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Opening the car door, I try to hold onto the shaking camera with my one good arm. 

It has been a long time since I battled bracing winds while walking alongside the Sakonnet River.

I take baby steps on the beach sand, which is as hard as concrete. 

Sea gulls cry overhead, urging me to hurry on.

I swipe away unbidden tears, yet I know that I should not lament the past, but instead give thanks for this gift.

This is my favorite place.

I have come home.

Last August, my mother broke her left wrist when she took a tumble in her driveway.

While visiting her in the hospital, she asked me to plug in a long cell phone cord. I rolled the bed aside, but the cable caught me around the leg and flung me in the air, violently tossing me on the porcelain floor.

I heard the bone in my left arm crack.

Screams echoed around the third floor of the hospital. Doctors, nurses, housekeeping, visitors and anyone in the vicinity fled into the room.

A doctor laid on the floor next to me and warned me not to move. 

I was lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled into an elevator. I cried all the way to the Emergency Room.

When the doctor determined that indeed my left arm was broken, I was given pain medication and a sling and sent home.

A few days later my husband deposited me in my childhood home with my mother. For one week we lamented our aching limbs together.

For the past six months I have cradled my broken arm and twice a week endured Physical Therapy.

This is my last week of P.T.

Back at the beach, I trudge on.

The wind picks up as I walk head down, circumventing rocks or any holes in the sand.

The winter of my discontent will pass.

The summer house awaits.