Postcards from a Midlife Elsewhere

A new bi-weekly series on what it means to belong somewhere else, again and again.

May 05, 2025

Every heroine’s journey includes a threshold moment — a step beyond the familiar into the unknown. Sometimes that threshold is internal. Sometimes, it’s a new city, a winding road, an unexpected sky. Starting today, I’ll share postcards from Midlife Elsewhere every other week. These posts are glimpses into real journeys that mirror the emotional adventures we all take. Think of these as little doorways into reinvention, wonder, and homecoming. Our adventures aren’t just metaphors. They're maps.

In Dundee, Scotland, there’s a new teal green door with a gold post slot in the center. It's always covered by a wash of cobwebs (spiders are active in this part of the world), and the green paint has already chipped off the kick-plate at the bottom. But it’s mine. Just mine (ours). And it’s the first front door in over ten years that I’ve been able to say that about.

Before this door, there were frustrating sets of heavy keys that never seemed to fit the lock we were trying to open. There was a collection of key cards loose and forgotten at the bottom of my handbag, some covered in shouty logos and smiling faces, some bare and sad with only a number printed from a label maker. There were air mattresses on the floors of places we had borrowed, or were trying to sell. There were rental homes with someone else’s artwork still hanging on the walls. There were "guest stays" with family and friends who appeared as dots on the map of the routes we passed through. There were goodbyes I didn’t get to grieve because I'd never fully arrived.

My Dad calls it "itchy feet." It's the urge you get when you need to "move on." Not necessarily from a job, a relationship, or a situation, but just a physical "moving on," a geographic leap. And although he (and as a result, us) made giant geographical leaps in his past (including a 3,400-mile leap from England to New Jersey), the itchy feet leap doesn't have to be major. It could be a more modest leap: a new house or state.

This "itchy feet" phenomenon might be genetic. My older brother has it. He spent his thirties as a backpacking nomad and now lives in Argentina. And I got it. I also married a man with "itchy feet," which compounds the drive.

I have lived in England, several US states, The Bahamas, and in countries throughout Europe. I have visited six continents (And no, the one I'm missing is not the one you think. Thanks for having me, Antarctica. I'm coming for you, Australia). We seem to be pretty much permanently on the road. Until we adopted this wee cottage and made it ours, we hadn't had a permanent home since we left The Bahamas in 2012 when we took to the road with our daughter for a European travel adventure.

When you push open that teal green door and step into the tiny, but cozy, 100-year-old cottage, a smell of new construction, like fresh paint and wood shavings, washes over you. For a moment, you're tricked into believing that no one has ever lived there, that the house doesn't have a history, but it does. How we came to be there, and how this door, of all doors, became the door I always return to, was a surprise to many, most of all myself.

Our sunny living room and fox-haven of a garden beyond.

We wandered for a decade. When we left our fancy two-corporate-salary home in Reston, Virginia, we wanted to give our daughter an adventure she would never forget. For the price of a house on a man-made lake in Virginia, we could buy a home in The Bahamas (a land of sunshine and sand) with a back gate that opened onto steps down into the warm ocean. So we did.

But itchy feet struck again, and we were off to Italy for a months-long wander through Italy, Sardinia, and eventually into Sicily. To Florida, so our daughter could attend the school of her dreams. To Michigan, when the school of her dreams turned a bit questionable, back to Reston to sell our home, back to The Bahamas, back and forth to Italy, and eventually landing in Scotland to look after my mother-in-law, who at 96 years old finally needed some support.

Then COVID struck, and our plans to return and settle in the US were thrown into the air as we found ourselves shielding in place in the tiny cottage owned by my mother-in-law. Slowly, in that time and place of the in-between, home emerged.

It was the chatty, fat ginger foster cat we took in because the vets were closed. It was the Friday night Zoom happy hours (cocktails in hand) with the wide circle of childhood friends who'd opened their arms to us as though Mark hadn't fled the country 25 years prior. It was the sleek and magical fox who padded softly across our patio every evening, peering through the French doors into our locked-up lives, confused at the sudden reversal. It was the regular letters from the government checking on my auto-immune health and offering support. It was home.

When my mother-in-law sadly passed (at the ripe old age of 98), Covid was still in full swing. Our plans to take off to a new life once our (very much chosen) responsibilities in his hometown were no longer needed were scuppered. We couldn't go anywhere. So, we accepted the message from the universe and bought the cottage from the family (then took it down to the studs and rebuilt it as our own).

Paradoxically, finding home made my feet itch even more. Over the prior ten years, traveling without a base, I'd experienced a low level of anxiety that I’d never quite figured out. I hadn't realized that although I had my family with me and no real desire for "stuff" or a place to keep it, my heart still craved a place to return to. I needed a physical container for the word "home."

Something inside me shifted when we bought this place. It wasn’t just about furniture or permanence or zip codes. It was about being able to leave and know that the teal green door would always be waiting for me (and I can verify that with the Ring camera that's always in my pocket).

My “Wee Hoose” in the back garden (sure beats writing on my lap on the patio in Italy, which is what I’m doing now.)

We left "home" early this year, thanks to changing schedules and life’s unpredictable rhythms. Our annual migration from Scotland to Italy usually happens in June, when the air is slightly warmer. This year, it was April. Spring, but still hard to let go.

As we packed the car, one of those endless days of cords, chargers, and coats, I felt the resistance rising. I always expect it now, that little war between the part of me that longs for movement and the part of me that craves roots. I’ve built a life across borders, yes, but also across identities. And crossing a border, literal or emotional, is never a clean line.

The front door clicked shut behind us. I touched the wood as I always do, whispering, "Wait for me."

I’m wondering what the word “home” means to you?

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