The Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus definition of home is “n. dwelling place; residence”. That seems pretty straight forward. By dictionary terms, when you live somewhere, you are “home”. However, that simple definition doesn’t hold true for me.

I can’t call someplace “home” until there is a sense of familiarity or comfort.

I’ve lived in three countries and four cities. I had a home in each city, but not just in the dictionary definition sense. Each home served a different purpose for me at various life stages.

First, my birthplace, New York City; my whole life from birth through the age of eighteen took place within a thirty block radius: two apartments, three schools, two synagogues, parks, and friends. I didn’t just live on the Upper West Side, it was in my blood. The feeling of the grass on the Barnad College quad, the fountains at Columbia University, playing in Riverside Park, and riding the subway were all familiar things. I saw the neighbourhood change from simple to chic. I see New York and the Upper West Side as my roots, the place where I was born, and will always be a large part of me and who I have become.

Boston is a city which I am no particularly fond of for many reasons, but it was still my home for four years of college. I “blossomed” in this city. I got my first taste of independence and rebellion. It’s where I started dating, and discovered the joys of body piercing and hair dye. I still visit friends and we go to our favourite restaurants for spicy French fries and cheap burgers, and shopping at the Cambridgeside Galleria mall. I associate the city with my education where I found my voice in the classroom, learned to love psychology, and journalism, and where I outgrew girlhood and became a woman. Boston is the home where my life’s journey began.

Then, there is Jerusalem. Israel became my home when I was six; my family moved to Jerusalem for a year in 1987, and I still remember my school, the friends I had, speaking Hebrew, the energy of Ben-Yehuda Street. Jerusalem was where my Judaism grew, where I learned to pray, speak, read, and write in Hebrew. I learned to cross the street alone, and walked to and from school by myself. I had a beautiful accent, and the “r” in Sara rolled off my tongue like a true Israeli.

In my adolescence, I returned several times, and each time a change occurred. Most noticeably was when I was seventeen and on a summer arts program for two months. My Hebrew came back to me; I started praying in the morning before our first activity. I painted and drew and sang in the Negev desert, the streets of Tel-Aviv. I believed in God, embraced my Judaism wholeheartedly, and for the first time, felt as if I had a soul.

Those feelings only emerge when I am in Israel or when I attended winter reunions with the group, but I try to think of them often and remember what it was like to feel so uplifted spiritually.

Now, my current home, Melbourne, Australia. It seemed so abstract to me when I watched a particular Nickelodeon cartoon with a magic koala, or the film “Crocodile Dundee”. I had no idea what to expect when I first arrived in February 2002, and after a month, I fell in love. This is my third time here, and it’s been almost a year since I arrived, and it still has my heart in a way that New York, Boston, or Jerusalem never will. This home, feels like my true home because I can breathe, and take joy in simple things: walking to and from school, and food shopping in the open air market is sensory overload in a good way. Sipping a creamy latte with friends feels like something Starbucks could never give me, and smiling at strangers.

Thinking back, I suppose my heart was in each place I lived; each home gave me something and contributed to the choices I have made in life, but some had more influence, more happiness than others. If I ever become rich, I’m splitting my time between New York and Melbourne, and spending vacations in Israel.