Home and home.

There is home and then there is Home, with the capital H.

Home, with the capital H, is the place that holds the people I love most, where ever they may be. Home, with capital H and welcoming arms, is where I'll eventually return to. Home, with the capital H and comforting broad shoulders, is what I'll miss when I start tiring of the road. Home, with the capital H and all round familiarity that I slip into so easily, is what I'll want, but not now. Home, with the capital H, is as concrete as it is abstract; it is conversations at the dinner table, lazy family-day-Sundays, the disembodied voice over the phone asking when I'll be home, little notes left in folders and on the fridge.

home, on the other hand, refers to the places I found a familiar comfort and a certain security. home was the 16 square metre room in Cologone filled with warmth and a chestful of plants in the middle of it all. home was breakfast in a pavilion with a dear friend and his family in Bad Hersfeld. home was the warm embrace I slept and awoke to in Marseille. home was a comfortable couch, freshly cooked pasta and movie nights in Rome. home was the sincerity with which strangers opened their lives to me. home was the inexplicable touch of commonality and understanding about the Way We Live Or Travel. home, too, would've been a week in Riga with a soft-spoken, sparkly-eyed friend.

There is Home, the permanent place I dare to take for granted in the short term, in which I was missed before I missed. Then there is home, which I missed at times because some were fleeting and I hadn't the time to properly appreciate all that surrounded me at that point. home was where I left with a mere hint of reluctance, where the neighbourhood playgrounds were more memorable than the house itself, and where I would've loved to stay on indefinitely and left with great unwillingness.

Be it Home or home, while the physical spaces played a part, the people took up massive spaces in my heart.