you know how in a very short time so much life can pass that you feel like it’s impossible to begin to catch up?

i feel like that.

the first time i went to Prague, it was in a handbasket. a wild, debaucherous, wonder-struck, stars-in-my-eyes, no-holds-barred and emotionally wringing kind of handbasket that in effect marked the end of my first (and formally, only) marriage and the utter fulfillment of the travel fantasies i’d had since i was an adolescent. Prague was a frilly birthday cake of seedy, smoky magic to me, and every place since has struggled to compare.

this trip to Mitteleurope was moderately more sedate…but still pretty surreal. it is the Twilight Zone of cities, Praha. Dave and i used to live in its ugly stepsister, Bratislava, but while the Soviet housing suburbs of the two are generally the same vast horrors of concrete bleakness, and the old town squares of each are monuments to Hapsburg frivolity and empire building, Prague – for me, at least – is infused with a unique energy that seems to inspire me to both my best and my worst all at the same time. it’s a heady place.

but it is no longer one i want to live in.

and a part of me is mourning the loss of that lust for baroque vistas and seedy underbelly. because it is gorgeous – indubitably, breathtakingly so. and it is a site ideally suited to the latenight cigarette-infused intensity and abandon and giddy conversation that i still rise to like a swimmer coming up for air, as if i’d never been out of the medium. i love it for that. and i loved that Dave and Oscar and i got to take in the former, and that Dave and i were freed by our generous babysitting friends for the rare freedom and focus of the latter. those things alone, plus getting to connect and catch up with those fine friends in what is now the third country we’ve all shared too many drinks in, was worth the trip. truly.

but the whole time i was just slightly off-balance, uneasy. around every corner, i found ghosts of myself, of former lives, all intersecting. i do not want to be an expat anymore, not one struggling to make enough to leave the (albeit beautiful) city i live in, not one continually bracing myself for a way to comprehend the seemingly Kafka-esque whims of local bureaucracy and red tape, not one looking for community in bars. i know there are other experiences available in the expatriate pallette, but these were my own…at their best. and i am over that. and i am a little sad to realize that so viscerally…because it means that a part of my heart can never truly go home again, to the magical land of faraway.

the journey back from Prague to London involved a race to the local children’s emergency room with Oscar, who’d come down with bronchiolitis all over again, poor wee, then a hustle back to drag our baggage and cartage and kitchen sink down the four flights of stairs from our friends’ flat to the cab, since we were not braving three changes on public transport laden down with luggage and a sick baby, then a screaming match between yours truly and a skanky cheap-Barbie-knockoff Czech Easyjet agent who – despite our problem-free trip from London to Prague with exactly the same luggage, and a confirmation phone call i’d made to the company itself before we ever left Canada to assure myself that i was interpreting their baggage allowances appropriately – charged us an extra $125 US just to depart her fine but still graft-notorious country with the same bags we’d come in with, may she burn in fake tan hell, the smug slag and her entire airline. that was a pleasant day.

London has been rejuvenating, however. Oscar is recovering. he has been, for the most part, an amazing little travel companion, adaptable and curious and pleasant, despite his wretched cold. he scared us badly, the morning of the emergency room run…but only forty-eight hours later, he is rested and pink-cheeked and happy, if a little snot-ridden. i love having him here, showing him things, seeing how he responds to sights and smells and people and the crush of public transit, watching his little feed trod over flagstones that are hundreds of years old. and in moments, i desperately wish Dave & i could have a swank dinner without little hands flailing to taste everything right now. such is parenthood, i guess. i would not trade. we are staying with another of the old friends we are lucky enough to have scattered all over the world right now, and her flat is tres cool and comfortable for getting our feet back under us. yesterday, O got his diaper changed at the London Eye, and at the Tate Modern. i’m sure he’ll treasure the photographic evidence of these adventures when he’s older. ;)

wherever you go, there you are, they say…and i am discovering myself again each new place we go.

wish you were here.