I’ve talked and thought extensively about home and what it means to me. As someone who’s stayed in her hometown — five minutes from her parents and ten from her brother — home has always been this place. The familiar streets, the same stores, the people I’ve spent my whole life seeing. I could drive through town with my eyes closed and still find my way.
But while I’ve written so much about the place I call home and the people who make it feel that way, I’ve never talked much about the people who aren’t here. Because even though this town will always be my home base, there are other people who feel like home too, even if they’re nowhere near here. And the older I get, the more I wonder how they fit into a life I’ve rooted so firmly in one place.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since Adele visited from Ireland. She’s been my “Irish sister” since I was ten and she first came here through the Irish Children’s Program. Every summer, she flew in from Belfast, crossing the ocean to get here. We couldn’t have been more different or lived more different lives — I still barely understand what her world is like — but we grew up together anyway. Summers were ours: swimming, shopping, staying up late, water balloons, video games, McDonald’s runs, baseball, bonfires. She’d return each summer and it always felt like she’d never left.
Her last visit was in 2009. Ten years slipped by. We got married, had kids, built lives, took on responsibilities that make long-distance reunions harder. We all knew we’d see her again, but no one knew when. Then, this June, she came back with her husband and kids — and suddenly it felt like she’d stepped straight out of our childhood and into the present, unchanged and familiar.
She stayed with my brother this time instead of in the room we used to share in my childhood home. As I drove my family over to meet hers, I felt calm… until I didn’t. The closer we got, the more the reality hit: I was about to see my childhood sister for the first time in a decade — and meet the little humans who made her a mom. I parked, got out, walked into the backyard, and there she was. A decade melted away in seconds. We hugged. I grinned. I said, on a laugh, “It’s been TEN YEARS!”
She and I are still opposite in so many ways. She’s outgoing, tough, loud, magnetic. I’m quieter, more hesitant, nothing like her. But she feels like home. When I’m around her, I’m right back in our childhood summers, only now, we’re chasing kids instead of running wild ourselves. It blows my mind that we’re both moms now, probably as much as it blows hers.
I don’t know when I’ll see her again — hopefully it won't take another ten years — but even if I meet her next in Ireland, halfway across the world, seeing her will still feel like home.
I’ve come to realize that home can be a place, but it can just as easily be a person. My grandmother is another one of those people.
She lives 1,300 miles away in Florida, and I’m lucky if I see her every couple of years — but she and her house feel like home in a way that makes distance irrelevant. I could walk that house in the dark. The guest room covered in quilts feels like mine, even though dozens of people have stayed there. I can picture every visit: me curled up with a book on the blue couch, Grandpa asleep in his recliner; mornings where I wander out to find Grandma watching the news in her robe and glasses, while I listen as if those Florida updates apply to my own life.
Every visit, I think: if everything in New York fell apart, I could come here. I could stay here forever. When I’m with her, I’m a kid again. She takes care of me as if I don’t have kids of my own. I miss her terribly when we’re apart. I message her often on Facebook just to check in. I cover my house in antique quilts and quilted dolls just to feel closer to her.
And when she visits here, home expands again. A trip to the store or a restaurant feels different — softer, safer — because she’s with me. It doesn't matter how often I visit those places in my daily life. It's different when she's there, too.
There’s another person like that for me, too: my best friend from high school who moved away after college. We were inseparable: weekends together, silly movies, inside jokes, driving around singing the worst Christmas songs at the top of our lungs. Once, I even almost hit him with my car. My teenage years wouldn’t make sense without him. We fed off each other’s sense of humor, made each other laugh until we cried.
We talk less now. Our lives are very different. I don’t know the details of his days and he doesn’t know mine. But whenever he comes home, it takes about one minute for us to fall back into who we were. I’m not “serious adult me” around him. I’m the version of myself I was at thirteen — loud, goofy, ridiculous — and he brings that out of me like no one else. He’s not here anymore, but when he visits, my sense of home stretches again.
I’m grateful for the roots I have here. I love my house and the life I've built. I love being close to my parents, my family, my two best friends. I’ll never stray far.
But there’s a comfort in knowing that home isn’t limited to one zip code. There’s peace in realizing that people can feel like home just as much as a place can... and that I could be anywhere in the world with them and still feel grounded, familiar, and safe.
Some homes you live in.
Some homes you visit.
And some homes live inside the people you love, no matter where you are.
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