I have had three very distinct, very precious homes. And a sweet story from a friend on Facebook has made me want to share a little about these homes.
The first was the rental on Annie St in Brisbane city, where my parents, brother and I lived when we'd first arrived from Kazakhstan to Australia. I was here until I was 11 years old. This home was surrounded by a community and network of almost all the kids I was at school and church with. Most of us were foreigners with complicated names and parents that were studying and working hard, which enabled us to have practically unsupervised afternoons on week days and get into all sorts of mischief as a result. Our different backgrounds taught us from an early age to embrace cultural and language differences and we each were able to grow confident in ourselves as a result. Our teachers encouraged very healthy unison through multicultural fusion and days were we would each bring a plate of our traditional food, or teach the classroom several words in our native languages.
To this day I maintain bonds of friendship with the kids and teachers from that school and in that suburb, whether forged through mutual punishments for convicted mischief, or through the difficulty in international acclimation and the tenacity it took to simultaneously learn English and keep up with the educational curriculum. I will always recall this home and these years of my life as some of the very happiest and best.
Age 11 brought much heart ache and misery, when the house my parents built was completed and I was forced to move across town to the South Brisbane suburb of Kuraby. A new suburb, new school, new teachers and kids; most of whom were Australian with the same culture, simple names and trouble saying mine. I felt very ostracized and instinctively gravitated toward the only other foreign girl there. We are still great friends, but she would be the last true friend I made during my adolescence in the south of Brisbane, for the following year brought high school and after that college, both adding more loneliness and misery.
I lived in this house until I was 19 and I've often wished I could call it a home, yet I can't. Family is one thing, but I was always happier when we were at the beach for holidays or away on weekends. I struggled keeping friends during these 8 years and begun to brood about a lot. It was excellent for my creative writing, since I wrote some of my best work up the stairs in that little back bedroom, but I was becoming a social recluse and developing some kind of depression as a result. All of this would, over the years, increase my negative associations with this house further.
My second home was in Rockhampton, QLD; where I moved at the age of 20 to pursue my college major and attempt independence. Rocky (as it's known in Aus) saved me! Here I met my sister and best friend for life, as well a multitude of other great friends and a family that quickly embraced me as their own; one that I could never now function without. I guess my attempt at independence failed, since I went from one family to another, but there is definitely something to be said for being loved unconditionally by a family that's not related to you: it grows your confidence immensely (while studying and slaving away in the hospitality industry helped too!).
I had believed that I would grow old in Rocky, preferably close to my bestie and the beach, yet at the age of 23, I was forced to give up my comfort zone, my bubble and home in Rockhampton due a force not to be reckoned with. It was one that had defeated me, body and soul: love. As I've previously mentioned, I'd fallen in love with a travelling American boy who was stationed temporarily on the other side of Australia. Despite fighting tooth and nail to deny the reality of my feelings and our future - I was overcome.
We lived together on the beautiful Scarborough Beach in Western Australia for six months, before an utter miracle took us back across the country to my beloved Rocky, where we were married less than two months later. It wasn't long hereafter (and by no great surprise) that we were uprooted again. In September 2010 (as most of my readers know), I made my second international migration, to the USA; and here, I have found my third home.
Although we've only just moved into a new apartment in Midtown Atlanta, and we're not fully settled in yet, I've now moved around so much that I'm not as attached to dwellings as I am to people. I've learnt that it's never the house that becomes a home - but rather the people in or around it. Having just celebrated our second wedding anniversary, I've realized that my love has only grown for this ungrounded, travelling boy and my third and final home is by his side. As my friend said today in his touching story:
Home is where the heart is.
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