Things that are home

If you’re privileged enough to have a home - a good, happy home - you may find it’s a funny place to return to.

Filled with the history of your childhood. Lit by a beautiful familiarity. Awash with meaning, reserved only for you.

There are certain things that make that space, out of anywhere in the whole wide world, your home. And when I venture back to 2 Macgregor Street, these are the things that are home to me:

• Mum always opting to eat the middle pip of the mango because she knows we like the cheeks best, and saying, ‘that’s good food’ when she’s done.

• The afternoon breeze that brings bird song to the deck as we sit and sweat and look out upon the trees that guard our wooden paradise.

• The ache of Sooty’s absence as I realise we’ve stopped rushing to shut the gate and that I still expect to see her lying at the end of the driveway, waiting for us to arrive home.

• That despite decades of days and dollars of distance, I am never forgotten – the wifi connects automatically.

• The art, so much art, acquired over years of living that turns a space into a spectacle and makes a wall breathe with beauty.

• The heat – thick in the air and moist on my skin, making naps groggy and running harder and home feel like it always has.

• The everlasting stash of digestive and scotch finger biscuits that wait patiently for Dad’s next cup of coffee.

• A familiarity that seismic shifts in society and catalytic changes in character cannot rupture - that allows you to move and cry and age - but means coming home is the same, as always.