Pizza Margherita and Family

Family is sacred in France, which means that one of the first questions I get when I detail the journey that brought me here is, “Don’t you miss your family?”

I’ll be honest; I still haven’t found a reply that feels true. I’m the girl who missed my mother so much one day in Kindergarten that she left me her car keys to meditate over, which I did, with the slightest bit of melodramatic flair, considering that I would see her again in six hours. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to wait that little.

To go from that child to this one, the one who doesn’t find the time to call home, the one who has to think before answering — “Well? Do you?” — is a strange sort of paradox to bear, and yet it makes sense, at least to me.

My brother was just here. My baby brother who, as a child, obediently played along with all variety of make-believe games imagined up by a sister four years his senior, spent four days and four nights sleeping on my floor, drinking rosé out of my mustard-jar glasses and slowly re-inserting himself into my day-to-day.

My brother and I haven’t lived in the same house since 2002. I was 15; he was 11. My time spent at home on vacation has always been time well-spent with all of my siblings, but I spend more time than not camping out on my brother’s floor as we update one another on our respective lives and listen to 70s folk rock, perhaps, more than anything, because he’s the only one who virtually disappears the moment he’s not in the same room. It echoes oddly true to me, who cringes when the phone rings and is perpetually signed out of Skype, but I didn’t realize until this trip how similar we truly are.

It started out with small things. I suggested a heavy apéro for their first meal in Paris; my brother jumped on it and immediately left for the grocery store with me and his friend, the boys walking double-time, just like I like, down to the Franprix, where they helped me select meat, cheese and wine and then carried all of it between the two of them, leaving me to carry two lonely baguettes.

“You know what the only thing you can eat in the street in France is?” my brother asked his friend, ripping a hot quignon from one of the baguettes I was carrying. I didn’t say anything, but I knew; he learned that from me.

The next four days were filled with all sorts of moments like these. We were endlessly mocked by the group of friends he was traveling with; my brother is famous for doling out bite-sized facts, and as a professional tour guide myself we spent most of our time wandering the streets trying to out-fact one another. Over dinner at Le Relais de l’Entrecôte, the Country Boy subtley pointed out, “You’re just the same,” though he couldn’t tell me why.

But it wasn’t until a friend of my brother’s, perched on my couch on the last night they were here, said it out loud that it really rang true: “I’ve never met anyone like this kid. But you’re the same.” I’m not sure he meant it as a compliment, but I took it that way. Somehow, even after nearly 10 years apart, my brother and I have more than enough common ground to build a Medieval fortress on. (Which, by the way, the Louvre once was, before becoming the Royal Palace in the 13th century).

And then, Wednesday morning, my brother packed up his things and boarded a plane to Budapest. When I got home from work, his coffee cup was still on the table, half-drunk: black, two sugars. I know that now. it almost hurts more to know than it did not to know, to have to ask in the morning if he ate breakfast, if he took his coffee black.

And that’s the thing, really, the crux of the whole question: you see, it hurts a little less today. It’s a little less strange to come home to a living room void of his belongings. A little less odd not to check my phone for a message from him. I miss him a little less, today. I have to.

I know it’s coming, because it always does: missing less becomes not missing; not missing becomes forgetting. Not everything, of course. You remember the important things, and even some of the smaller things. Maybe next time, I’ll know about the coffee, black, two sugars. But what about the way that someone holds their glass? In their palm or with their fingertips? At the base or around the rim? What about the motion of standing up? Do they lean forward first, balancing their forearms on their knees? Do they gain momentum leaning back and launch themselves from the chair? Do you remember?

Maybe, maybe not. Either way, pizza is my brother’s food. More on that tomorrow; today it’s just pictures of margherita pizza with roasted garlic, the way I make it here in Paris. It’s not the same as his, but it doesn’t have to be.