Sanctuary, Retreat, Belonging. The Importance Of Home In Difficult Times

As I write this in the middle of March 2020, the world is gripped by the spread of coronavirus COVID19. Countries are shutting their borders, people are asked to stay indoors, shelter in place and self-quarantine inside. Restaurants, bars, gyms, schools, and other public places are closing. Airlines are on the verge of going bust or re-nationalized, the economy is struggling, and citizens are being asked to travel home. And that’s what I want to talk about today. The concept of home and what it means, especially in difficult times. Because this is the Books and Travel Podcast, but travel may be gone from our lives for a time — and home has become the most important thing. The dictionary definition of home is ‘the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household,’ but in this article, I ponder the aspects of an emotional home, a physical dwelling, and the country we belong to. (1) “Home is where the heart is.” Pliny The Elder This is what it comes down to when crisis hits. We want to know that we and our loved ones are safe at home. Anxiety rises when people we love are trapped overseas with no travel options, or quarantined somewhere far from home. As I write this my brother is on his way home from the Caribbean, my brother-in-law is sick in the middle east, and a friend of mine is stuck in Peru, unable to get a flight out. I am home with my husband, Jonathan. My immediate family are mostly in their homes here in the UK, but his are in New Zealand and Australia. My sister-in-law is Canadian, my other sister-in-law is Nigerian, and they are far from their families too. We don’t know what will happen with flights over the coming months, but if there is a health issue with someone we love, we don’t know if we will be able to get there to help. This global diaspora is how we live now and in good times, it is a wonderful rainbow culture. But in difficult times, how do we even know where home is? Many have chosen a new country to call home, somewhere that resonates in an emotional way beyond the place they were born. My husband Jonathan has chosen the UK as his home but his heart is split over hemispheres right now, and if he has to go, then I go too, even if it means leaving my family behind. In the end, my home is my love, not the physical place I dwell in.   (2) Sanctuary. Refuge. Home is where you feel safe. I’m very lucky to own a modest little house in Bath in the south-west of England. Well, we own a piece of it, the bank owns the rest until we pay it off, but it is home. We bought it in May 2019, after almost a decade of renting, because we were ready to settle down again. I find it hard to commit to a place because, for most of my life, I have moved on after a couple of years — between countries and between cities. I was born in Somerset where I now live and spent most of my school life in Bristol, the city closest to where I live now, so I have come full circle in a way. But I went to school for a while in Malawi, Africa, and worked out in Israel in my year out, before I went to the University of Oxford, which I talked about in episode 12. I worked in London, then in Belgium, Finland and Holland, before traveling to Australia (episode 20) and then New Zealand, where I became a citizen and found a new home – I’ll be doing a separate episode on that at some point. We moved back to the UK in 2011 because we missed Europe so much and I have always felt European — then with Brexit, we questioned whether this was the place we wanted to stay. But I have traveled so much that I can see how wonde...