Songs of Home - Bella Loudon
The idea of home has always been a strange one for me. I grew up in a family full of love, joy and adventure. But, because of my father’s job we moved around a lot. Home shifted from the wild loch of Scotland to humid Hong Kong, the soft and pretty villages of Dorset to the dry spicy airs of Pakistan. We spent our holidays in Upstate New York or Cornwall with family on my mother’s side and visits to my father’s family in Wales. Each place became home because that is where my family were but I can’t say that I feel like I come from any of them…And now my sense of family has shifted sine I became a mother. My french partner and our daughter are my new family and we have a beautiful life in Marseille in the South of Fracne- but even though this is now my “home” - I am not from here so it is not “home”.
So I suppose home for me is ever shifting in moments of happiness. Home is when we all gather at my Mum’s house in Edinburgh, home is when my partner and daughter are laughing together as they paddle in the Mediterranean sea, home is a theatre in London, home is visiting my Father’s grave in Cornwall. Home is in the places I have travelled and loved and learned and will never visit again. Home is with my best girl friends drinking wine, it’s watching one of my brothers reading while the other refills the bird feeders, it’s facetiming my sister and nephew before the sun has risen. Home is holding my mum’s hand. Home is my daughter.
I don’t have “a” home and I am not “from” anywhere - but I am lucky to have so many places and people that feel like home.