On the Sunday prior to departure, some of the administrative odds and ends began to resolve. I received, at last, confirmation of my home in Saint John, on the second floor of a stately old heritage building at the top of Chipman Hill.
Home.
That idea takes me back 6 years, to another September along the North Sea coast in Fife, Scotland. A friend was driving me up the coast, fishing village to fishing village, to the point where I began to wonder if it was possible to get one’s fill of fishing villages, and if I had reached that point.
Coming down a narrow road with a high wall on the right, it wasn’t until reaching the intersection at the bottom that the harbour of Pittenweem unfolded before me. It was a complete, gasp-worthy, take-your-breath-away moment. Clearly, the thought formed, “oh, I must live here,” followed quickly with some form of, “but of course that’s not possible.” Here’s what I was faced with:
Redefining ‘life’
So, why was it not possible?
A tab opened in my head devoted to the question. Travel outside of North America came late in my life, so to see everything there is to see, including the stuff I won’t know I want to see until stumbled upon, there’s no way to devote a lot of time to picking up and moving to every place, like Pittenweem, that steals my breath.
That’s what sits underneath the 15-day rule. Since conventional residency was at best impractical, a new definition emerged.
So, a conventional vacation is a week or two, at least it was when the corporate, suburban routine had a hold of me, long before work-from-home was thing. Fifteen days, though, one day more than a typical two-week vacation, could be my dividing line, given that I’ve already shuffled through more than half of the mortal coil allotment.
Anywhere I spend 15 days or more based out of one location now counts, for the purposes of my life, as residency, even if it’s not recognized by the various levels of government, near or far.
By that definition, I’ve added Maastricht, Holland, Boizenburg, Germany, and Titusville, Florida since 2015 to my Official With an Asterisk “Lived There*” list.
And now I know what the front door of my next home looks like. I get there Friday.
-Scott. 09/12/2021 London, ON
Itinerant Impressions 