Home is where the heart is?

Whilst picking junior up from school the other day, her teacher was asking some of the mums if they’d be going ‘home’ for Christmas i.e. the country they originate from. She was asking because the children will be doing a play and it’s no use them learning their parts if they’re not going to be here. It got me thinking about the concept of home and why people always assume if you’re from another country, that you will automatically gravitate there for holidays etc.
So where is home if you don’t live in the country you were born? England really doesn’t feel like home to me but perhaps that is due to the fact that there is no ‘family home’ remembered from childhood to lure me back and hasn’t been for nearly 20 years’, perhaps it is these places and the memories they hold which draw the ‘ex-pat’ back. I can imagine living in England again but only in Devon where Sean and I lived in the late 1990s and where we immediately felt at home and were actually quite sad to leave but if we hadn’t left then we wouldn’t have lived in Ireland where junior was born and where we owned the perfect house (in my opinion anyway, though I think my father may disagree!). I suppose then that home is where Sean and junior are, regardless of country or surroundings, and that it is not a specific place that holds any sway over my heart but rather the people (and animals of course!).
We’ve been seeing some rather beautiful skies of late from the living room window but unfortunately we never seem able to capture them in a picture, I haven’t the patience and Sean hasn’t the time. Here however is one of his efforts from a few nights’ ago.

It was even more beautiful in the flesh and sort of makes up for not having telly