It’s the people, the chaos, and the food. The love , the comfort, and the sense of knowing it’ll always be there. Home for me has never been a place. I’ve lived on 4 continents and never been in the same house for more than 5 years. But I have never felt without a home.

This last summer, we went on a cross-country road trip to Toronto and back, over a week of driving and thousands of kilometers covered. It was home on the road. Every day we’d get in the van…and start the regular routine. Reading books, watching movies, arguing, eating, sleeping…the mundane things that make up day-to-day life. And every night we’d brush our teeth and go to bed. So even though we were at a truck stop in Sudbury one night or a trailer park in Swift Current the other, it did not feel like a too-long trip. It was home-on-the-road! We passed through the Ontario forests and the endless Prairies, saw the Northern Lights and the Rocky Mountains, and then got a nice stormy welcome into BC as the dry spell was broken with a crazy storm.

Some folks thought my family was crazy. 4000+ kilometers? And with 10 kids (yes, I come from a very big family)? In the heat of summer? But we just thought it was a lot of fun.

It’s how I look at home. It’s being with the people you love most, those you can argue with about anything, the one’s you can be silly or smart or sad or just nothing in front of. It’s being around people who you wouldn’t hesitate to do crazy things like go on long road trips or camp in your backyard.

Then regardless of what happens, how much you have to move or what life throws at you, once they are there, you are at home.

I guess looking at it all, my family is my home. Anywhere, anytime.

 

Work Cited

Algonquin Provincial Park. Accessed on 8 February, 2016.

Azpiri, Jon. “Massive Metro Vancouver storm leads to power outage, fallen trees.” Global

     News. 29 August 2015.  Accessed on 8 February, 2015