Home

Being away from daily life has been really wonderful and needed. We’ve been back in the Netherlands now for one week and we’ve slipped back into it just as fast as we slipped out of it for two weeks. While being back at work, grocery shopping, house cleaning, thinking of and making dinners, it has already been great to be able to look back at all the memories we’ve made. This vacation in particular has made me realize that being back in our house, in this country and in the vicinity of our families is not necessarily being back home.

Let me explain.

I never left home, not really. They say: “Home is where the heart is” and that for me rings very true. My heart is with {M} & {J}. This explains why we have no problem at all moving around the country or the world. In the more than twenty-nine years that we have been married we have moved 11 times and lived in 12 houses or apartments. The longest we have lived in a house is 10 years, the second longest is the house we live in now, a little over 4 1/2 years. We started in Rotterdam, immigrated to the USA, moved back and ended up in a small town in Zeeland, the South-West part of the Netherlands and now we live in the North-West part of the country. We’re always open to the possibility of moving. It’s not that we want to or feel like we’re not at peace where we are, I am a big believer in the fact that I always bring myself with me, so the really important things don’t change or get better (if needed) by moving. The thing is that wherever I am with {M} is where I am most at home.

And so I am not back home, because I never left home. The place, the person, where I feel most at home has been with me all this time!