It’s like stepping out of a cozy, perfect dream and landing quietly in what appears to be your bed, hours after the alarm stopped bothering to ring, breath slow and eyes heavy. You shift slightly so your body can understand where you are, but your arms are heavy too and the warmth of the disappearing dream beckons you back toward a sleep state. You yawn and sigh and accept the inevitability of a few more minutes of dreamy limbo.
That’s what it’s like, coming back to “normal life” after special people come to visit.
One and a half days after my younger brothers and their partners headed back to their lives in the US, hoping to escape another eerily quiet morning in an apartment now empty of their shoes and their spirits, I finally hopped back on my bike. The chain is a bit rusty from being left tied to a pole in Kirtipur during a week of rain and then stuck at home for another two weeks with no one around to ride. Something’s happened to the gear shifter too – an eternal problem for me. But the weather was perfect this morning, and the roads were empty. I headed down, and then up, to my old haunts around Patan to find a new festival I’d just learned of the day before. Feeling the sun and the wind, sweat down my back and dust in my teeth, I weaved in and out of traffic, enjoying the freedom and the solitude of cycling alone, on my own time, with no agenda other than to follow the crowds and get myself a coffee.
I entered the old city of Patan via the main gate, the Patan Dhoka, and then followed the curving road toward the Durbar Square. This area is possibly my favorite spot in all of Nepal, and I know many of the roads quite well, so when I reached the Durbar and didn’t find any parades with drummers leading sacred statues on palanquins, I decided to roam until I found something. Dodging stray dogs and support beams leftover from the earthquakes, I passed pedestrians and motorbikes and carts full of tomatoes. I went to the Golden Temple, to Banglamukhi Temple, to an open square near where I lived in 2019. I circled back and went toward Gwarko for a while until making a hairpin turn to head back up a road I didn’t remember. I came across a Jyapu Heritage Museum and stopped for a minute, intrigued, only to realize I had production-managed a show there many years ago. I took a few more twists and turns through the narrow cobblestoned roads of the old city, confused by the emptiness of the streets on a Saturday morning, until finally it was time to admit defeat and have a coffee. For the first time in weeks, I sat alone, quiet, with space to reflect, or not.
It meant the world to me, having my brothers and their partners here. I loved stuffing our faces at my favorite restaurants, exploring local markets, marveling over the shimmering green rice paddy terraces, dancing at the 52nd best nightclub in the world, petting stray dogs and avoiding stray monkeys, explaining my limited understanding of Nepal’s architecture and culture and practices and problems. Even getting devoured by land-leeches was an adventure, since I got to do it with the best group. It’s a privilege and an honor to share this special country with people I love, and it’s often a big sacrifice for those people to make their way over here. If I could keep them here longer, I certainly would.
But alas, we step out of dreamland and back into our separate lives, grasping at the special moments and holding them tight, sharing pictures in Google Photos to increase our collective memory.
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