Where is home?

It's taking a little while, but Larry and I are putting our mark on our Mexican casa. It's a little different for us than for many of our neighbors who spend only part of the year down here. We don't own a house any place else, so we've got the family albums, keepsakes and other generational accumulations that make a house into....home. I have to admit I'm looking at a lot of this stuff wondering why we brought it along. And then this past week I was kicking myself for having jettisoned my highschool annuals. (I know I know that woman whose mother was my mother's next door neighbor there at the nursing home in Lubbock. Two years ahead of me at Lubbock High. Wasn't she a cheerleader?)

When IS the proper time to move on and leave stuff behind? Right now my three siblings and I are gearing up for a grand cleanout of Mom and Dad's place. Who's going to do it for Larry and me?

Sea turtles have it made....well, apart from the fact that only one in 100 survives. The beach across the street from us should be welcoming "home" in years to come, some of the little guys, er girls, which were released last month. Our neighbors Dave and Ally provide a protected area on their beachfront for the turtles to hatch, and then invite all and sundry to participate in educational turtle releases. Sometimes there are as many as 350 turtles who waddle across the sand, absorbing the smell and feel of "home." Then they hit the waves and are gone for a year. Some of them will travel as far as Japan and back! But the beach at Guayabitos will be home forever -- the place where the turtles return to lay their eggs. And they don't even have any stuff to mark their place in the sand. It's just there.