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An Evolving Definition of Home
The loss (and gain) that happens when we live with an adventurous, open heart.
I’m spending the week in Amsterdam, the place I have lived longest since leaving Australia twenty years ago. Walking its streets, memories lurk everywhere. Some make a particular space in my heart glow. Others give rise to bittersweet nostalgia, sending a shard of pain to that same place.
The dozen or so streets on which I’ve lived, strewn across the city.
My favorite run, done countless times, looping along canals through Oud Zuid.
Passionate kisses on a bridge over the Amstel river.
Late evening pizza and beer picnics with mates, laughter rising in the heavy, heady summer humidity.
Biking home from a music festival, dawn starting to glisten on the horizon, feeling unrestrainedly alive and free.
Sobbing without restraint, meandering De Pijp streets aimlessly, mourning the fact that I was leaving Amsterdam “for good” to marry and start a new life in California.
Ha.
Amsterdam always knew better.
The first time I stepped foot in Amsterdam was as an exchange student. We spent the first weeks in the country in “culture classes”, run by the…
