18 years

Simo left this morning. She's travelling through Norway in a motor home, together with her two children, Emile and Thibault, and her husband, Oliver, a handsome and friendly guy whom I felt surprisingly comfortable around. They spent the weekend here. We went on hikes and to the swimming pool all together a couple of times, cooked and ate meals together, drank some wine and bored all her family members senseless, reminiscing our Duino days and gossiping about people they didn't know. After everybody had gone to sleep we stayed up, chatting about our lives, hopes and worries.

I hadn't seen Simo in eighteen years, since our last day of high school. That day she drove away in her used Renault 4 named "Towanda" (a reference to Green Fried Tomatoes, a movie I later watched because of her excitement in mentioning it to me -- it was high up there for me for a while, together with Forrest Gump and Threesome). I remember her driving away that sunny day of May in '93, Towanda heaped with suitcases and boxes belonging to her and the three other students she was taking along.

Today it was I who rode along on Simo's motor home for a couple of kilometers. They dropped me in Flekke shop with my bike. We hugged and I pledged a visit of my own to Montpellier, and on they went. Oliver wanted to get to Stadt, to do some kite surfing.

The moment I lost sight of them behind a curve, I felt this... tug, pulling me heavily down and back in time. I shopped quickly and pedaled back under the momentary sun, soaking it in but somewhat distracted.

I've been missing Simo all day now, but perhaps more than just her. Time passing doesn't usually make me sad. Life has been full and generous to me, and this weekend I've seen first hand the same can be said of Simo. I'm greedy, though, and wish I could have her nearby, a short walk away, like in those carefree days of a lifetime ago, which I of course know, on a different level, were not carefree at all.

I'm thankful for this friendship with such deep roots, thankful for the years and the distances of our vastly different lives, that make it so solid... But I also wish it had the thick foliage of experiences shared on an everyday basis, as it once did. Now our confidences only blossoms
infrequently, like one of those plants found in fairy tales, that produce a rare and precious flower once in a shovelful of years.

This is our time under the sun, though. The only one we are going to get. It's the only magic there is, and it is enough.

But as Oliver Twist said, could I have some more, please.