I was in Sarasota. I had gone back to art school. I found a place across the street in a Sr. Citizens apartment complex. At first my next door neighbors were 2 young gay men They had a Christmas tree that should have been taken out a long time ago. It was shedding needles all over the place. I took it out to the fire escape/balcony. ??? In a little closet, a hide-away ironing board was hanging in the closet. Now I had 2 ladders. The guys had a dog I walked sometimes. School was gonna start. My mother was there to fix the place up and make it look like a home. I did not like what she did. I'd rather have no furniture than the furniture she picked out. My hair had turned very light. I looked in the mirror. It was almost white. My mother had filled the bag with church shoes. I did not want them. A man came and said I took a pair of shoes out of a brown bag--I thought they were mine but they weren't. I looked back. First I had ignored him a long time. I said, "They're mine." I was in the water of the ocean with all the shoes beside me. Dora was sitting in the water with me. I was putting on and taking off the shoes when they were washed up. The tide came in very fast and deep. I felt around the bottom and found first one shoe, then the other--when I had found both shoes underwater--I looked up and the tide had come in deep--it was carrying Dora out to sea.