Before it was called Easthampton or East Hampton, the tiny colonial town way out on the eastern part of Long Island was known as Maidstone. Supposedly. Proof is scant.

At some point over the summer I passed over an invisible boundary line and began looking ahead to that golden day when I will become a grandmother.

I knew this would be no ordinary house. As a neighborhood kid, I saw Julian and Barbara Neski’s 1964 modernist masterpiece on Terbell Lane develop, and got to know the owners, Sy and Ronnie Chalif.