The Strange Geography of Home

I thought coming back to Edinburgh would feel like slipping into a familiar coat, worn, warm, and perfectly mine. Instead, I landed and felt something I never expected, a quiet ache to return to São Paulo.

Edinburgh is not just where I grew up, it is where my identity started to be shaped. My parents played a big role in teaching me life skills from an early age, a resilience that I was able to build on as I grew. My father, unable to work due to health issues, and my mother, juggling care and whatever jobs she could find, did everything they could to shield me and my siblings from the weight of their struggles. Benefits were nothing like they are now, but somehow they made it work.

Childhood, for me, was still full of adventure, be it roaming the New Town and Stockbridge, playing in the parks, cycling to the beach or wherever curiosity pulled me. It was a happy time that carried me well into my teens.

Edinburgh has always been an anchor for me. Even when I lived in Germany, Spain, Holland or England. Places that shaped me in different ways. I never felt pulled away from this city. I could leave, but I never drifted. Coming back was always easy. Natural. Automatic. This time, though, something had shifted.

São Paulo has changed that and I can find no logical reason why. It has taken root in me in a way no other place managed. I have found a new rhythm, a life that is unfolding there. It wasn’t supposed to become home in the way that Edinburgh once was. It was just meant to be a new chapter, not a replacement. However, somewhere between the chaos of the traffic, the warmth of my dear Brazilian wife and her family, the music in the streets and the strange comfort of being a foreigner who is no longer foreign, the city claimed me.

So back to the here and now, in Edinburgh feeling a bit like a visitor in my own birthplace. Time is moving differently. Maybe it’s because I no longer have a house here. Maybe it’s because marriage rewires the idea of home. Maybe it’s because São Paulo is where my life is now. But none of these explanations fully capture the feeling. It’s not that Edinburgh has changed, it’s that I have. And walking through familiar streets with an unfamiliar sense of distance is a strange kind of grief.

I am not choosing one home over another. I am acknowledging that I now have two but the balance between them has shifted. Something I have known deep down inside for a long time is that home is not a fixed point. It is like a moving target, shaped by the people we love and the lives we build.

Edinburgh will always be a part of me, in my bones, in my soul. It is the skyline in my memory. One you cannot forget. But São Paulo is where my life breathes now. And maybe that’s why, for the first time, coming “home” made me long to go home.

I didn’t expect to miss Brazil while standing in the city that raised me. But maybe that’s what happens when life changes shape. The old coat still fits, but the new one feels like home.