I jolted awake, excitement thrumming through me before I even opened my eyes. The alarm clock flickered from a blur of pixels into a sharp, red 8:00, and a split second later it erupted into its miserable blare. I shut it off, breathless, already halfway out of bed. Today. The day months of essays, interviews, tests, and whispered prayers of hope have been pointing toward. I burst from my room, scrambling for the living room computer.
“It’s time to check! Everyone hurry up!”
Feet shuffled, doors creaked open, and my family drifted in one by one. The football replay paused mid-way. Even the neighbour’s dog, usually quick to object to anything, fell silent. Everyone gathered by me as I logged into my email. The page loaded with painful slowness and suspense, then: “Congratulations on your acceptance to Blair Academy!”
I froze. The room didn’t. It erupted into joyful chaos. Arms wrapped around me, lifting me off the ground, squeezing the breath from my lungs. One moment we were inside, the next, we’re all out in the garden surrounded by neighbours and friends with 80s music blasting as the grill hissed to life. Flowers seemed to bloom brighter and the air smelt of fresh grass and laughter filled the air. Enveloping me in a warm hug, spring gave me its congratulations.
When school ended, I said goodbye to all my friends and teachers at school and stepped into the buzzing summer air. Summer carried me across oceans and into places both foreign and familiar. In Hong Kong, heat clung to the harbour as my cousins wove me through clamouring markets that smelt of seafood and incense ash. Vendors called out prices in a cadence that felt older than the city itself. London carried a different kind of hum. The city glowed softly, rows of brick houses warmed by the late-afternoon sun, ornate with a unique architectural mix. The scent of rain clung onto everything like perfume that never wore off. In those weeks, I learned that warmth didn’t always come from home. Sometimes, it emerges through the quiet familiarity of a park bench, the murmur of overlapping accents on the tube, or amidst the chaos of a city that never sleeps.
Autumn muted the vibrancy of summer. The stone grumbled under my suitcase as I made my way to my dorm, declaring my arrival. Inside the dorm, the air smelled faintly of detergent and strongly of unfamiliarity. For weeks, my roommate and I orbited one another with polite curiosity – offering snacks, learning preferences, drifting into separate worlds with ease. Back home, messages from friends arrived slower. Their words felt thinner and slowly started to shrivel. Whilst the heaters provided warmth inside, outside leaves collected in corners of the campus like forgotten notes, and every day the winds sounded more like a closing door.
Winter shut that door completely. The campus glistened under the soft illumination. I walked with my hands shoved deep in my pockets, shoulders hunched against a chill that seemed to radiate from my bones. Inside the dorms, I’m greeted with chatter and warmth that spread through the air. On video calls with my family, I could see the snow piling high against the porch railings. The camera picked up the warm glow of the living room lamp, the blur of someone crossing the frame, the muted chatter of a football replay in the background. I would focus on the most intricate details, trying to immerse myself in the atmosphere as if distance could be eliminated and I magically would wake up and find myself surrounded by that glow. But even the familiar melodies of our Christmas playlist felt like voices fading behind a thick pane of class. Winter pressed everything into stillness, leaving me suspended between two places. Their glows are bright enough for the light to shine through but not the warmth.
Then spring returned in small, almost secret gestures. When I stepped off the bus, the air smelled faintly of wet earth, the kind that yields easily to new roots. My mother spotted me before I saw her, her glint in her eyes joyous and unrestrained. At home, sunlight pooled on the kitchen tiles, warming the backs of my ankles as I stood listening to familiar laughter coming from the living room. Someone had already switched on the speaker, and a familiar Christmas song drifted out – wrong season, right comfort. Friends reappeared too, not all at once but in gentle echoes: a text with an old inside joke, a knock on the door from the neighbour with the barking dogs. The new cat, fur as white and cold as snow and amber eyes that burned with warmth, curled instantly into my lap as though she’d been waiting to claim the spot. Colours crept back quietly: pale green buds trembling at the ends of branches, soft yellow spilling across the counter top, the pink blush of early peonies opening in the garden. I felt something inside me thaw with them.
By summer’s return, I discovered a new definition of the word home. It isn’t a place, nor a country stamped into a passport. Home is a collection of small, steady details: the soothing of my mum’s hand combing through my hair, the cousin who unleashes my funny side, the sound of football playing on the tv, the chatter of friends, the weight of a cat settling against my ribs. Home wasn’t fixed. It lived in moments that glowed, quietly and consistently, no matter where I ended up in the world.
