London and Lake Garda

Week 1

I arrived in London early on a foggy Tuesday morning and met my friend Maelle at the Finchley & Frognall station. Within an hour I was fast asleep in her bed in Hampstead Heath — to me, a sign of true friendship. After a short rest and a long lunch, Maelle showed me her favorite bookstore and coffee shop. The last time I saw Maelle was last August in London. In the six months since, she had left her job to travel while I stayed at mine to root. Being back with her felt so easy and the breadth of experiences she’d had in the months since our last reunion brought depth to our conversation. I found London to fit as as snugly as it had last summer, if not more.

London fit more snugly but for sure less fashionably than Maelle’s pink raincoat

I celebrated pancake Tuesday that evening at my cousin Poppy’s home in Tottenham. Holding her sweet son Rudy for a few minutes was a highlight of my week in London, as were the few hours I had alone with Poppy and her husband John after Rudy and his brother Stanley fell asleep. The most precious currency of my 20’s may be the undivided attention and unfiltered advice of my older cousins with younger children Lacking in time, their advice is less eloquent and more honest and, lacking in distance from their own 20’s, their memories of this decade not yet been blurred by nostalgia.

Wednesday I blissfully slept half the day away and spent the second half walking along the Thames with Maelle and meeting our friend Mathilde in Bermondsey. We three caught up over drinks at her neighborhood bar and I felt a similar sensation to my fourth year at McGill - a combined desire to live more instinctually and in closer proximity to Mathilde, who knows no other way and whose life shines as a result.

Wednesday night I reunited with four friends from my field semester at their flat Finsbury Park. The last time we we five had been together was four years ago when we spent three months traveling through Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania by truck. Four years ago, we celebrated Valentines Day by singing around a campfire on the shores Lake Nabugabo in Southern Uganda. This year, we sang a semi circle around a keyboard on the North side of London.

Thursday morning Maelle and I biked from Hampstead Heath to Notting Hill to meet our friend Gabby. We three spent the early afternoon poking around the vintage shops and the late afternoon catching up over drinks. I noticed the imposter syndrome arise in me as my friends discussed the geopolitics of Greece. Maelle has just returned from volunteering at a refugee camp on an Island not far from where Gabby had spent a semester studying but it was less about the physical spots they had been than the intellectual spots their brains so easily occupied - spots it felt like mine had all but evacuated since I left university. It’s a feeling I’ve encountered a few times in DC, too.

Thursday evening Maelle, Gabby, and I met our friend Sofie for a drink in Shoreditch - which Maelle perfectly encapsulated as a ‘capitalization of itself’ - and then took the bus to Mathilde’s, where she and our friend Sacha had been cooking up a feast. We broke homemade naan and reminisced about our time in Montreal - mainly Igloo fest. Gabby, Maelle and I stayed at Mathilde’s that night and spent most of it reminiscing. We woke early the next morning and took the tube to Angel to meet Sofie and our friend Pauline for coffee and pastries. I had to depart for the airport soon after and it felt like I was leaving London too quickly. My friend Freddy said it’s good to leave a place knowing there’s something you want to come back for. I left London with many.

Sweet Maelle on my Sunny last morning in London - so many reasons to come back

A bus, train, plane, and taxi ride later, I met my cousin Maddy at the train station on the Southern side of Lake Garda and together we took another taxi up north to our hotel. The town we were staying in was quiet. We settled at a quaint restaurant across the street, one of the only open, and caught up over Branzino and spaghetti Bolognese. We were tucked into bed watching Call Me By Your Name by 10 pm.

The next morning we woke up and walked down to breakfast to see blue cliffs cascading into the lake, a view that reminded me of Lausanne and the Grand Tetons. Maddy and I traced the lake’s perimeter during the day and tested it depth at dusk, diving underneath its dark blue surface just a the sun had a few minutes before. Moments like those remind me of a quote from Kate Bowler and one from Boyhood—

“You know how everyone's always saying seize the moment? I don't know, I'm kinda thinking it's the other way around. You know, like the moment seizes us.” - Nicole in Boyhood.

“There’s no done and there’s no formula and there’s no enough except for those moments where you feel it and you know it and you’re loved and it feels like transcendence for a hot second and then it’s gone and you feel like you’re going to starve to death because I think that’s how good the beautiful good stuff is. Love - it makes us hungry.” - Kate Bowler

We emerged from the water famished.