People ask me this question often. I suppose it makes sense — we’ve lived in many places over the years, so curiosity follows. Usually, the question comes as a gentler way of asking, “Where are you from?” or the more direct, “Where were you born?”
But is “Where is home?” really a synonym for either of those? I don’t think so.For many, home is easy to define: it’s where they spent their childhood, where they first learned how the world works — absorbed its smells, customs, jokes, and silences. It’s tied to geography, to a set of coordinates rooted in memory.
But for those of us who’ve been on the move — building memories in different time zones, collecting fragments of belonging across countries — the idea of home gets murkier.
Take us, for example. My wife, two sons, and I left our country of origin decades ago. We’ve lived, worked, and grown roots in a number of cities. And in all that time, we carried our sense of home with us. It wasn’t in a place. It was in the fact that we were together.
Home, in that sense, has been Mexico City, Madrid, London, San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Zaandam.
Fast forward to now, and home still lives in several of those cities — because one of us is still there.
So if you ask me “Where is home?” don’t be surprised if I answer with more than one place.
Because to me, home is wherever the people — and dogs and cats — I love most happen to be.
David Cuen 
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