I first left home when I was seven years old. My parents’ jobs in the academe took them to far flung places in the country. To give us four siblings a sense of stability by not moving from one school to another, I stayed with our closest family in the city, coming home only on Christmas and school holidays. A journey that I thought I had already gotten used to until I was old enough to fly the roost.
In the years when children who have jobs of their own would wish to stay in the comfort of the family home I upped and settled abroad, earning my own keep. Again, I would be home on occasions or whenever I could. Those were emotional moments of homecoming and departing, an all too familiar ritual that strangely never got any easier through the years.
There is something about home that I have never really found anywhere no matter how far away I wander. It may be the warmth of what is familiar. Or the memories that I can never leave behind. Perhaps the places that I have been to did not beckon enough. Maybe I haven't settled, just yet.
A sojourner and a wanderer. I guess my heart never really left home.
