What even is home anyway?

I’m wondering if, over a week since the Euros final, it’s safe to admit that I thought I might go mad if I heard one more person say “It’s Coming Home”. Anything repeated often enough gets annoying in the end…right? Still, I did enjoy the national enthusiasm for the line. It suggests a sort of collective sentimentality, as well as a defiant optimism (even if it’s initial resurgence in the 2018 World Cup was, as Tom implied, initially a bit tongue in cheek – before people realised England might actually be in with a shot of winning).

While football has taken an Italian detour, I’m still wondering… what even is home anyway? The older I get the more nostalgic, romantic even, the idea of it seems. As a Smoggy living in London for the past ten years, it’s becoming ever harder to know where – or what – defines it.

Unlike the footy, I did make it ‘home’ with my mini squad during the Euros: at almost 17 months old, it was Ruby’s maiden voyage to the North-East where I grew up. After a remarkably smooth five-hour drive, she waltzed straight into my childhood home, completed a full sweep of the premises and settled herself straight in. And there we stayed for six nights – spending time with people, taking turns to keep an eye on Rubes, eating baked goods, watching the matches, respectfully ignoring mam’s requests to clear out my old room and generally not venturing very far. It was bloody great.

And I thought, not for the first time recently, why the hell do we live so far apart? The distance seems infinitely greater than it did for child free me, blissfully unaware of the impending Covid outbreak and its related restrictions. For the first time since moving to London, I’ve started to feel homesick for the place I’m from – or at least for the people that are there.

Oddly, this feeling is really hitting home (ahem) as we’re leaving restrictions behind. Maybe it’s because, now we’re actually allowed to consistently spend time with our families whenever we like (*pauses to compute that this is real life I’m talking about*), I’m starting to really appreciate what we’re missing out on by not living closer to them.

On the last night of our stay I took myself out for a run around the streets I used to bomb about on my bike as a kid. I wondered if part of missing home is nostalgia for a certain time in life. It’s an unfair comparison between the reality of now and the highlights reel from then: a time immortalised in my memory for post-school cuppas and Mars Bars (thanks Dad), long summer nights playing out or walking the dog and winter evenings curled up in the armchair with episodes of Dawson’s Creek (I was just as cool then as I am now). There was an uncomplicated freedom to life that comes, I guess, with a sense of security – and when I’m back there I remember it well.  

The next day I was too preoccupied with being the one to start the drive back down South to shed the tears that have become standard every time we say goodbye to my parents (anyone who’s been in a car under my stewardship will understand why all attention must, first and foremost, be on the wheel). As I was warned having a baby would, something about Ruby’s arrival has turned me into a blubbering wreck. And, true to form, once I registered that we were back in London – whereby I mean I realised we had care of our own child again and were no longer being waited on hand and foot – the waterworks made a robust appearance. Independence, I decided, might be over-rated after all.

Weirdly, not long after getting back, I reached a point in a book* I’ve been plodding through for ages that talked about the idea of home. It said: “Home is where a thought or feeling can be sustained instead of being interrupted or torn away from us because something else is demanding our time and attention.” And I thought, yeah: maybe it makes sense that home isn’t really a place at all, but a state of mind. And I guess it’s unsurprising that we often attach that state of mind to the place we grew up – where, if we were lucky, we got to experience feeling content and still and satisfied – the sort of stuff which can sometimes elude us as adults. (See post on why I reckon toddlers might be the real oracles.)

And, of course, once emo me calmed down, I was very happy to be back in our gaff. I hope Ruby looks back on this place – her first home – with a smidge of the affection I have for mine. Because, in writing this, I’ve realised that being homesick is also sort of the same as being grateful. And it’s only now, as we’re raising the Rubes, that I realise just how much I’ve got to be grateful for.

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*Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés