Saturday morning was rough. I was at a great party all night and stumbled back to my apartment at 6:30am, which is after the sun is up in Barcelona. I fell into my bed and quickly to sleep.
Three hours later I had to get up and move out of my apartment. I eventually (I'm am saving a lot of boring complaints here, so thanks are in order) made it to my friend Angela's apartment where I was fortunate enough to inhabit the living room. I laid there for a while in a half sleep, half deep thought about the unfairness of the whole concept of hangovers. I wasn't able to sleep because, as I mentioned before, I was in the living room and my friend has (lovely) roommates who got up at the reasonable hour of 11.
By 3pm my friend Sandra (who was also crashing at Angela's) and I went to meet Sally in Gracia for food. All of us were hungover for the second or third night in a row. We had all had very minimal sleep. We all felt like shit, and let me tell you, I really looked like shit. It didn't matter, though. It didn't matter that I didn't have my A game; that I was lucky if I could bring my B game to the table. I didn't have to wow them with stories or wit. I could put everything else aside and just be myself. It dawned on me that perhaps this is what friendship is: feeling like crap and wanting to be with them regardless. Knowing that they already love me, accept me, and we can set everything else aside. We were too tired for pretense so we got the core of each other for the day. It was perfect.
We found this wonderful Lebanese restaurant and sat there for 5 hours watching the summer rain come and go. In those 5 hours we laughed so hard we cried, chatted about nothing, shared, talked, and sometimes, we were just quiet. Angela joined us later in the day - I'm not even sure when. I was content.
The table of locals sitting next to us asked us to join them and help them eat their food. We did and had a great time talking in a combination of Spanish and English about all sorts of things. We begrudgingly left at 11 to go meet friends for drinks at another bar. For the second time that day I was struck with the depth of experience that was showing itself to me. What a great country, I thought, where an American, a Canadian, a New Zealander and a girl from Wales can sit at a table for most of the day and end up sharing dinner - sharing plates, even - with the Lebanese and Spanish folks at the next table. We were all able to come together across nationalities and languages to share a meal, the most simple and meaningful of things, and walk away having created something rare: a real connection.
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5 comments:
This was lovely.
mary, I am so homesick for that day, one that should have been terrible given the amount of alcohol consumed the night before! It turned out to be one of the best days I had-and the stories.....classic!
I like the scene in the restaurant in the late afternoon sun, the friends sitting around eating and talking and being content.
Can't wait to see you.
wow dude you are all sappy and poetic in that post and totally cracking me up. but you have hit on an essential truth: "It dawned on me that perhaps this is what friendship is: feeling like crap and wanting to be with them regardless". yup, that's it EXACTLY!! :)
Beautiful! I've just got to reading this post... feeling nostalgic for Barcelona and those days, and even though I only shared in the end of that memorable day it was the sort of ordinary day that becomes special because of how you felt.
I'm thankful that your skills as a writer have captured it. And that I get to relive it a bit right now.
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Glad to see you made it home ok!
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