Heart Homes
Josh asked me a few years ago where I would live if we couldn’t live in D.C., and I promptly told him that it would be somewhere in the North Sea or Northern Atlantic like the Shetland Islands or Faroe Islands, though I could easily be talked as far south as the Outer Hebrides. He was a little taken aback and admitted that he thought I’d throw out Boston or Philadelphia. Something a little more realistic. A little more in our home country.
And, like, yeah, I think we’ll probably end up living in this country forever, but my heart home is somewhere very cold with otters, puffins, and not a lot of sunlight in winter.
Like I said on Friday, it’s when you know you’re from one place but you always sensed that your heart is from somewhere else. That, for me, is Scotland since I was a little kid. That’s why I cried so much when we were in Scotland last year. It was like my heart for the first time was where it belonged. Like I brought it home.
I think if I could live anywhere in Scotland right now, it would be the Island of Yell in the Shetland Islands.
Do you have a heart home?
3 comments
You have dashed all my hopes of you ever saying “Denver.”
My heart home is probably somewhere with a lot of sunlight in winter.
I think Albania is that heart home for both my husband and me. Maybe not for our kids though.
Also, that Moana song – I thought it was written for ME! 🙂
Yes. And I’m finally living there. A tiny town outside Sacramento- although for most of my life I would have just said Sacramento. It’s where my grandparents lived, although by the time we moved here almost 8 years ago they were long dead But growing up we moved a lot. As in, I went to 13 schools before I graduated high school. That included 3 different kindergartens and 3 separate 2nd grades. I was always the new kid, and I never felt like I fit in (wonder why?). The one place that was always a constant was my grandparent’s house. No matter where we had moved I knew there house was always there. When my mom and I gratefully came back home to California after 2 long, long years in Va/DC it was to their house at Christmas. It was where my mom and I would go every summer for a few days to for the fair. It was the one place that felt like home. When my life long best friend moved to that area it was only natural that became a beacon- the only place my heart could possibly want to settle. We had no other family by then so why not? And we did. After moving so much as a kid and taking so many years to get back there’s nowhere I’d go now.