On Sunday, fresh off the plane and completely jet-lagged, we went to the beach closest to our flat. We held Hugo in the cold water, played in the sand, splashed around in the shallow rock-pools.
The weather was perfect, the scene was perfect, so I said, "Aren't we lucky to be able to come home to this?" to which Chris replied, "We're not lucky, we chose to live here."
He's right, we not only chose to move to Newcastle, we made the life-changing decision to uproot ourselves, leave friends and family behind, a professional network we had become a part of, and a cultural landscape we enjoyed, in order to move to a city we had never even visited on the off-chance that we might like it.
As it turns out, we more than like, we love it. This is the right place for us at this moment in our lives, as a young family. The pull to come 'Home' to Newcastle did take me a little by surprise as we were packing our bags in Nice last week. I'm not sure I ever felt this way about Sydney even-though we were there for much longer.
Maybe Newcastle feels the most like home these days because it is the only home Hugo has ever known and around him, we have made our nest.
When you were about the same age as Hugo, we went for a long trip to places where many dream of going: New York, Los Angeles, Tahiti, Paris ... and I sure was happy to finally be going home to Aqaba, the comparatively unknown land of sea, sand and sun, from which all the other expat wives had fled.
ReplyDeleteHome is just where the people you love are.