this space. the one of writing. where everything left and and everything right and all the air and furniture and stacks of work stretching behind fade in to a sort of watery blur, and the tiny world around me grows tight and immediate. dogs asleep, kiddo asleep, house open to the night time breeze and sultry, lovelorn spanish lyrics just audible over the soft clack of keyboard taps. this is such a rare and perfect storm, i soak it up like a forgotten sponge. the quiet here is so complete it practically screams.

half of my birthday this year was spent with the sweetest travelers on a plane, where after the passage of eleven hours and about 5,000 miles, we finally dropped in to the low lands. the beautiful faces of my friends awaited me beyond customs, and within the littlest hour i was walking a neighborhood i haven’t visited since my thirties, arm in arm with my gorgeous heartgirl signe, in search of clove cigarets and a perfect glass of champagne on a perfect sunny patio to celebrate the arrival of 53.

 the first hours settling in somewhere far from the scope of real life bring release, where all the responsibilities and daily norms of one’s regular life fall away and what is left is this incredible open space of ease and emptiness. i am a terrible tourist; i can take or leave museums and boat rides and visitor attractions. but offer me a corner bistro or park bench or sidewalk cafe and i am joyful to sit for hours witnessing the changing snapshot of a place and the rhythm of life there. it is a glorious place, the vacuum of observation.

i waited for that open space to arrive, with this trip to a world i once lived in but have never felt i could call my own. but the neutrality of the observer never showed up, and what came instead was a sort of blinding nostalgia, unexpected and poignant. waves of remembrance hit and took me to my teens and twenties. to the years that i left california again and again, stretching and reaching for and creating a life in places that simply made more sense to me than the one i grew up in. places far from home.

within hours back in amsterdam it was as if a little film reel of memory and desire had begun, and during the days that followed, unexpected moments of lucidity kept showing up, moments that drove home the fact that in returning to southern california over twenty years ago, i had by proxy and without question returned to an ideal born of home and upbringing and environment in a place I never expected to live again. not a terrible thing, for my life since then reflects all that i deem important and lasting – raising my remarkable daughter, my family, my career, a commitment to my friends and authenticity and kindness and hard work. but a really weighty realization that surprised and threw me.

maybe if i were more flippant and less a seeker of meaning, these bursts of insight would be just a passing moment of many during a perfect week away. but of course those who know me know nothing ever sits solely on the surface. i have always been a digger, an excavator, a believer that real connection comes from real reveal. and in those early moments in amsterdam where i sank in to a different world than my own, all the crevices and pockets and places to tuck things that are the cadence and norms of every day life, were suddenly open. what swirled around like a whisper of fragrant smoke to fill them was a sea of bicycles moving through the city, the smell of fresh bread and dark coffee, rain drops dancing on sidewalks, leafless trees lined against a pale sky like a row of giacometti scupltures. gray light filtered in through elegant windows, and the round table in niek and signe’s dining room still beckons like an enormous anchor for the people moving in and out of their lives, drinking tea and coffee and wine amidst an always lively conversation. a table where love lives.

filling the even deeper spaces were the faces of people i have loved more than half of my life. signe my truest friend since i was 17 years old; niek the beautiful teller of stories who has loved her since we were all young and green; kester the tall one with a voice made of whisky and velvet, from whom adoration and light pours toward me like a beacon, a lighthouse, an unanswered question. those crevices, and pockets, and places we tuck the things of daily life, were brimming suddenly with the warmth of history, the longevity of affection, the power of longing and humor and tenderness. and for me, like an arrow cracking through the sternum and straight to my core, a wrap of love that filled the empty spaces with such delicacy and presence that it left me hearkening back to a younger me and a wonder of whether the place that was never mine could have been.

i could have fought it. the beguiling charm of a city i don’t know by heart but readily give myself over to, the draw of old friends, the warm embrace of adoring and being adored. if getting older has taught me anything, it’s that the rare moments of beauty are to be seen, celebrated, revered. how often are we presented with a chance to step outside our lives (or deep within them) to embrace the gift of something precious showing up? i allowed myself the indulgence of simply being there among friends, in love, in a set of moments as beautiful as have ever existed.

and when it was time to say goodbye, before the farewell tears started, i sat on the bed in the upstairs bedroom – the one i think of as mine – and packed my things to return home. in every piece of clothing, i placed a memory from seven days in amsterdam before folding them into squares and placing them in my suitcase. hours and hours later, exhausted and with a deep orange sun setting in a western sky, i opened the case, unfolded the clothes and watched as dozens of perfect moments, bouts of laughter, deep kisses and sips of wine fluttered from my wrinkled jeans and sweaters to land like butterflies on bed posts and door knobs and my ancient old dresser. weeks later, they are still here, bending their wings in greeting as i walk by, a wink of color and remembrance from a path i didn’t choose, and which i long for.