Where is home?

On my way back to Geneva from Windermere I visited my mother. My "home" is in Ferney Voltaire with Stephen but I often have quite strange emotions returning as an adult to the home I grew up in. Being confronted with the fact that I am both the person who grew up there and no longer at all quite the same. Confronted too with my own ability to regress to adolescence in the blink of an eye!
In so many ways this provincial semi urban but seemingly rural landscape formed me. The distant glorious horizons stretching out from the garden, the open skies and sunsets, the easy bus routes. The first humiliation was not being able to find the taxi rank in my home town; the second not being able to find the plates in my mum's kitchen! Then there was the absence in her house - not of my father but of a cat. I'd never been there without sharing the space with at least one cat and that was rather sad and I missed having a purring creature there - if I read this on someone else's blog I'd probably think it sounded a bit pathetic, these days I'm not very into pets.
Then there was the other reason I made the extra effort to visit. Another man is now sharing my mother's life and we're learning to become a blended family across European borders. I think my father's comment would be that at a time when the family seems always to be getting smaller it's good to welcome a new person in.