What Makes Home Home?

Memorizing the creaks in a house you've lived in for many years.
Anticipating when a family member will leave the milk out, because they do it every single morning.
Watching your daughter make friends in elementary school, then graduate with them years later.
Seeing the various streets get potholes, then get those potholes filled, and having to re-learn where the bumps are.

Those are good reasons to stay put. We live in an age of airplanes, cell phones, and the web. I don't have to drive a damn buggy across the plains, climb on a boat, and spend weeks at sea just to see another continent. I can go for a week and come back, not missing much.

But there are equally good reasons to not stay put, to bounce around.

I grew up escaping through books, with the idea that as soon as I could muster up the courage, I would escape from country to country. I had solid plans to buy an orange El Camino and travel through the United States, with a mattress in the back to sleep on (don't judge eleven year-old dreamy me). Then I would sail to Europe and inspect every corner of it while living in an old gypsy caravan.
 

LONDON

DUBLIN

ROME

BARCELONA

SEATTLE

PALAU

HAWAII

INDIA

KYOTO

CYPRUS

PARIS

AUSTRALIA

Fin won't be in kindergarten for another four years. She would adore these places. I'm thoroughly convinced that what makes a home home isn't that list of things at the top of this post. Those are the things that make it wonderful, but the truth is, my family makes it home.

And anytime I feel bored with simple, routine, repetitive life, I just remember that I would be delighted to tumble around the world with my darling daughter by my side, learning other ways of living, tasting the foods, seeing the fashions, breathing in foreign air--but it would be worthless without my family.

And we live in an amazing age, when I can jump on a plane, see Paris, and fly home for super cheap.

Home is wherever I decide it is. And it's not a place, it's a state of mind.