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.