Where is home? As an immigrant, I’ve always been torn between my birthplace, which will forever feel like my first home, and the country I chose and have built my adult life in. That tension might explain my restless soul. Or maybe the restlessness came first and led me to move in the first place.

I’ve always wanted adventure. Ironically, I’m also a homebody. I’d happily spend an entire weekend indoors, venturing no further than the kitchen for regular snacks. Travel, for me, is the necessary interlude to an otherwise sedentary status quo. It’s my reset button that keeps me grounded by periodically pulling me out of my comfort zone, lest I start to atrophy in place.

I think this is how I parent too. Most of the time, I’m a go-with-the-flow, let-the-mess-happen, we’ll-deal-with-it-later kind of parent. And then, suddenly, something switches. The urge to create core memories kicks in. An itinerary is born. Adventure mode activated.

Travel has become my reprieve and, oddly enough, my parenting saving grace. It’s where my restlessness finds purpose, where structure and spontaneity meet, and where our family seems to remember who we are together.

Time will tell how much therapy my child will need to unpack her mother’s energy yo-yoing. But for now, this space lives right here: between home and away.

* The name is a nod to Home and Away, an Australian soap my grandmother watched religiously when I was a kid. Apparently, it made an impression.