My sister, Veronica, spent many years living in California. Mostly it was Santa Cruz, but she lived in Arcata while she was working on her undergraduate degree. Last year she relocated to North Carolina to go to graduate school. That’s still quite a ways away from us, here in New England, but she is living in Massachusetts for the summer. This is a rare treat; we don’t usually get to see her very often.

A few weeks ago, she came to dinner at our house. After I’d put Nate to bed, we got to have a real, grown-up conversation. She observed how strange it is that the town where we grew up no longer feels like home to either of us. We agreed that it can take years before a place starts to feel like home. She’ll be going back to North Carolina soon, but her heart is in Santa Cruz.

Veronica asked me where I considered my home to be. I had to stop and think about it.

When Sarah and I started planning a family of our own, we knew we couldn’t stay in Salem. It was a fun place to live, but it did have a few drawbacks. I never felt terribly safe living there. It’s at least half an hour’s drive to get to a major highway, and Sarah told me that the public schools were a nightmare. Sarah was living in Brookline when I met her; we loved it, but no way could we afford to buy there. So we drew circles on the map around her parents’ house, my dad’s house, and her sister’s house. I sat down with the Commuter Rail schedule, and she sat down with the public school rankings and per-student expenditures tables. We arrived independently at the same suburban town. I can’t recommend house-hunting with someone who is eight months pregnant, but it didn’t take us long to find the perfect house. We moved into our new home a little less than a month before Nate was born.

Sarah was the one who was putting down roots here. She joined the Mom’s Club, and took Nate out exploring every day. They went to the library, they found all the playgrounds and parks, they took Baby Yoga together. Now that she’s gone, Nate goes to day care, and I spend most of my waking hours at work. I have made a few close friends in town, but I can’t say with any degree of conviction that this is where I was meant to be.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no intention of moving. This is Nate’s home, if nothing else, and I want to give him as much stability as I possibly can. I do like living here, and I know it will seem like home to me soon enough.

But the question remains. If money were no object… if Nate were grown and living on his own… where would I want to be? Where do I belong?

There are a number of places where I can remember feeling at peace, but they’re not home.

Home is wherever Sarah is.

I was never much of a tourist. Left to my own devices, I would probably never leave the house. Sarah, on the other hand, was a world traveler. We complemented each other nicely. I reined her in from her more extravagant travel plans (“Let’s bring our infant son to Churchill, Alaska, to see the polar bears!”) and she helped keep me from growing moldy (“Let’s stay here and watch the Law & Order channel for two weeks straight!”).

When I first met Sarah, she was planning a trip to Egypt. We had been dating for only a few months when Sarah announced that she was thinking of cancelling her trip to Egypt, because she couldn’t bear to be parted from me. I knew immediately that this was a test. Is Dave husband material? I am proud to say that I passed with flying colors. “Don’t be silly,” I said. “You’ve been looking forward to this trip for years. I’ll go with you.” I was a little bit scared, but it was wonderful. I’m glad we went when we did; I wouldn’t dare to travel in the Middle East now.

Sarah took me all over the world. After Egypt, we went to Canada, England, Italy, the Bahamas, and Australia. Once we had Nate, we toned it down a bit. We took him to New Orleans when he was just twelve weeks old, and then to Hawai‘i when he was about a year old. We took a cruise to Bermuda when he was almost two.

Many of our trips were to places Sarah had already been. She wanted to show me all of her favorite places, to help me know her better. I loved London right along with her, and Venice was simply magical. But we were always glad to come home. Well, almost always.

When we staggered off the airplane in Sydney, Australia, we were completely fried. The flight was something like twenty hours long, and it would be another six hours before we could check in to our hotel. We were wandering around Hyde Park and the Royal Botanic Gardens, looking for a place to nap that contained as few venomous spiders as possible. Even through our jet-lag stupor, we were taken by how beautiful, clean, and open the city was. Our running joke was for me to pretend to be grumpy at being dragged halfway around the world, so Sarah was surprised when I said earnestly, “I absolutely love it here. When are we coming back?” If it weren’t for our family ties, I really think I could have persuaded her to move there.

Sarah’s philosophy was that one should take the trip of a lifetime every year, because one never knows how long a lifetime will be.

She was very wise.