Facebook is amazing for bringing people together. Every few months I search for friends from childhood, people who were important to me when I was growing up. I haven't had much luck finding them, but sometimes, someone else finds me, someone who was important but I never thought to search for them because I had forgotten how important they were.
One such friend reached out yesterday. And I added her to my friends list, because I remember how much fun we had dancing to Michael Jackson's record "Thriller", and wrapping ourselves in old curtains and posing like models (and I remember how she cut me out when she started high school [I was a year ahead]. Even then, I didn't understand why people rejected me.)
As I was reading her profile, trying to glean twenty-five years of information from five basic questions, I started to think about home, or more specifically, that place that you answer when asked "where are you from?" As a child, I never thought we would leave Horsham. Primary school was at the end of the street, high school was a bike ride away, there was a shop on the corner, a park across the road, friends around the block, the perfect idyllic life of the 70s and 80s.
But mum and dad's business grew, too big for a small country town, they needed to move to the city, so we moved, changed schools, learned how to use public transport, studied, worked, went home to sleep each night, and became the people we are today. That's how I define where I'm from - it's the place where I became the person that I am today.
And now I live in Queensland, with my own family, behind this purple door, and I hope that when my kids grow up and someone says "where are you from?", they answer "mum's place, behind the purple door"
How do you define your home town, or where you're from, when asked?