The 3 Places That Feel Like Home

Home, is where I want to be
But I guess I’m already there.
I come home, she lifted up her wings,
I guess that this must be the place.
 – “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)”, Talking Heads

There are exactly three places in the world where I feel like, “Yep—this is home.”

One is Lake Rosemound, Louisiana, a community of lake houses on a pair of small, connected lakes along the Louisiana/Mississippi border. I spent an uncountable number of weekends there at a shack of a house my grandparents owned with two of my grandfather’s three brothers. That’s where my grandfather taught me to fish, how to drive a boat, how to water ski.

Number 2 is Boonton, New Jersey, where I lived for several years when I was assigned to The Wall Street Journal’s mothership in NYC. The most adorable, quintessential house on Hill Street was where I taught my son—then 5 or 6 years old—how to hit a baseball… nearby is where I coached YMCA soccer (I remain undefeated as a coach!)… where “coming home” every night has never been surpassed.

As for number three, well, I found that place in September 2018 as I was relocating from Los Angeles to Prague for my new life as a digital nomad living permanently abroad in Europe.

Before I made my way to the Czech capital, I spent a month living and working in Waterford, Ireland, a town of 60,000 or so about two-and-a-half hours south of Dublin.

I walked everywhere around town.

Shopped the local markets and pedestrian streets.

Rented a car and drove all over southern Ireland.

I hiked through electric-green hills and dales in the Irish rain that at times just wants to spit on you playfully, and at other times likes to see how close it can come to outright drowning you.

I absolutely love the place because I feel so content.

The small bed-and-breakfast I found way out in Dingle, on a peninsula of land jutting out into the cold, windy, and damp North Atlantic… the pub I found in Killarney, where the owner befriended me because he liked my southern US accent and pulled his mom out of the kitchen who, when she learned I was looking for an Irish stew, set about making one… a Kilkenny beer straight from the tap… the Irish people who are always laughing and always treat you like you’ve just returned home from a long stretch abroad and just wait till you hear what’s been going on while you were gone…

Honestly, there’s nothing I don’t love about Ireland.

All of this is top of mind this week because I’m back in Waterford (where the International Living offices are) for some meetings—the first time I’ve been back in more than a year.

And the being back part has me thinking about the many dispatches I’ve written for Field Notes, and the many stories I’ve written for International Living from the numerous cities and countries I’ve been to and loved. Indeed, I write frequently about the many places in the world where I could live.

But where one “could live” is not, by definition, the same as “this place feels like home.” Sure, it’s where your home-of-the-moment is located, but it’s not necessarily where your heart wants to be.

Lake Rosemound is where my heart wants to be.

Boonton, New Jersey is where my heart wants to be.

And southern Ireland.

I can’t have Lake Rosemound because it means returning to a country in a state of decay, and I know that living amid that decay would cause me a great deal of anger that I’d just as soon avoid.

And I can’t have Boonton because it was as much a time as it was a place. And while you can always go home again, you can’t go back to the time that made that home the home that your heart longs for.

So, can I have Ireland?

I mean, there are rules and regs on settling down in a country that’s not your own. Ireland doesn’t make it as easy for retirees, non-EU workers, or digital nomads as some other places. I don’t want to live in Ireland as someone who ultimately has to leave because of this rule or that. I’d want to live in Ireland as a place where you settle for good… where you don’t just plant roots, but where those roots wrap themselves around the roots of long-lived trees nearby and bind you to the place permanently.

I guess I could marry an Irish girl—though I feel confident my Ukrainian wife would disapprove.

Or maybe I could convince International Living to hire me into the home office as a full-time employee instead of a contract writer. But there might be issues with that related to the financial content I write and Irish securities laws.

Or… I wait it out here in Portugal, apply for Portuguese citizenship and a Portuguese passport. That’s an EU passport, and EU freedom of movement laws means I could relocate to southern Ireland on my Portuguese documents.

That’s really my most solid path. I just have to learn to speak Portuguese to a degree good enough to pass a language test.

So, soon I will begin learning Portuguese.

Because, oddly, it might be the only path home I still have.