a rotation

Time is an elusive concept.

It’s passing constantly, yet it’s so hard to feel. It’s like lying in the grass, trying to feel the Earth rotate.

When changes are both small and constant, we can’t grasp them.

But watching a sunset, for example, we can process that we’ve successfully completed another rotation.

– For small creatures such as we, Sasha Sagan

And so, my time in France has ended. As will a semester, a year, soon a decade. 

Took an early morning Flixbus out of Strasbourg today, thankful for the place that has housed me graciously for the past four months.

How time passes imperceptibly, and then suddenly tout à coup, the end is here.

I have many thoughts to process – how Europe has shifted my perception on work, the lessons I hope to bring home.

My memory filled with the many faces and well-wishes of people I may never see again but whose path I had the serendipity to cross during my short séjour en France.

My suitcase filled with rice-and-lavender stuffed sock-warmers I made with Reid, an Advent calendar I bought at a German Christmas market, a leather jacket I got at a second-hand store in Montpellier that makes me feel fit to walk the Parisian streets.

In a way, we need these markers to signal the passing of time.

They remind us of the fragility of our humanity – how though we try hard to plan and order our lives, we are in fact subject to the unavoidable marching forward of time.

But I try my best to capture the memories of the moments before they pass me by.

I take photos, stuff my suitcase, scribble in my journal.

I sit here at this cafe in the middle of Luxembourg Old Town and write about what it feels like to have completed a rotation.

Grateful to have been given the chance to explore a bit of this side of the world, but also to come back to familiar rhythms and people.

The thought of walking into a Church 21 service again on a Sunday morning makes me unexplainably happy.

Yup, that’s right –

Montreal, I’m coming home.