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.
