Nothing but the Start

A friend from Boston came to visit some months ago, and I was hesitant about whether she’d fit into my new Madrid apartment. My US condo was spacious and comfortable — perfectly laid out to reflect “me” and respond to my needs. I loved it. Visitors tended to fall asleep on my couch with the afternoon light streaming through the windows, but I took this as a compliment to the space’s calming influence rather than a sense of boredom.

So, needless to say, I was dubious about my friend’s reaction to my Spanish quarters of 50 sq meters. Now, she’s a kind girl as well as a small girl, so I wasn’t expecting her to drop her bags and look around aghast.

But I wasn’t expecting her to love it either. To my surprise, she thought the apartment perfectly reflected me. She would have been able to easily pick this poor, small, shabby apartment that tried to sneak by without a kitchen, right out of a lineup. (It did boast floor to ceiling windows and a central location.) Granted, I had brought a rug and some small but prized frames with me to Madrid, and there were some books present. But I was surprised.

And so, months later, I think of this surprise as I lay on a new bed in my new bedroom in a new barrio of Madrid. Supposedly, my whole living situation has changed. I’m sharing with roommates after a long stint of choosing to do otherwise. This is quite different. This is a change.

But my room looks quite familiar — and will undoubtedly look familiar to this friend when she pays another visit. And it makes me wonder — based on these very physical indications — is change really possible? We may change our surroundings. We may change our appearance. We may change our job and even our daily routine. Our tastes evolve. We can choose to change how we spend our time, and we can choose to take our past history into consideration and change how we react to people, places, things.

And yet, we keep dragging our selves with us wherever we go.

Ever try speed dating?  I’m fascinated by it but will likely never do it.  (Although I  wholeheartedly support your decision to give it a go.)  In fact, I have a New York (female) friend or two who’ve found it thoroughly enjoyable.

I bring up speed dating because that’s what it felt like being in Boston the other week.  I hadn’t been back in a while (I wait so long because it doesn’t feel so long until I land in Logan.)  I was speed dating my friends and former colleagues.  Many of my phone conversations/emails went like this: I have an hour here… do you have an hour here?  Luckily though, I didn’t need to do any thin slicing (Gladwell) since I adore these people, but packing them into two or three hour time slots is difficult. And exhausting. And not good enough.

It was a handful of days to see everyone I could (not a dent) while claiming to be more available in December (highly unlikely), and driving to favorite locations (ahem, being driven) to eat anything that wasn’t a tapa, and ordering all the holiday coffee drinks at starbucks.  Spain’s starbucks does not believe – perhaps to their benefit – in pumpkin spice, peppermint mocha, or gingerbread lattes.  (I admit to drinking Starbucks in both America and Spain.  Kill me.)

And in the whirlwind, I noticed that my old haunt did not disappear while I had turned my back:

• The front yard of my condo still insists on re-blooming flowers in November.
• The weather is still cold and mists at you; umbrellas are useless.
• The sidewalks are still lethal with heels.
• Harvard Square’s Pho Pasteur still makes excellent tofu vegetable soup, just under a different name.
• Union Square’s Bloc 11 still makes the best sandwiches and lets you swap or add any ingredient.  (Don’t try that in Spain.)
• Any coffee shop in Somerville or Cambridge still makes me feel at home.
• The girls at the table next to you are still beautiful and bookish and talking about bottom of the pyramid and microfinancing.  The boys are still reading Sartre.
• There still isn’t any real need to go across the river into Boston.

And all that is a relief because I still really like it there.

Of course, there were some developments (hello completed road construction on Somerville Ave).  In fact, being away for a year allowed me to see how much my friends have changed during that time.  Many of them will be surprised to read that sentence; they probably think they are just going along their life, one day after the next, going to work, going to dinner, going to sleep.  But the friend speeding made clear how different they all are from one another, how their paths have forked into unique lives.

In the past year, one or more of my friends has: gotten married, become a mother or a father (again), moved apartments, gone into therapy, found a new job, been promoted, become a vegetarian, fixed a relationship, ended a relationship, shown their work in a gallery, taken one step closer to knowing what they want.

Most of them look like the best version of themselves: shiny and sleek and happy.  And I wouldn’t have noticed that if I had spent the year with them.  Funny how that step back really helps things (like taking a long, non-America style vacation.)  So, I resolve to think of them – my “old” friends – if ever I feel that I’m just going through the motions.  Because things are happening even when we feel we are standing still (I dare you to quote Lennon) and we just need to be reminded to step back and take a good look.

And that’s what friends are for, isn’t it?