I’ve been away for the last five weeks (and silly busy in the weeks before that, hence the blog silence) but within two weeks I wanted to come ‘home’. The weird thing about that feeling is that ‘home’ used to be, and in some ways still is, England. I’ve only lived in the US for 7 of my 43 years, but I wanted to be back here.
Actually, it’s not the US that feels like home, but the street I currently live on. I never before such a sense of belonging somewhere. So even though I was ‘away’ seeing my mom and siblings and wonderful friends I’ve known for decades, I needed a physical location to feel ‘home’. I mean a location, not just a house, that’s associated with people and relationships and a shared history (albeit fairly short).
I don’t know anyone now who lives in the town in which I spent the first 23 years of my life, and I don’t know anyone in the town where my parents retired to in the early ’90s. My sisters are scattered between across England, Scotland, Wales and New Zealand, and my friends are likewise scattered. So the only place I have a day to day continuity of relationship is where I currently live.
If I could gather my friends and family in England together in one place, where I could ‘pop in’ or where I’d bump into them serendipitously in the course of days and weeks, then for sure that would be home. But I can’t, so it isn’t. At least for now, this is.