Where your skates are

 Dear future hubster,
I'm sure I've said it before, but in case I haven't: home is not a place. Although sometimes it might look like a place,  like a moderately ugly orange sofa in the Tshukudu house.

But it's so many more things. 

It is where you're picked up from the airport and handed balloons, water, GT; or where you already have metro tickets on arrival and don't have to line up with all the losers at the ticket machines; you also know which line to take without having to check. Home is where somebody gives you instructions in a way that makes sense to you, none of that 300 meters northeast, but "after the green door". Home is where you get a key, can make your own coffee (if you figure out how the buttons work), and you know you can grab a few hangers for your clothes - sometimes you even get a dedicated drawer!

It is where somebody gets grapefruit juice and oat milk for your breakfast; where there is late-night ramen prepared if you and your jet lag get hungry, where your dietary choices are remembered. 

Ok fine maybe home is at least part food ( shoutout to the good old Luxair cheese sandwich), it is also where you feel quietly smug for ordering un crémant and hearing the flight attendant politely lecture the savages in the row behind who asked for champagne.  

  

Sure, your phone connects to the wifi, but also, you don't need your phone that much, because outside you know your way around a little bit, and inside there are people you want to be with, watching real estate reality shows or playing Scrabble or just gossiping about politics and celebrities and group therapy and sexist poetry and assessment methods.

It's also where five languages are spoken in the house but the only known word for some berries is "ribizli" and everybody understands it.

Home is where you buy extra concert tickets because you know exactly whom to offer them to; where you know the best corner of the concert hall and you know that you might see some familiar faces there; and where the moment you wince somebody asks if it's too loud, too crowded, or if you need earplugs because they know your track record with crowded and loud places.

Home is where you can go out for dinner with some friends and run into others like it's no big deal. It's also where your heart skips happily when you see a place you used to go to still being open after everything; where your heart sinks a little when you hear about places that didn't make it. 

If home is a place, it's not defined by geography. It is a space where you can be yourself, if you know who that is, can think about who you want to be, and have permission to not be anything you don't want to be. More importantly, it's a place where not having the faintest clue of who you are and what you're doing with your life is nothing to be ashamed of or hide. It is a space where everybody knows that most of us are winging it; it's a space where you're allowed to not know, helped in your trials, supported in your error aftermaths, and celebrated for the miniest of wins.