Home
Tomorrow’s update will probably be delayed by a day, as I am travelling home.
Home is probably one of the most hard-working words in the English language. So much meaning is compacted into a single four-letter word. Home means so many things for different people, but there’s a problem; home can mean multiple things for the same person. I’m currently writing this at home, by which I mean the house that I am sharing with two of my friends in Cambridge. I’ve been here for six months, it’s where I go after work (when I’m not dashing off to do something else), it’s where I sleep, and I can relax here. Home.
Cambridge is home too; I feel not only that I live here now (which may change when I finish my PhD, but who knows?) but that the vast majority of my friends are here, and I love the fact that I often see friends whilst I’m cycling in to the lab, and if I were to go wandering through town I’d probably bump into more. It’s also where my girlfriend lives most of the time (when she’s not at home, where her parents live). So Cambridge is home too.
But the house where I grew up is never going to stop being home, and by extension, the town where I grew up is my home town. Even though Cambridge feels like home because I am surrounded by friends, I do still have friends at home, and more than that, I have family. Family here doesn’t just mean blood relations; there are people back home who’ve known me since I was born, and some of them are close enough that I’ll refer to them as Aunts and Uncles and similar. Even though me and various members of my family differ in many respects, there’s something hugely comforting about having the safety net of home where I know I’ll always be welcome (especially with my parents), and there will be people with whom I have such a strong bond. Some of my oldest friends at home almost qualify as this too; I see them whenever I’m home, and I am grateful that they always make time for me. Also, I should add that my little cousins are there (most of the time, sadly they are away for a while at the moment), and it’s always great fun to visit and play with them. But the house is more home than the town is, just because of the sheer amount of time I've lived there and the accompanying memories. Memories of growing up and being looked after, memories of feeling comfortable and safe. Even the memories of when I was sad there because of being bullied at school still contribute to make it home. But of course, it's the fact the good vastly outweighed the bad that means it's still home.
And then when I’m away abroad or similar, wherever I’m staying becomes a sort of surrogate home. It shares attributes with my home here in Cambridge now, and I’ll likely refer to it as such, but its allocation as “home” is much more flimsy. It’s not somewhere I belong; it’s just somewhere I happen to be. “I’m heading home” sometimes seems to be the phrase that emerges from my lips, when really I should say “I’m heading back to the flat” or something. This is me being careless with the word “home” and I probably shouldn’t do it. I know what I mean though.
So, tomorrow I’m leaving home to go to work, and going home. Both town home and house home. Simple, eh?