Have you ever made a list of all the addresses you've lived at? I did the other day, and while I didn't include the address of grandparents who I lived with for two school terms when I was 14 or my Aunt and Uncle who I crashed with for a year during sixth form, I managed to rack up 20 different addresses.
I've been thinking about home the last little while. Where is home - how do I define that place I think of when we think of HOME. To me, "I'm going home." means different things to me depending on the context.
Here while I live in Melbourne it means I'm going to the apartment I share with my roommates. Except when it means I'm getting on a plane to go fly to New Zealand, then it means I'm going to the place where my kids live in Auckland. When I'm there, sometimes 'home' means driving down to Taranaki where I grew up my teenage years.
Home doesn't mean where I was born any more. It doesn't mean where I lived in the first homes we bought, nor my first flats or apartments. When I really think about it, I wonder if I actually have a home. Can I remember what it's like to have one?
I'm not a permanent resident of Australia, let alone Mebourne. I don't live where my children live anymore. I feel 'at home' in Taranaki at The Farm, but it hasn't been the place where I live for a very long time. So where is my home? Maybe I don't actually have one after all. Maybe they're all just addresses.
Is having lived at 20 different addresses more than usual, or about right? How many different places have you lived?