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Suggested Song:I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore, Woody Guthrie (performed by Billy Bragg)
Suggested Drink: Immigrant Pale Ale, Hophead Brewing

Is there any greater comfort than being home? Perhaps your humble hearth is not as Conde Naste as a sun-kissed villa in Tuscany, nor as opulent as a rambling compound in Calabasas. But it is infinitely cozier and more familiar, regardless of placement and volume. When feeding the soul in slippers and pjs, we just want to be home.

I’ve lived in a 2 bedroom flat in Aix-en-Provence since 2010. By American standards it’s humble in size but rich in character. Constructed about the time Columbus was bobbing around the Bahamas, my apartment’s high-beamed ceilings and terracotta floors evoke a genteel period when Aix was the parliamentary center of the greater region. Think powdered wigs and bodice tops, ripe for the ripping (as Flaubert would have us believe). While deliberating the Sun King’s impending visit from Versailles, my airy salon may have hosted a gaggle of countesses (that sounds sexist) nibbling on candied almond calissons and sipping fine champagne, pinkies extended most delicately. Okay, who’s doing the flower arrangements?

One’s home is more than a collection of rooms plus roof for the rain. It is our private refuge and space for healing. It is our expression of self. Photos there speak of family and friends and favorite holidays. Kitchens there feed loved ones. When the day is done and dishes put away, we lever back the recliner, dip the tea bag, open the novel or click on the remote. Ahhh, home.

The comforts of home are top of mind now (in my small brain), for 2 reasons.

#1: The flux of the world.

More than 120 million people worldwide are currently displaced from the sanctuary of home, according to the UN, a 6 percent uptick from the year before. That includes a full quarter of the Syrian population, Ukrainians and Afghanis by the millions, and refugees from dozens of countries across the planet too numerous to list. Despite the varying conditions for their transient lodging, from spare rooms to squalid camps, one sentiment is shared: a deep longing for home.

Add to that count two million Gazans, who have been hounded south, then chased north, then south again, and to where next? As of August, an estimated 92 percent of all homes in the strip lay in ruins, former occupants either dead or starving in tents. It’s thought that 49 of the Israelis kidnapped on October 7 remain hostage and alive (is that the word?) in the dark tunnels underground. All longing deeply, deeply for home.

That this purge would take root in the US was unimaginable just months ago. Now that root has taken, and with a flourish. As of the summer, ICE has detained 60 thousand undocumented immigrants (70% of which have no criminal records) for eviction. Stephen Miller’s stretch goal is one million per year (quite the ambitious Nazi), and ICE is tripling the number of agents by year-end to hit his quota. That’s a million moms, dads, sons and daughters, deeply knit into our communities’ fabrics, taken from their homes and given the boot. Last night was lemonade and T-ball in the neighorhood cul-de-sac. Tonight its suitcases and cots in a distant detention center. Like the Ukrainians and Palestinians and so many more, they will soon be crying for home.

#2: The flux in my life: I’m leaving home.

Aix-en-Provence will be in my rearview come December, after 15 years of amazing joy and discovery here. More on why in coming Postcards, but I will surely miss this flat, its comically uneven floors, the drafty tall windows, its cheap kitchen appliances (that produced some stunning meals through the years), the family photos here and books stacked there, my daughter Stella’s daybed in the living room corner, and the faux antique tables and stands bought for a dime from the local flea market. (My sons and I lugged more of that stuff up the wide promenade through Aix than I care to remember. What, pay for delivery?)

I’m leaving on my own terms, taking what I want, and heading where I decide (back to San Francisco, of course). This is my home and I’ll miss it, probably long deeply for it when reading this article or seeing that show about Provence. But it’s my call and I can return when I want. How blessed is that in today’s world? Don’t catch me crying.

Bill Magill
Aix-en-Provence