I wrote recently for another Gallery prompt that the best thing about travelling was the coming home: I love to see Canary Wharf in the distance and know that I will soon be on my front doorstep. It’s a strange thing to grow up overseas. Not just overseas, but travelling, so that every three years you have a new home, a new school, a new social life, a new set of friends.
My background meant that I was a good nanny: quick to settle in, get the lay of the land, ingratiate myself and all that. I also used to rearrange the furniture. I was actually known for it. It was one of the ways I used to claim a space as my own: rearranging the room removed the person who had the post before me. In the same way, when we move house, I always like to change the numbers on the door and get it repainted. Somehow that casts out the old family and claims the house as officially ours.
When we moved into our current house, we had been a family for five weeks. The door was dark green, as were the tiny numbers on the wall surround. You couldn’t see them from five paces away, never mind from the road. How different it is now.
I'm gonna paint my front door red and change my name to Elizabeth Arden
I am so content to be tucked away behind this door, which is not to say that I wouldn’t give it up in a heartbeat. The most important thing I learned from my career as an expat brat is that family is all you need: without them, a house is just four walls and a roof. Home is where the heart is, after all.
For more introspective takes on the ‘Home’ theme, go to Sticky Fingers.
what a lovely, welcoming looking front door!
family is all that you need – so, so true! everything else is an extra… what a beautiful front door – so welcoming!
What a beautiful front door, very welcoming and friendly.
You’re so right: home is where the heart is.
A front door is still a definite bonus though TBAM!
Great idea, cast out the old and bring in the new, love your Elizabeth Arden front door 😉
Aww I love this. Perfect. x
Thanks Susan!
Glad you like the sock-it-to-me red Mari 😀
You have inspired me. We have been in this house for 10 years and it really is home but the front door has laways bothered me, I shall paint it and claim it as my own. 🙂
a fellow furnture shifter! brilliant. i even do it on holiday to ‘claim the holiday cottage’ as our little nest!!
What a nice ritual – I like that casting out and settling in idea 🙂
I really like that. Always wondered what home meant to someone who moved about all the time. Now I know 🙂
Glad I could enlighten you David 😀
I am all about the casting out Actually Mummy- perhaps I was a witch in a former life!
Delighted to inspire you Chris: it’s usually the other way round!