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My mom grew up in Ocean City, N.J., a little town built on an island that stretches about six miles or so along the southern Jersey shore. Tourists flock to the town in the summer, drawn in by its sandy beaches, salty breezes and old-fashioned boardwalk. To Mom, though, it has always been more than that. It’s where hurricanes were weathered and school was attended and dates were made. The ocean was her pool. The breeze was her air conditioning. The boardwalk was her backyard. While others saw it as a vacation destination, to her it has always been someplace much more special. To her, it’s always been home.

My entire life I’ve heard stories about Ocean City. About how it was quaint and safe and something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. About how it was the home of Gay Talese before he became a famous writer and the summer home of Grace Kelley before she became a movie star and a princess. About how it was the greatest place in the world to grow up.

I always wanted to visit Ocean City, and last week I did. The circumstance that brought about the trip wasn’t a happy one—Mom’s brother, Frank, died, and we went there to bury him. It was only the third time Mom had been back since coming to Ohio in the 1950s to find work and raise her family. Still, even the sadness of the situation couldn’t overcome the joy she felt about being there. About being home.

•••

What is “home”? That’s a question that’s often puzzled me. My wife is from Texas and has a shirt with a picture of the state flag on it and the word “Home.” I don’t share that same sense of home as my mom or Beth. I was born in Dayton and raised in various places around Cincinnati, and I feel no great connection to either. Yes, I eventually returned and settled here after living in a handful of other towns, but not because of any great fondness for the area. I don’t like the politics. There’s no great natural beauty to be awed by. I certainly didn’t come back for the weather. The pride they feel about the place they call home just isn’t there for me. Perhaps it’s because my youth was more transient than Mom’s or Beth’s. We moved around a lot, and I guess I never really established any roots. Not strong ones anyway.

But I think home is more than that. It seems to me that home isn’t just a place. It isn’t a zip code or address or four walls. It’s something more abstract than that. More philosophical or metaphysical or transcendental. It’s a state of mind. It’s an emotion. Is it where the heart is, to steal a cliché? Perhaps. It’s certainly where Mom’s heart is anyway.

“Do you like my little town?” she asked several times during the trip. Most of the time she’d have to clarify that statement, though, with, “Although my little town isn’t so little anymore.”

Today Ocean City has become the refuge for bigwigs from Atlantic City, whose neon-lit casinos and hotels sit just 12 miles up the coast and now pierce the horizon. Real estate prices have skyrocketed. Condos have sprung up on what was once swampland. The old drawbridge is slowly being replaced by a new modern bridge that soars high over the water so boats can simply sail underneath. Life, it seems, has invaded my mom’s utopia. But to her it’s still home.

•••

Mom doesn’t walk very well anymore. Parkinson’s Disease and two artificial hips are robbing her of her once graceful gait. Feet now drag. Muscles now tighten. What were once easy walks are now feats of labor. None of that mattered, though, as we made our way around town. The trip home gave her the one thing life took away—her youth.

One day we sat on a bench on the boardwalk and watched as lovers strolled by and people milled about in the odd collection of stores. The air was filled with the sound of waves crashing and seagulls squawking as they dive-bombed people with food. “I still hear those seagulls in my sleep,” she said. Even though she was surrounded by the present, all she saw was the past. She was 10 years old all over again.

“There’s the movie theater,” she said. “My brother Bill was a lifeguard during the summers, I had to bring him his lunch every day. He wanted milk with his lunch and it had to be cold, so I’d ride my bike up here, give him his lunch and then go into the movie theater. I’d pay my quarter, sit in the first row of the balcony and watch a movie. Sometimes I stayed for all three shows. Then I’d jump on my bike and pedal as fast as I could. The only rule I had was I had to be home by 6:00 for dinner.”

The tide slowly rose and the sun slowly set, gracefully filling the sky with pinks and purples and oranges. “Feel that breeze?” she said. “We always slept with the windows open. It was good sleeping.”

I asked her if you ever get used to it, if the tranquility eventually becomes the backdrop of everyday life and loses some of its charm. She nods yes. But not today.

•••

We drove past the homes where she once lived—a duplex, a second-floor apartment next to the fire house, a little Cape Cod her parents built when she was in high school. When we drove by the house, there was a dumpster out front and construction tools all around. The couple her mom eventually sold the house to died and their daughter now owned it. She was remodeling it. “Would you mind if I looked inside,” Mom asked. The owner was thrilled to invite us in.

“This was the kitchen,” Mom said. “Over here was the living room. I came home from nursing school one day and there was a TV sitting over in the corner. Nobody told me we got one. We were one of the first people on the block to get one.”

Her dad—my grandfather—was from Philadelphia and decided he wanted to live in Ocean City and moved there shortly after getting married. He got a job in a furniture store and worked there his entire life, providing for the family and getting bargains on new items like TVs. My mom came late in his life—10 years after her brother Bill and 11 years after Frank—and as she grew his health declined. He was determined to live long enough to see his little girl graduate from nursing school, though, and he did. She graduated at the end of November; he died in early January. That's one of my favorite Mom stories.

•••

Mom’s 77 years old now, a lioness in winter. The physical requirements and financial resources for making trips like this are fading, and this was probably her last trip home. She never said anything, but as we drove across the old drawbridge for the final time, I think that reality set in. She just stared out the window, looking back as the buildings got smaller and smaller. When they finally disappeared, she simply gave a little wave and let out a sigh. “So long little town.”