I first wrote about Connie last January in the Oak Bluffs town column. Something unusual, actually supernatural, had happened between Connie and me, back in that frosty month, and I had to share it.

Constance MacAllister was a friend of mine, an older woman who lived with her daughter, Gwyn, also a close friend, in a drafty Victorian house only a few blocks away from me on Samoset avenue.

Sad to say, I come from a long line of people who bump into doors, sweep punch bowls from tables, and drag dog doo into rooms, inadvertently stamping it into rugs and floorboards because the person with the soiled shoe can’t understand why everyone’s yelling at him. My dad was a one-man demolition derby. At six foot one and rangy, he was part Hulk, part Absent-Minded Professor, and he broke one out of every five chairs on which he plunked himself. The sight gag was perfect.

There’s a reason that at this time of year many of us experience a breakdown of sorts. It can be anything from a momentary cri de coeur to a lingering sadness to a snap decision to, well, do something other than be here. The thing is, we long-timers occasionally feel stranded on the Island and we ask ourselves if it’s absolutely necessary to stay. Why, sure, this place is gorgeous, unspoiled, scenic and architecturally handsome every way you turn, but we wonder, as we’ve done in the distant past with some of our worst romantic choices: Are looks everything?

It’s a staple of local conventional wisdom that one of the reasons famous people love our Island is that we encounter them with a nonchalance that puts one in mind of an English butler escorting a carpet-installer to the rear wing.

Who doesn’t love families?

Or Mom or apple pie, for that matter?