. Save on petrol. We would not like scraps of paper or discarded letters to fall into the hands of the TMZ or perhaps this very planning board. No offense. But I remember what happened to Bob Dylan. They rummaged through his garbage. That’s how I found out his true name was Robert Zimmerman. A Zionist. Too bad. I used to sing “Just Like a Woman” when we did karaoke in the caves.

    How many bathrooms do you plan?

    Two. One inside, one outside.

    How long do you think this construction will take?

    I have a large construction crew. They also do demolition. Very fast. Very effective. What are the hours permitted for work? In my homeland, we are so courteous that we work only a few hours each day.

    In Southampton, where building is our main business, we allow loud construction and deafening jackhammers 12 hours a day, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. — 7 days a week.

    On the Sabbath you sanction work?

    What do you do for a living, Mr. Lin Saden?

    I am an inspirational speaker.

    We couldn’t tell.

    It loses something in the translation. I had 565,000 hits on YouTube last week. Perhaps you have seen my work?

    Anyone on the board familiar with Mr. Lin Saden’s work?

    (Board members look at one another and answer, from left to right, “No,” “Not me,” “Sorry,” “I have grandchildren,” “No,” “What is YouTube?” and “I am getting ready for polo season.”)

    No harm. I am a humble servant. How long will permit take?

    As you can see by the crowd here today, we are swamped. Ever since 9/11, more and more people are moving out of the city and building homes in the Hamptons.

    I understand. You have a lovely community. I haven’t seen a policeman in two weeks. Your citizens are very kind. Some salespeople at P.C. Richard can be curt, but I am sure to feel safe and secure here.

    In these plans, your mansion resembles a fortress of seclusion.

    You make me sound like Superman. I blush.

    That was the Fortress of Solitude.

    Oh, right. With so many wives and rivals, I’d settle for seclusion.

    You have exteriors walls of 8 feet and 13 feet and even 18 feet — one on the third-floor balcony. That one has barbed wire. We want to protect the look of the neighborhood more than the residents who live there, so can you talk about the composition of walls, please?

    We use brick and mortar, maybe some cinder ­blocks. Old school. Nothing modern. Fundamental elements.

    We will need samples of the exact bricks and the mortar before we can approve anything.

    You don’t know what a brick looks like?

    You’d be amazed, Mr. Saden. Some people try to sneak in oddly colored or oddly shaped bricks. They even dye the mortar just to be different. We don’t like different. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want your neighborhood wrecked by surprise mortar, would you?

    Death to dyed mortar!

    Your plans also call for metal doors, metal security gates, and a natural camouflage provided by surrounding hedges and trees and man-made dunes.

    When in Southampton, do as the Southamptonites do. Everyone here lives as if they are international terrorists hiding from the authorities. I will too. Not to worry. We will blend in. You won’t know we are here. Except when the adhan calls us to prayer five times a day.

    With that, Obama Lin Saden looked at his watch, stood up, and marched out of the meeting. It was lunchtime. His lawyer apologized and later withdrew his application. No explanation was offered. This did happen, however, shortly after Page Six spotted one of Bin Laden’s wives walking down Main Street with a young waiter from Silver’s. That claim has never been substantiated.

    Bruce Buschel is a writer of nonfiction and an Off Broadway musical. He blogs for The New York Times about his restaurant in Bridgehampton, Southfork Kitchen. He has also directed and produced a series of jazz films, “Live at the Village Vanguard.” He lives in Bridgehampton.

   “We’re grieving again,” I said recently to our appraiser, adding, “I guess it’s something like drinking again.”

    He could see, he said, how the two might be related, the assessments here presumably being so out of whack.

    Along that line, I have here in front of me a tear sheet from the March 18 Times real estate section with a photo taken by our neighbor, Gordon Grant, of a 3,000-square-foot four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath house on parklike 2.4 acres with “a new pool, meandering perennial gardens and the privacy to enjoy both.”

    Asking price: $3.5 million.

    Annual taxes: $13,100.

    Okay. Let’s see. . . . This house is worth — if they get what they want — six times what our shack in Springs is and yet the owners have been paying only twice what we have been in taxes.

    A year ago, when we first began to grieve, having finally awakened to the gross disparity between presumed full values and actual values, I said if enough of us filed grievance forms we might wind up doing the town’s reassessment work for it.

    It’s generally agreed that the time for a townwide reassessment has come, long come. Yet nothing’s ever done. I’m told that while the price tag for such an undertaking might appear large, at $3 million, say, the cost spread out among the town’s 25,000 parcels works out to $120 per. And that that $120 could be pro-rated, as could the effects of increased assessments on properties that had not been reassessed in years.

    Fairness is the goal here, a not unsurprising goal in a country whose institutions are ostensibly dedicated to it.

    If it hasn’t been obvious at the national level, it is certainly so here that middle-class homeowners have been subsidizing well-heeled ones when it comes to property taxes.

    Back to the March 18 blurb. . . . “To get to the house, you drive through automatic gates and up a long driveway to a parking area. The glass sides of the foyer allow views of the large, heated Gunite pool and waterfall behind the house. . . . Meandering perennial gardens and mature trees contribute to the parklike setting. . . .”

    Were it our house, that blurb would read, “To get to the house, bordered on one side by old mowers, rusted folding chairs, the frame of a patio table whose glass top shattered in a windstorm, bikes, and Obama signs, you drive by a mailbox in a sling up an undulating driveway in whose declivities waterfowl serenely glide when it rains. The Palladian kitchen window (when the pollen’s washed off) allows views of a lawn of many species in which ticks gambol and at whose edge a scabrous plastic lamb and a stone owl and rabbit look on in wonder as perennials vanish one by one, tugged under by the owners’ prize herd of meandering voles. . . .”

    With Grievance Day looming as I write, I trust our patience soon will no longer be taxed.

    Quiet rain, heavy rain, thunderstorms, we’ve had them all this week, and the forecast isn’t for sun until Saturday, if then.

    Many East Enders have been frustrated by this unrelenting downpour. Set back in the annual rush to finish outdoor jobs before Memorial Day, landscapers and those who work in construction have been particularly aggravated.

    But while the rain has been bad news for them — and certainly it was serious business elsewhere in the country — for me, I have to admit, it was a pleasure.    

    For one thing, any hint of pressure I might have felt about yard or garden evaporated. If we’d had sun, I would have had to do something about the tall grass growing around the house, and face all those empty pots awaiting flowers on the patio. Standing ankle-deep by a storm drain on North Main Street, as I loaded groceries from the I.G.A. into the trunk of my car, I didn’t even mind the water bubbling all around.

    You sometimes hear people say that rainy weather is good for sleeping. My husband is recuperating from surgery this month, and he was sitting up in bed the other day reading poetry by Julia de Burgos, a Puerto Rican writer whose work he had recently discovered. I was on the phone talking to a friend about it, and she said, “It’s perfect weather for poetry.”

    A fragment of a poem in a college compilation by a young woman I knew has never left me, although I’ve undoubtedly garbled it somewhat over the years:

    “Perhaps I flung too much away/ On mad forsythia in May/ Too soon, great greenness overrules.”

    My friends laughed at the poem at the time. College was in New Jersey, where forsythia is at its peak in April rather than May, just as it is here. Never mind, I liked the feeling the lines conveyed, as well as the rhyme.

    If any forsythia was still blooming this week, the rains did it in. The lilacs and yellow irises may have come back, as they do every year, but great greenness has overruled here, deepening on the ground and in the trees.

    Nikki Goodbird is our 3-year-old Quaker parrot. We named him Nikki as an acceptable androgynous option before we knew his gender. He added the “Goodbird” all on his own.

    Everything we ever read about Quakers is true: In spite of their harmless appearance — brilliant green backs with little gray bellies — they are fire-breathing dragons, fiercely loyal to their “flock,” and in kill mode if you’re perceived as foe.

    When he is in an affectionate mood, he will get the cuddles he craves by any means necessary. If squawking doesn’t work, Nikki, who is roughly the size of a female cardinal, will boldly climb down from his perch, walk across the floor in a house with three dogs, and tap on my foot with his beak to be picked up and adored.

    If he’s feeling frisky, he will initiate a rousing game of hide-and-seek, accomplished by poking his head in my sleeve. “Where’s Nikki?” I ask. He agrees: “Where’s Nik-Nik?” Then he pulls his head out of my sleeve while enthusiastically screeching “Peek-a-boo!”

    This can go on for hours.

    There is only one person that Nikki has loathed with a passion since first sight — my mother. He runs at her whenever she visits, his beak open, ready to take a large chunk out of her foot. The feeling is more than mutual; I can see her strongly resisting the urge to punt.

    She used to impart at least a pretense of fondness, for my sake, but that was left in the dust long ago.

    “Back off, you little shit,” she commands, and he does. They seem to have developed that sort of mutual respect only found between opposing generals in old war movies.

    Considering his brain is the size of a lentil, Nikki has a pretty large vocabulary.

    He can say “Nikki’s a good bird. Yeah!” And “tickle, tickle, under the wing.” And “I’m gonna get you!” And “upside down.” And “pretty bird,” followed by a wolf whistle, along with many other gems.

    He sings and dances to a song he wrote himself, with the help of my children: “Yeah, Nikki/Time to dance/Oh yeah, oh yeah.” (If you are interested in more, you can probably find it on YouTube under “Nikki the Quaker Parrot.”)

     He calls the dogs by name — which confuses them, and amuses him, to no end — gives kisses, asks for “yum-yums,” and always says “thank you” when he gets them.

    Here’s what he can’t say: “Little green pants.”

    For the past three years, I’ve been working on, “Nikki, what are you wearing?” to which the only proper reply should be, “Little green pants.”

    I mean, he does wear little green pants.

    Recently I took to saying, “Nikki, what are you wearing?” and then, after a few stupid birdie blink-blinks, I say, “What’s this?” while pointing to his leg, hoping somehow that will force his hand, so to speak.

    This is how the conversation generally goes:

    Me: Nikki, what are you wearing?

    Nikki blinks.

    Me: What are you wearing?

    Nikki (whispering): Wuhziss?

    Me (pointing at his leg): What’s this?

    Nikki (grabbing my finger): Pleez ta meet-cha!

    Me: Pleased to meet you! Nikki, what are you wearing?

    Nikki blinks, still gripping my finger, tightly, in his claw.

    Me: Is it . . . little green pants?

    Nikki: (same time): . . . pants?

    Me: Little green pants?

    Nikki (same time): Pants?

    Me: What are you wearing?

    Nikki (getting bored): Kisshes. Mwah!

    Me (relenting): Okay, kisses.

    We kiss.

    Nikki (happily): Nikki Goodbirdgoodbirdgoodbird. . . .

    He then goes into the little parrot hut which he shares with his life-mate (an orange Ping-Pong ball), and talks to it in a quiet voice, sounding eerily like Edward G. Robinson.

     “Schwah,” Nikki grumbles to his round ginger friend. “Schwah-schwah-schwah.” He is an odd little creature, who provides endless hours of pleasure with his eccentricities.

    Quakers live for about 35 years, so someone in my house will undoubtedly be wearing a pirate costume every Halloween from now through 2043.

    Nikki, of course, will be wearing little green pants.

—

    Bridget LeRoy is a reporter at The Star.

    Not long ago, without our telling anyone, my spouse and I appeared on a tabloid news show. Judging from a near dearth of phone calls and e-mails, absolutely no one we know saw the segment. Not only was this lack of exposure fine with us, it was a huge relief.

    We are no strangers to being asked to exploit ourselves. Around six years ago MTV asked if we’d consider being the subjects of a reality series. We turned it down instantly and never told the kids about it. We have five kids. At the time MTV first contacted us the kids were all little and cute and running around our yard and kitchen laughing, fighting, shouting, tumbling (you can just imagine the footage, no?). And my spouse and I are both women. Oh, and my spouse has famous parents. So when MTV asked to enter our home with cameras, we knew exactly why, and of course said no.

    We’re not merely private, we are also filmmakers. I know intimately that a story needs to be fully explored for an artistic piece to reach its potential. I don’t subject our family to public exposure, not because I don’t trust TV producers, camerapeople, or fellow filmmakers, but because I know that they often probe beyond a subject’s comfort zone in order to do their jobs effectively.

    Which is perhaps why, when we produced our first feature documentary three years ago, we had the talent sign waivers before we rolled cameras (this means they agreed in advance to let us use whatever they were about to say and do). We do not do exploitive work, and did not do an exploitive film. But the stuff that happens on camera is not always the stuff someone would plan to have their parents or ministers hear them say.

    Right after we were filmed for the tabloid news show, we told our parents about it. I called my mother in Palm Beach, who checked her program guide and couldn’t find the airing of it, but asked with no small concern how my hair had looked. My spouse texted her parents, who are the most tech-savvy septuagenarians on earth. They DVR’d it, watched it later, and were very positive about the segment (though they never mentioned how my hair looked).

    Six years ago, around the same time we were not allowing MTV crews into our home, our life was intense. Not only did we have that batch of kids, we had recently made the brave decision to blend families and move in together. (I came to the party with one son, my spouse-to-be had three daughters and a son.)

    Deciding to move into a house built in the 1820s added a huge layer of stress in the form of leaks, drafts, rotting wood, and black mold. To pay for the endless stream of house repairs and child distractions (do you know that a seven-person trip to Club Med takes exactly the same amount of time, and money, as the installation of an entirely new septic system?) we upped our commercial work to hyperdrive.

    Those early years together were filled with little sleep and utter bedlam. But it was creative bedlam, whether we were pre-wiring the kids’ four separate school systems about “different” families or shooting big-budget commercials or glue-gunning costumes.

    As filmmakers, we couldn’t ignore the creatively fertile environment we were living in. We didn’t want a network to record our family, but we couldn’t resist doing it ourselves. Since we didn’t want to expose the kids on camera, we wrote a fictitious account of our lives. Titled “Out in the Hamptons,” it is the story of (as our synopsis offered) “two women who work together, play together, have great sex together — and happen to have five kids together.”

    We wrote a pilot and sent it to the best agent in L.A. (courtesy of an introduction from my spouse’s father), who believed in it, believed in us as writers, and tried to sell it. It was too risqué for network, so she showed it to the big cable networks. HBO didn’t like it. Showtime very much liked it, but said they already had a lesbian show. There weren’t many other places to take it at the time, but the best agent in L.A. assured us that “you never know, things are always changing,” and we had no reason to doubt her.

    We took the show ourselves to LOGO (the cable network of L.G.B.T. content). LOGO didn’t have enough money to produce our show — they were looking entirely (like many other networks at the time) for reality TV shows. They wondered if we’d be willing to be the subjects of one. No, we explained — that’s why we created the series. So LOGO asked us to come up with a reality show based on our series. They actually asked us to find a family that was a real version of the fictitious one we’d created, which was based on our real one. . . .

    It took about two months to find a family. It had two male heads of household and 10 kids. It was the reality show version of us, sort of. It was better — they had twice as many kids, all African-American, ranging from an adorable infant to a star of the high school football team. They had zero trepidations about cameras or exploitation, and the dads were articulate and interesting.

    Then LOGO lost its funding and bagged the idea. We are now working on other projects: We are trying to distribute our feature film, we have written a screenplay we hope to direct next year, and, on optimistic days, we still think that someone might like to produce our scripted series.

    Then, Meredith Baxter, the 62-year-old actress most famous for the “Family Ties” series, announced on national television that she’s a lesbian. That night, while we were cooking three different dinners for four kids (the fifth was away at boarding school), my spouse took a call from an unknown number. It was a news magazine show wanting to film (the next day) our reaction to Meredith Baxter’s late-in-life coming out. They promised to hype our film (titled “Out Late”) if we agreed. Uncharacteristically for us, we did.

    The next day we got the kids off to school and welcomed a reporter, a cameraman, a producer, and a sound guy into our home. They were lovely and respectful. At one point, for B roll (the images you see while someone is speaking over them — like us making coffee and checking our mail), they asked us to kiss. I refused, saying I don’t kiss on cue (I made a joke about needing a little red wine and some Billy Joel music for that), and they seemed to be fine without the kiss. They also asked for a picture of my spouse with her famous father, and we said no (I said she’d need a little red wine and some Billy Joel music for that).

    The piece ran that evening, mentioning our film and showing clips from it. Except for a horrifying still of us that introduced the piece (with the headline “Late in Life Lesbians,” which upset my spouse because she didn’t consider her 48-year-old self “late in life”), they made us look and sound good. They didn’t get to show our kids, or the bedlam, or any dirt. They did get a picture of my spouse with her famous father, but not from us.

    Since coming out, Meredith Baxter published a memoir that is now number 10 on The New York Times’s best-seller list. Portia de Rossi’s memoir is climbing that same list. Ricky Martin, after years of deflecting public speculation, not long ago announced on every major talk show that he’s “a fortunate gay man”(who’s also plugging a new book and a new single). Sean Hayes (the star from “Will and Grace” who was neither Will nor Grace) came out a couple of years after his hit sitcom ended and right before his smash Broadway debut in “Promises, Promises.”

    Ellen DeGeneres, a true groundbreaker in 1997, came out during the run of her TV show. Immediately afterward, her ratings soared. Her current talk show enjoys consistently huge ratings and she has reached mega-celebrity status. Conversely (or sort of conversely, in an inverted kind of way), DeGeneres’s onetime partner Anne Heche experienced a significant jolt of fame when she “came out” as a lesbian, while her career suffered the direct inverse as soon as she later “came out” as straight.

    This is not to say that coming out necessarily helps if you’re in the public eye (although, ratings-wise, it arguably has done nothing to hurt the careers of Rosie O’Donnell, Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Lane, or Jodie Foster). I’m merely pointing out that while coming out can, tragically, still be a career-breaker for teachers, politicians, clergy, and a host of other ordinary citizens worldwide . . . in the entertainment industry it mysteriously provides often positive leverage. My partner and I are not even remotely celebrities, but it seems we are somehow close enough to be of minor interest from time to time.

    And this is how we came to be exploited. On our own terms, and by our own choosing. We were willing to do it because it didn’t include the kids, and did include our feature film. We gave up a measured piece of ourselves in order to promote our careers. I think I’m learning that exploitation can be okay, when it goes both ways. Or, perhaps, when no one you know actually sees it.

Jennifer Brooke is a writer and filmmaker who lives year round in Sag Harbor with her partner in film and in life, Beatrice Alda, and their children.