My parents have sold my summer.   Let me explain.  Every summer since I was four years old, my family went to Southampton.  Yes.  The Hamptons.  Fancy Schmancy.  But that’s really only for a certain set of people.  For people who hit the parties and the clubs and went to be seen.  I was there before there was much of a scene to be seen in.  When there were farms everywhere.  And not a lot of traffic.  And no one dressed in couture to walk down the street.

Don’t get me wrong.  The Hamptons always had a certain cache.  But when you’re four, five, six – even 15 years old, and you’ve been there every summer of your memory, it isn’t about that.  It’s just…home.

But as my father asked me, when he told me they were selling the house “What? Did you think it would last forever?”  Well, no.  Nothing does, does it?  Not the quiet sleepy feel of the Hamptons, and not my summer home there – with all of it’s memories, and childhood drawings, and pajamas that I’ve had since High School in the drawers.

Summer in NY is not a lot of fun.  It’s hot. It’s empty.  It’s easy to get a dinner reservation…but who wants to go out to dinner in Manhattan when it’s humid and a bazillion degrees and the streets have that certain summer stench?  Plus, the spoiled truth of my life is,  I’ve never spent a summer in the city.  And I don’t really want to start. So now I have to figure out what I’m doing.

I could rent in the Hamptons.  Only I can’t.  Too soon.  Too sad.  Too weird.

We’re thinking about a house in Connecticut.  But I don’t know.  Will it feel funny to be inland?  Will a lake be a good substitute for an ocean beach?  What will it be like to spend a summer in a place where I have no history, no friends, no chance to go to the public library and see my name penciled in on the 1972 Summer Reading Club bulletin board at the Public Library?

I guess I’ll find out.  Maybe we’ll try the Jersey Shore (it isn’t all Snookie,I swear!).  Maybe Connecticut.  Maybe we’ll go up to Maine for a week. 

And hopefully, we’ll make memories my kids will have forever.

Because maybe the houses we stay in won’t always be there.  But the memories always will be.