Coming Home

There’s just something about the place you grew up. It always feels like home…no matter where you live.

Last week I got to go back to the place where I spent most of my summers growing up- Sag Harbor, NY.

Sag Harbor is part of “The Hamptons” on the eastern end of Long Island. It is one of the most beautiful places I’ve even been.

And I know what you’re thinking…my family must be “rolling in the dough” having a house in the Hamptons.

Quite the opposite actually.

I shared a small bedroom with my sister growing up and my dad worked two jobs to provide for the family of six. I never wanted for anything as a child, but we were by no means “rolling in the dough”.  

You see, the Hamptons was quite a different place back when my family started going there almost 75 years ago.

No crowds. No fuss. No big fancy cars and mansions.  

Just a lot of farms, small cottages and beaches filled with pebbles and shiny seashells in a million pastel colors. And the smell of salt water everywhere.

My mom was just a little girl when she started vacationing there. The first house they rented didn’t even have electricity! I remember the stories my grandmother would tell staying at that house… I could see from the bittersweet expression in her eyes that it was some of the best times of her life. The little cottage on the beach with no electricity.

My great aunt eventually built a house there and this is where I spent a majority of my summers as a child- on her pull-out coach in the den. I remember it being quiet on her porch…just the sound of wind chimes and the smell of grass.

Even today when I catch a whiff of fresh-cut grass it brings me back to my summers in Sag Harbor.

Our days consisted of walking to the beach carrying all our paraphernalia and a cooler of bologna sandwiches. The evenings usually involved feeding the deer (leftover bologna sandwiches), walking through town and getting ice cream.

I was in high school when my family eventually built our own L-shaped ranch on the property next to my aunt’s house. It was a labor of love getting that house together as we did much of the work ourselves.

We rented it out for many years to pay it off but eventually it became our summer retreat. I spend many summers in my 20’s “partying” with my friends and as I got older it became a place my family could enjoy.

When I moved away to Buffalo, that house became a place of connection between my new world and my past. Both my kids spent their first few months as newborns in that house. And every year while my kids were growing up, we would spend a week at the house with my parents because I wanted Sag Harbor to be part of their story too.

But as life got crazy with 2 teenagers, I let the connection slip. Last week was the first time I was there in two years.

It was a bittersweet experience as this time my mom wasn’t there. She passed in February.

And I could feel her presence in every corner of the house.

Perhaps I’m in that funny place in the grieving process where the memories sting a bit instead of bring solace. I know with time that will change.

But I am grateful for the time with my daughter, my dad and my extended family at our house by the beach. We made new memories.

We watched the sunset every night.

We walked the beach each morning with a fresh coffee in hand.

We threw pebbles in the bay and got ice cream in town.

And I was able to keep a very important tradition alive- I took my 16-year-old daughter for a driving lesson.

My grandmother learned to drive on those small country roads as a mother of three back in the 1940s. My mother also learned to drive there. And as a teenager so did I …in a big old Oldsmobile station wagon with wood paneling on the side.

My daughter now shares the tradition of learning to drive on the very same country roads her great grandmother, grandmother and mother learned to drive on.

What an incredible gift. To have a place that holds so much history and the opportunity to impart that sacredness for future generations.

I am grateful.

Home is many places I’ve learned…it’s where you’re from that still lives inside of you and it’s where you are today.

The past and present integrated to make you...you.

My hope is for Sag Harbor to continue to live on in my own family’s story. Maybe my granddaughter will learn to drive on those small country roads as well.

With me in this picture is my dad, my daughter Emma, and my sister Cathleen's family, right after sunset on Noyac Bay in Sag Harbor, NY.