A Bittersweet Hamptons Homecoming on a Wellness Weekend With My Son

Like most people who’ve experienced the quiet of an off-season Hamptons, I’ve always been awed by the otherworldly autumn-winter light that illuminates East End, Long Island’s green spaces, and the uncrowded soft white-sand shores that are only a few minutes’ drive from any of the area’s towns. These are the places where my son Dante would lie on his then-tiny toddler pot belly, drawing in his notebook or digging in the sand. We’d called Hampton Bays home for over a dozen years, with me commuting daily on the LIRR to work in magazines in Manhattan while his father taught at a school in the area. My son is now 20, tall, and lean, living with his partner three time zones away. I’ve since moved back to New York City, where I grew up (and work on staff for Traveler). I’d secretly hoped that he would embrace city life like I did at his age, food-crawling for the best lox and trying to look old enough to get past a bouncer—but it wasn’t his nature. I have to remind myself that he had a very different upbringing, growing up in a beach town two hours away from the city that is now home for me. It’s easy to see how being a child in the Hamptons shaped him: Dante has a