What is Home?

Have you ever really thought to answer the question “What is Home?” I don’t think I had really thought a lot about it until last winter when we left Sabática docked in Sicily and started traveling to visit family, friends and different places. Nowhere felt like “home” anymore. We were truly nomads, so I started investigating the question. This hit me more than Conor as I am less nomadic by nature. 

Is “home” a country? A city? A neighborhood? A community? A physical abode? Where you grew up? Where your family or friends are? Where things are familiar? Where you have routines? Where certain customs exist? Where a particular language is spoken? The answer might be different for everyone.

Sabática is certainly our home. She is an abode and an abode that is ours. She has our “things,” and she’s organized how we like it. She’s comfortable to us. A great perk of traveling and visiting new places by boat, is that you get to bring your home with you. 🙂 Whenever we leave her and then return, we certainly feel like we are returning home. We definitely welcome and host guests on her. But what about the environment she’s sitting in? This cruising life we’ve embarked on in Europe is quite a nomadic and culturally foreign one for me. Typically great for vacationing, but what about living? What does it take to make other places feel more like home?

This expanded question of “home” resurfaced as we returned to Porto Montenegro several times this summer. Each time we arrived, we breathed a little sigh and felt we had returned “home” in the sense that Porto Montenegro (Tivat) is where our whole adventure began. We’ve lived here at least a couple of months in total, it’s very familiar, we like it, and we know some local people. However, the challenging Montenegrin language will forever be a barrier.

We breathed another huge sigh once we made it back to Sicily a couple of weeks ago (in time to collect our friends!). We’ve spent many months in Sicily, living as well as exploring. Again, it’s familiar and we like it. We feel “local” enough here to show friends around. We’re familiar with certain towns and understand more than we remembered in the way of customs, foods, specialities, etc. Our Californian friends – Katie, Jeff, Jackson and Scott – were with us for three quick nights and were happy to have a very chill time after coming off busy tours in Paris and London. We were able to give them a taste of Catania, Siracusa and boat life. I think swimming among schools of fish was a unique highlight for them! 🙂

On our own again, we simply had two more days of sailing to reach our winter spot in Licata. Yet another, deeper feeling of returning “home.” We were able to dock on the same pontoon as last winter, we have neighbors we know from last winter, we know a few locals, and we have easily been able to fall into the same familiar routines. But, the language barrier (even though we tried learning some Italian!) and other customs really makes the town itself always feel foreign and somewhat unreachable. 

Up until we left for our sailing life, California was definitely “home.” We loved it there, we had a fresh start as a couple and fit in well, raised our kids there, had a great community, and still have great friends there. Visiting last fall, however, felt strange being back in our town and not having our house to go back to. Staying with friends was great, but not having our own place felt really weird. 

To sum things up, nowhere completely feels like home to me during this nomadic adventure! Why is this an important question? Without a permanent home, my sense of belonging to something erodes. By being so reliant on Conor, a bit of my sense of independent identity also gets fuzzy. I’ve realized that I only feel completely myself when I’m fully “at home.”

I suppose there are degrees of home, though. I can recognize that for me, home is an abode that is our own, in a place that has become familiar, where I have routines, where I can act independently, and where I know people. Actually, we don’t just know people, but we are involved in a community sharing our abilities with others. It’s about being connected – to family, friends and community. I naturally feel most comfortable in the USA where the culture is familiar, I can easily speak English with depth of language, I can operate very independently, and it’s easier to feel I belong.

As long as we are nomads, though, I can look to develop features of home where ever we may be. The marina in Licata is the closest thing we have so far because we get plugged into the amazing boating community that congregates here each winter. We attend weekly social happy hours and BBQs, and we get to meet interesting people from all over the world who share this adventurous boating lifestyle. We share stories and wisdom and laughs, and there is much comfort in that.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for taking in my reflection. I’ve confirmed that I’m not a long-term nomad, though will make the most of each location we experience. In more ways than one, I’ve learned that leaving home is a great way to learn about oneself!