The Concept of Home ...

Well, another new week at school, another interesting lunchtime chat ...

I was chatting with (North American) English-speaking staff about holidays, trips, and catching up with family & friends ... and I got around to mentioning to one woman who has a lot of people coming over summer that I know of a reasonably large apartment that will be vacant around that time as the residents will be traveling overseas. Of course she asked if it was mine, and that in turn dribbled around to the fact that I will be visiting Australia around that time to catch up with people.
Now, the other member of the conversation (let's call her Arwen, just for fun) chimed in with, "Oh, so you're going home then!".
Without thinking, I replied, "No, back to Australia for a holiday.".
"Isn't that home?" Arwen asked.
"No, Zürich's home," I answered, honestly.
Arwen appeared confused, as if I was being deliberately obtuse, and asked, "Home is where you were born, where you grew up, isn't it?"
I let the assertion slide, and she wandered off to another conversation. Got me thinking, though, about where 'home' really is ...


For me, I feel at home in whatever place I am now. Growing up, home was the only house in which I'd ever lived. I lived there for 21 years, in the same bedroom, without thinking about any other place as being home.

After my Dad remarried, I moved to Mum's house - and that was home. I established myself in a different room, with a few different bits of furniture, and really settled in. This was now home, not the house in which I'd lived for 21 years.

Then, a few years later, I got married. Moved in to a flat with my new wife, and now that flat was home (with a bizarre landlord, who unfailingly mowed the moss around the block each Wednesday. Yes, it was moss (well, 70% anyway!), but he mowed it anyway! He also must have had at least fifty spares for everything in the block tucked away somewhere, as whenever some ancient fitting broke, out came a perfect match - even to the age!

We soon had a child on the way, and felt it best to move away from our unbalanced landlord, so moved into a nice little flat (next to a huge park!) owned by my Dad ... and that was home, double-length garage that never had space for a car (thanks to my wife's hoarding of furniture) and all! Our daughter was born, it was a slightly messier home ... our son was born, and it was a slightly crowded even messier home ... but it was home.

After some years of that home, we had to move to avoid a hostile landlord take-over ... so we managed to rent a house that backed onto the in-laws' side fence. Gave my father-in-law a new perspective on the external plumbing for the upstairs bathroom ... "That sticks out like a sore thumb!". Oh, and he installed the gate through the fence left-handed (natural, given his inclination) ... which meant we had to pass the gate, then open it, in order to visit. Also, for some reason known only to himself, he made the gate less than 700mm wide. Still, once my mother-in-law put a curtain on the kitchen window, we got on reasonably well. My father-in-law swiftly went from half a dozen easily-cared-for reptiles to about a score, including some which required fresh live food daily, once he knew somebody who was not afraid to grab a handful of cockroaches lived next door and could be trusted with a set of keys. That was home, bizarre feeding habits and all ... with the added bonus of emergency babysitting on various evenings when we were suddenly called out to dinner or a movie. Oh, and the landlord living two doors up the road was not a problem ... at least, not as much as his attitude to any broken-down air conditioners or shattered windows ... Yes, home, with an unusable pool that proved to be a perfect breeding ground for goldfish.

Said landlord wanted to let his brother use the house, and gave us the minimum notice to move out. Rather generous of him, since it meant that the moving date was about two weeks after our third child's due date, and our kids are all born late ... truly a great man!
So, second son born in the back room of a house we had to vacate less than a week later (which worked remarkably smoothly, thanks to a friend and her Korean removalists! Lucky them, they could pretend they didn't understand the annoying landlord who tried to give orders as to how things should be moved to avoid damage to his house ... that's what the bond & insurance are for, git!). That home was left with few regrets (I loved watching the goldfish, we had a few big ones in there, and a variety of interesting colours!), and we moved to a flash townhouse near the kids' school.
This was soon home, but for some reason it didn't feel as permanent as the others. I was settled, but the wife & kids seemed not so ... This was due to the fact that, unknown to us at the time, we were going to leave there less than twelve months later (which suited our landlord, whose relationship with his new girlfriend was working well, and he could sell the place vacant shortly after our lease expired).

Zürich was our destination, and an apartment scheduled for demolition within eight months. It felt like home straight away, despite a decided lack of furniture.
Eight? Did I say eight? Sorry, make that fourteen ... nah, stuff it, why not 26! That's a far more reasonable short-term lease ... don't mind the surveying markers, they'll last two years without getting lost - they're about five metres high!


So, home ... perhaps the concept of 'home' is so flexible to me, since I don't really see any place in this world as where I'll really settle. My home is not in this world, but I can be content in a whole heap of places while I'm waiting to get there ...