So much of my lightning visit to our former hometown of Rotterdam proved skewed and twisted, yet screamed for a redo sooner rather than later, if only to spend more time with my sister, who was kind and loving enough to travel there too, being the only one in the family I can actually still relate to, even though we have a terrible influence on each other when exposed to alcohol, always thrilling and accelerating, in the old days combined with excessive smoking, while overbearingly proclaiming we never ever in our lives drank nor smoked, pretty not so little liars we were.
I love me a trip down memory lane, but this was not what I had in mind when I booked me a hotel in our actual old hood to facilitate an overdue dentist appointment – a ridiculous rationale to begin with but that’s what’s needed when one trust ones Syrian care provider and her French speaking assistant with a hilarious sense of humor to be the only ones allowed to protect ones teeth and gums, having had cataclysmic experiences with some of their not so highly esteemed colleagues in the past – and hiking a ride with the in-laws returning home after their extended visit.
This place, this stomping ground where the seed of change once fell into fertile soil, making our moving away look natural and judicious, now feels like a parallel universe, a blueprint of what we chose to leave behind, but still fitting like a glove, not even collected any dust, but on the contrary, upwards battling the hordes, only nowadays without us.
There’s many ways to slide back in, I realized, but the one way I plumped for rather eagerly will not surprise you as it entailed fast trains going south and happy Mecs to unite with. Forgetting the whereabouts of my balance by stepping outside just a teeny bit further than usual, made me aware of the thickness of the walls we build when we assembled our bastion Les Pierres.
That’s a good thing, I think. It better be because we have planned a joined holiday soon, stranger things have finally happened.
