Amatriciana

I’m not too sure when things started happening so fast. There are a series of moments — many of them documented on this very blog — that have had me turning around and saying… “Wait, what?”… but that doesn’t mean that each new moment that makes yesterday feel like a million years ago doesn’t shock me just as much. When my brother was here, and I watched him and his friends being so very twenty, I realized, quite suddenly, that if I noticed that they were twenty, it meant that I wasn’t anymore. “Wait… WHAT?”

I sometimes still feel twenty, or I should say, I usually still feel twenty. Or at least, I think I do, until I actually think about it and realize that I don’t. Sorry for the convoluted expression, but at least now you know how it feels in my head. I feel twenty… except…

When I was twenty, I had just moved to Paris. Cannes had rekindled my love of France, a love that I don’t think I ever fully felt before. I wanted to feel it, and then I got to Cannes, and I really felt it. And then I got to Paris, and really, that was it for me.

When I was twenty, I was dating the Canadian. The Canadian didn’t love France nearly as much as I did. The Canadian didn’t like Paris one bit. It’s pretty amazing that I managed to love Paris and the Canadian all at once, but I did. The heart is funny that way.

When I was twenty, though, I thought that Paris was temporary. Whether it was because of the Canadian’s wandering ways or my own, I thought that I wanted to stay here a little while and then move on: to Naples, to Mallorca, to Argentina. Paris was just a stopping point. Five years later, it’s pretty much the only real home my adult self has ever known.

I’m very aware of the fact that future Emiglia will look back on this realization and laugh, because I’m sure that between now and then, things will have once again changed 20-fold. But I already find it interesting to look back, to think about what was once normal and to realize how not normal it is, now that my new normal is normal.

When I was twenty, I had just met my friend Emese; we both had the same wanderlust, the same penchant for falling in and out of love with a place as quickly as you can bat an eye. We lived in Paris together for a year and a half, the final few months in the same apartment, our day-to-day overlapping in the way that seems impossible thinking back, and the only possible when you’re in the moment. Now, separated by a Channel, our normal is no longer the same, and we have to find time to catch up via Facebook and quick puddle-jumping visits, like last week, when she was here for a few days.

It’s strange how quickly some things snap right back, as though they’d never changed: sitting on the floor of the living room of a Paris apartment — the apartment has changed, but nothing else has — drinking wine and finding endless reserves of stories; watching stupid chick flicks on television; seeking out our old favorite restaurants, now clear across the city. Suddenly, the old normal feels normal again, and yet so very far away, all at once. Is this what being a grown-up feels like?

I found out while she was here that Emese has been making this amatriciana sauce — featured over here — for dinner recently. It’s kind of cool to know that even though we’re not in the same place anymore, and half the time we have no idea what the other is up to, that sometimes we might still be eating the same thing for dinner.