Home. A few weeks away and I’m glad to be home. The comfort of it, the convenience, the familiarity, the knowing. It’s taken me almost six decades to admit it out loud, but I prefer being home. I like the idea of travel and I like looking back on it after I have been away, but during the event, while I am away, I think often of home. I still count down the days until I get home.
It’s fashionable to want to go places. To duck off for a week here or two weeks there. To fill passports with stamps of foreign countries. But I’ve always preferred settling in rather than passing through. To being part of the fabric of a place rather than watching it go by. To see places isn’t to know them. To know places you need to stay.
I had an uncle who lived his entire life on the one farm. Seventy one years. I always felt he knew where he wanted to be. That he knew that place with deep intimacy.
As I child I suffered dreadfully from homesickness. I remember lying in a strange bed crying, my sleepover friend asleep across the room in her own bed, rhythmic breathing accompanying the unfamiliar creaks of the house. A house known by day but not by night. By night a foreign country. A place I did not want to be. I wanted my own bed, my own room, my own house, my own family. I sobbed into my pillow. Mrs R, my friend’s mother, came in to the room. ‘Are you okay?’ A gentle voice in the darkness. But not my mother. I wanted my mother. I sat up. ‘I want to go home.’ ‘You’ll be okay in the morning. It’s just a few more hours. Then we can have pancakes for breakfast and you and Susan can go and play all day. Then in the afternoon, your Dad will come and get you. Just after lunch.’ It sounded so far away. So long to wait. I bawled. Mrs R tried again: ‘Do you have your cuddle doll? Your mum said you like to have your cuddle doll.’ I hugged Cuddles to my chest. ‘She wants to go home too,’ I offered.
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