Home is where the heart is

My nieces Olivia and Alexandra, aged respectively four and seven, made this for me and Scott on Sunday (with a little help from Emily). We live in a beautiful, 100-year-old house in Enmore with decorative ceilings, stained glass windows, French doors, a sweet kitchen garden, and an increasingly famous blue door.

The cat and dog like to sleep on the old Persian-esque rugs that cover the floorboards and wind up the original oak staircases that curve in two directions. Antique gilt mirrors sit above the marble fireplaces in the lounge room and our bedroom. Both the rugs and mirrors were left behind by the previous owner, and we love to keep his history in our house.

The previous owner also left behind a painting over the dining-room fireplace that we call “the pus painting” (pus is the only word to describe the colour of this painting, which defies description in its hideousness). We tried to remove the pus painting but nothing else worked: it belongs with the house.

We love our house. We really love it. And it was even better on the weekend, with the laughter of our friends and family ringing from every room.

But each Monday, my husband flies back to the Gold Coast, Queensland, for his job, and the dog, cat and I are alone in our super house. And without Mr B, my house is not really a home. I once read that clichés only become clichés because they are the best way of saying something…

So I am moving to the Gold Coast, which scares me on so many levels. I will miss my beautiful house. I will miss my parents and brother. I will miss my amazing friends, who are true family.

I feel like I am constantly leaving people behind. First I left everyone I loved in Sydney, then I left everyone I loved in New York, and now that I’ve barely been back in Sydney, I’m leaving it again.

Not to mention, it’s… THE GOLD COAST.

But Mr B and I will live together again. At night we will cook dinner, and argue because he’ll want more carbs and I’ll want more veges. We'll breathe the sea-salt air. We’ll walk the dog at dusk. I’ll sit in front of the TV and write blog posts while he massages my feet.

A girl can dream.

I will learn to cope with the humidity, and the schoolies, and I will find where the more artistic scene hides. It has to be somewhere, right?

And in the meantime, because Mr B is as sad as I am to say goodbye to our house in Enmore, I had it made into a snowdome. Now he can carry it with him everywhere.