#home

overgrown

so they know we are home

we missed this

shakshuka with our eggs and tomatoes 

practising her spoonfest skills

making a magic wand

We're home!

And it's the strangest thing but most of the time I feel like we've always been here.

Even though we've been away for three whole months, even though we've walked the streets of London and Rome and Paris and Tel Aviv, even though we've seen the Mona Lisa, we've shopped in Oxford Street, we've stayed in an Airbnb right next to a blue domed church in Santorini, and even though we got lost in a down pour in Sienna, now that we're home - we're home.

Everything is so easy, so comfortable and so familiar. I know exactly where the toilet is even when it's dark, I don't have to search for the cutlery drawer, the washing machine automatically uses the setting I like and I get to sleep in the comfiest bed in the whole world.

Our home smells like the forest that surrounds it, like the fires in the cooker and in the lounge-room and like the laundry that I've just hung out. (I can't tell you how relieved I feel that our home does not smell like a dead mouse in the wall or like mouse wee in the pantry like I'd feared, phew!) Our home is ridiculously quiet. Quieter than any other place we've been. If you close your eyes and listen carefully you might just hear the sound of the bore water pouring into the house dam, the song of a bird calling to its mate or the hum of the fridge. Home tastes like the shakshuka Miss Jazzy made over the fire last night, like a long waited for farmer Bren coffee and like juice made from everything we can find in our overgrown garden. Home is familiar, it's part of me.

Home feels like we've never left her.

But every now and then, usually when I'm doing the most usual thing, our adventure comes rushing back to remind me. I'll be knitting the last few rows of a pair of socks when I suddenly remember the kitchen of the Tuscan villa where I first wound the wool and cast on. I'll be walking to the door to let the dog in when I'll trip over a bag of damp bathers from the swim we had in Hong Kong just hours before we left for the airport. I'll catch sight of Miss Indi's I love Italy pyjama top and remember the cute little shop we bought it from in Rome. And I'll look at my instagram feed and see that someone has liked a photo of an impossibly beautiful beach we swam in on the Greek island of Crete.

For those split seconds I am back there, I am hurrying to wind the wool to get out of the cook's way, I am floating on my back in the warm pool in Hong Kong looking at the sky and wondering how long it'll be before I swim again, I am hurrying the girls up in the souvenir shop so we can go and eat yet another spaghetti pomodoro and I am running over the burning hot sand and jumping into the deliciously cool water of the Mediterranean sea.

And then I'm back home getting another log for the fire.


Does that make sense? I apologise if it's a bit mooshy. I have a horrible cold and I feel like my head is filled with marshmallow.

But I do look forward to blogging a bit more regularly now that we're back. I'd love to fill in some of the blanks from the last three months and if that fails then I'll be happy to record this time of landing and finding our feet and moving forward. I'm a tiny bit considering a photo and a paragraph post a day in October, but with going back to school and two birthdays and all the planting and weeding, I'm not sure that would be so wise.

Nevertheless, I will be seeing you soon.

I hope you are happy and well and loved.

Kate

xoxoxoxox