[Week 19] - On Location and Home

A walk by the river - Oct 19, 2025

This post is coming from you mid-move. Written in an empty apartment and edited in a boxed-up house. All of my things have been relocated, but nothing has been unpacked. 

This move has been… 

Stressful, certainly. 

Happy? Most definitely. 

Dramatic? Me oh my. 

Bloody? Yes, unfortunately. 

(I managed to disturb my surgery site from a month ago).

In the midst of this movement, Taylor and I have been talking a lot about the places we've called home. He’s been through this process considerably more than I have and dreads any application which requires him to recall his previous residencies. 

(For once) my history is simpler. I can track down only a small handful of past addresses, though not all of my definitions of ‘home’ would be suitable for an application of licence transfer with the New Zealand Nursing Council.  

Fall is in the air - Oct 19, 2025

How is a home defined— Is it a feeling? 

The address listed on a drivers license? 

A place where mail gets delivered? 

Home away from home - Oct, 2018

As mail goes, I used to get letters and parcels delivered to the hospital and summer camp, yet I hardly see those as residencies as worth listing here. Comparatively, I have yet to update my address to reflect any of the moves I have made outside of my childhood home. By these definitions, I have lived everywhere and nowhere all at once, yet the overwhelming majority of my life has been rooted in Roseville. 

My time living at my parents’ is best told in two parts:

First there’s the Roseville house of my childhood. The yard I grew up running around, the swings where I spent my evenings, the room where I played, read, and crafted.

Then there's the Roseville house from when I was sick. The room which became a hospital, customized to my… interesting choices in paint colours and flooring. The curtain of Beads of Courage. The endless collectibles. The bandages, ventilator, and plushies.

I made memories, good and bad, with the house as a main character. It is welcoming and safe. By standard definition, the Roseville house is a place that meets all the needs of ‘home’, and it was mine for 27 years.

Curtain of Courage – 2019. Beads of Courage is a program that offers critically ill young people colour-coded beads for each medical procedure.

Then came my working holiday to New Zealand, and my little rental off the side of State Highway 29. I traded familiarity for adventure, safe in the knowledge that it was only temporary.

I found 4798A while I was still staying in Auckland. I even signed the lease from there, committing to nine months sight unseen. The place met the only requirement I thought to ask of it: it was close enough to both work and town that I could get around by bicycle (a blog post for another day).

Its cinderblock walls and damp floors were not glamorous, but they represented my first meaningful taste of independence. I remember the excitement of moving in, the stress of not having a bed, the pain of mowing the lawn with a plug-in mower, and the panic of misplacing my house key. I was kicked out when rats moved in. 

Couch surfing may not have been part of the plan, but it enriched my trip in ways I could not see at the time. The story is even serving as an essay topic at present. 

Arriving back at the Roseville house after my chaotic months abroad, I found it challenging to adjust to ‘home’ in the same way. 

I was neither a child nor sick, and I longed for the freedom of my own kitchen. 

This is the Roseville house of my recovery, of my adulthood. It holds memory, nostalgia, and, most importantly, it is filled to the brim with the people I love— but it is not an adress where I have lived.

A week after getting state-side, band camp started. Rookies are required to stay in the dorms of Superblock for the first week of Spat Camp. Used to living out of my suitcase, I just moved a few things from my big bag into a smaller one in preparation for my transition to Frontier Hall. 

Little known fact: this was my second dorm experience at the University of Minnesota, I had a dorm in Yudof Hall back in 2013 before I was deferred. 

I never got to spend a night in Yudolf, and I only lasted three at Frontier. Dorms were a nice idea, but they are not addresses for this list.

My original letter of acceptance from the University of Minnesota, 2013. On the cusp between Roseville house versions 1 & 2.

Instead, while I was preoccupied with marching, my mother searched for an apartment. I moved the day after our first football game.

I settled into the Doyle no problem, hosting Lord of the Rings watch parties and having friends over for late night dips in the hot tub. I put up chains of flowers and posters and got an overstuffed armchair to do my homework (writing) in. 

[“Its very college” - an unnamed guest to 501]

Very college indeed. 

There were many life milestones hit while living at the Doyle— and several inter-building moves. I started in 411, the next year I moved to 501, and finally, (the day after getting home this August) I moved to 603.

This summer was spent nomadic. I turned thirty while abroad. My apartment at the Doyle waited quietly, while my parents kept planting their garden and living life in my absence.   

This fall, Taylor and I's search for a shared address began in earnest. Now October (nearly November), we are making a home together in Prospect Park. A simplification of this story, sure, but I am tired and my actual homework is still sitting, neglected in a box somewhere... 

Until next week, 

Hannah 

The new writing corner in Prospect Park, Minneapolis - Oct 26, 2025