Home Sweet Home

It’s become a bit of a tradition for me to post something on my birthday every year; even though it doesn’t really feel like my style anymore, I thought I had better not break tradition. After all, turning 26 was pretty good. Turning 27 was even better. By the time I was 28 I was loving my late 20s. After turning 29 my year was a challenging one in many regards, but the challenges led to exactly the kind of life I want to be living: happy and fulfilled.

Photos of one of my favourite cities in the world. And how could it not be one of my favourites, with bangers and mash, graffiti proposals, and snow globes the size of a house?

There, standing on the bridge that would take me to my flat, is a young man, his arms outstretched in wanting embrace, his face delighted at the sight of me. Looking at him you would have thought we were old friends, new lovers, that we had shared laughs or drinks or at least a handshake.

I have never seen him before in my life.

12 years ago, I was getting ready to start another day at high school; it was my first week of being in Grade 12, my first week as a prefect. It was picture day, so I had woken up early to spend a bit more time on my hair and makeup, make sure my shirt and blazer were ironed properly. I was in the kitchen when my dad called from work.

“Something happened in New York, ” he said. My mum and brother were there, too, so the three of us huddled around the TV and watched with horror as the towers burned. My hometown is an hour behind New York, and so we had been sitting there, eating cereal, chatting about the upcoming day, without knowing what had happened, without knowing that the world was falling apart.

There’s been a foreboding sense to this summer – I’ve known all along that, eventually, I’d be packing up and moving my life to London for an indefinite period of time. This isn’t a surprise; I’ve been talking about it since spring. And yet I’m the type of person who, instead of taking my time packing and organizing and planning, will leave everything until the very end. I leave in four days, and yet I still feel as though there’s a lot to do. That’s the way it always goes, though, isn’t it? There’s a lot to do and we stress out and then it’s just done.

“I love this house,” I said to my mum over the weekend. “It just feels like home. I wish I could pick it up and take it to London with me.”

I bought this house in 2011, primarily as an investment. I rent it out when I’m not around, and will be finding full-time renters in September. It’s also been a great place for me to hang up my hat, so to speak, whenever I come back in town. I lived here for a few months in early 2012, in between trips to Asia and South America, and again for a few months this year, in between South America and moving to London. If the living room in the photo above looks awfully decorated for someone who is only there for a maximum of three months at a time, you may be right.