I walk down the stairs of an old musky, waterfront clubhouse in the heart of a Newport Beach. I can hear what sounds like 100 excited female voices and I adjust my seatbelt wrinkled shirt.

I take each step carefully. I can’t breath. I haven’t seen these women in years and I didn’t show my best self the last time we interacted.

I hit the bottom of the stairs and look around. All 5 of my aunts and each of their husbands has their back turned to me. A line of yachts floats by in front of them covered in Christmas lights and blaring Christmas jingles. The aunties lean in front of their husbands to grab each other’s hands when they see something they like.

‘Reminds me of dad.’

‘Me too! Remember that one Christmas when mom dressed up as Mrs Claus and dad drove her across Ming Lake on that silly boat?’

‘Oh my gosh yes!’

They have lent spotted me yet so I sit on a couch behind them, flooded with memories of my childhood in my grandfathers backyard with the hum of the aunties chatting away while 20 something cousins swam and played until we dropped. I would crawl into a hammock and let the chaos put me to sleep.

They all still smell like sunscreen and Dior perfume.

And after 7 years of fighting the hardest battle of my life and feeling alone while doing it I realize something spectacular sitting on the couch behind these women listening to the hum of this tiny little beehive. I feel a rush of relaxation within my bones and a heaviness in my eyes. I could actually fall asleep.

Home is not a place, it’s within people we love, wherever they are.