The front porch is full of boxes and bags. Mom sits on the porch in her rocking chair, talking with her longtime friends who have come to drive her to the beach. Mom has a break of 6 weeks before she starts radiation. She needs to spend it gaining her strength and healing from the chemo. She doesn't need the stress of watching me pack up the house and move. She still spends most of her time lying down, and I don't want to take the bed right out from under her. So, she is going to the beach. She'll have friends to look in on her, the sound to float in. the beach to walk on.

I imagine she'll also work on her continuing redecoration project that she started over Easter week. She had been at the beach for a week with my sisters when we pulled up to the trailer to find them all on the porch, giggling. "Come on in," they said with expectant faces. As my daughter and I walked through the door, I felt like one of those people on the home makeover shows, which I am sure was their intention. "Oh, my......is this my trailer?" They had been to Pier 1 and redone my living room in a Tuscan style theme. They had gotten rid of the ugly furniture I had inherited when I bought the trailer and replaced it with dark wicker, a futon couch, new lamps and tables. The colors were bold and exotic--paprika, saffron, gold, fertile browns. They had been watching "Under the Tuscan Sun" on repeat all week, and now its palate spilled out of the screen and into my beach home.

On our next return to the beach in May, Mom and I went to Pier 1 again. We found more pillows, candleholders, and accessories. And then we found the most important piece of all. A TV cabinet in the Spanish style--with wrought iron legs and hinges, distressed dark wood, and a star burst pattern on the front. Mom was so excited, like my daughter when she spies the hidden gift bag in the back of the closet. Once we got it in place, she sat in one of her new chairs, eyeing the tranformed room with pride.

The name of the cabinet was "Segovia"--a place I actually visited while in Spain. The cabinet became the centerpiece of the room, and made think about when I was traveling in Spain. Funny, though, how the mind works. When I actually was in Spain, I went to Piles, a small seaside town just south of Valencia, for my first look at the Mediterranean Sea. We were staying with a friend, an Austrian expatriate artist who had an apartment on the main street of the pueblo. The town was set back from the sea, and we had to walk through orange groves to get to the water. I had to push the men into hurrying to the resort area of town so I could see the water. Finally, when I stood on the beach, I kicked the sand and thought, "This is it? My beach is better than this."

I have become a beach snob. I judge all beaches against my own. And although I have seen many beaches, I have yet to find one I love like I do the sands of Bouge Banks. When I look at this new cabinet set up in my living room, I remember how even a world away, on the grandest of adventures, I longed for the rhythms of the waters I heard in my childhood. I guess my mother, too, longed for this beach, the one where she raised her young children, when on her grand adventure. Both she and I, travelers and transients, have history here.

I carry Mom's bags to her car and put them in the trunk of her car, smiling at the out of place Alaska license plate. I send with her a china set with large sunflowers on it. She'll replace the old junk in the cabinets with this sunny set, and, probably, do even more I can't even anticipate to make this place more of her own. Bearing her distinctive stamp, it will be her home on the east coast as long as she wants it. I have encouraged her not to spend the money to fix it up, but then, I stopped. She enjoys so little right now. If this is what she wants to do, then who am I to discourage her?