Do you have a home away from home?

There’s a house on Stradbroke Island. Straddie is about an hour’s ferry ride from the mainland. The house is old, but it has everything you need. It’s also right next to Moreton Bay. We can sit and watch the sun go down and see dolphins fishing a few feet from us. In the morning, we can lay in bed and hear the water lapping against the shore and the wind blowing through the branches of the tree just outside. It’s so peaceful. My husband fishes. I read. We sleep and reconnect.

The island itself is like stepping back in time to the 70s. It’s sort of in a time warp. There are pubs, cafes and a restaurant or two and community centres, but really, there’s not much to do. No shopping centres. No cinema. Not very much of anything other than beautiful beaches, scenery and time to relax.

We try to go there to recharge our batteries. We’re overdue a visit.

It’s a house on wheels.

No, sadly, I don’t. We rent cabins, mostly on the water, to recharge.

We have a flat in one of China’s largest cities where I live for a few months every year. It is a large flat in a gated community. It is on the ground floor of a multi storey building and the windows look out on communal gardens with trees and shrubs and a pond.

My home away from home right now is the Airbnb place I rent in Berkeley, California. It has just three rooms, a lovely stone tiled kitchen with French doors on to a private garden, a small living room and a quiet basic bedroom. I go there and I am happy.

In the past, I have had other homes away. From childhood on, a refuge was a cabin we would rent for a weekend or a week in Stokes State Forest. I went there through childhood, in early marriage and later with my kids and husband. Another refuge was Mohonk Mountain House in the Hudson Valley – a rambling Quaker run Victorian resort where my marital family and family of origin would go. My Ex and I had a condo in Dunedin, Florida at the time of my divorce. It too was a happy place, light and airy and decorated by me in light, beachy colors.

All these places have been ruined for me since my marriage ended and I have had to start afresh.

My family has a vacation home at Lake Tahoe, and that’s always been our home-away-from-home. Sometimes I go up with family, sometimes I go up with friends, and recently I’ve gone up by myself just to get away from the urban/suburban life.

I have a backpack that carries what I need and only what I need for a few days or so. I like to take little unplug sessions in the GSMNP away from everything and everyone.