Two houses

I didn't always live in the house I am typing from now.  In fact, up until about four months ago I lived in a very different suburb with four very different people to the two I live with now.  Up until four months ago I had slept in the same bedroom I was placed in on arriving home from the one and only time I've ever been in a hospital.  

The house I grew up in is situated in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne.  Not outer outer, but outer enough to make a trip to work in Footscray an hour-and-a-half-each-way journey by public transport.  The suburb I grew up in is not outer enough to be bogan, yet not inner enough to be urban.  

As a result, many of the people who grow up in these middle suburbs never leave.  They finish high school, travel each day to university or work, never deviating from their well planned out route, and then come home to eat a dinner of spaghetti bolognaise with their parents consisting mostly of prepackaged and prepared ingredients.  When they do move out of home, they move into a nice suburban house with their long term high school boyfriend in the same postcode as their parents, then get married and have babies, and continue the middle suburban cycle.

Fortunately, I managed to happen upon friends in my middle suburb who transcend this pattern.  For all but one friend, they are not friends I went to high school with.  My friends from high school are all very much living in their middle suburb bubble.  The last I heard, they were of the opinion I'd "gone off the rails".  This statement was based purely on several of them running into me after midnight at the 24 hour Coles doing my regular grocery shopping.  They too were at Coles at 2am, however were having a "girls night" and buying munchies.  This is (apparently) much less deviant than grocery shopping.

Although all these friends do transcend the middle suburb pattern, most still live with their parents in order to save money while they're still welcome.  I now live in the inner north-east, which means I travel back to the outer east very often to visit.

I did so last night.

Before I left my home, I called my family home to see if my middle sister wanted to come with me to meet some other friends for coffee.  She wasn't home, but my youngest sister was, and so she took me up on the offer instead.  I arrived to pick her up just after eight, as I'd said I would, to discover she was not home.  Not only was she not home, but she was out driving.  She only got her license a few weeks ago, and the thought of her on the road is a little disturbing.  It's worrying enough thinking of my middle sister on the road, let alone the littlest one too.

While waiting for my youngest sister to arrive home, my middle sister appeared at the front door.  I offered my original coffee invitation, and it was accepted, and so we waited for the youngest and then all left together in my car.

Despite disliking the outer east, there are a lot of things I really do miss.  All of them people, and my sisters the most.

I miss being loud in our house, and bursting into song at inopportune moments.  If our life were a sitcom it would surely be one in musical form.  I also miss watching bad TV with them and shouting at the characters on the screen.  And I miss knowing that there will be someone around to talk to me about random things that are really not very interesting, but that I want to hear all the same.

Living in the inner north-east is very different.

Almost as much as my sisters I miss two of my friends.  I miss being able to drive five minutes up the road to meet with one for coffee, and I miss wandering ten minutes up the road at midnight to meet the other at a designated street corner where we will wander around the silent streets and chat about all the things that would be awkward to say in a family home.

Right now, I'm a twenty-five minute drive from home, but most of the time it feels as though I could be on completely the other side of the country.