Quarter life crisis

Jude was here. She came on a Saturday because the commute around Amsterdam would have been unbearable on a weekday. Last time we met, we didn't think about that. We would have used public transport, transferring times for anything south of Amsterdam, north of Maastricht rolling smoothly from our memory, having used it on a more than weekly basis for years. Cars were an unknown luxury sometimes borrowed from our parents, when we had decided to concur the Alps over the weekend. I suppose they still are. Parents borrowed luxury. Except we don't concur Alps anymore. And living with your parents again makes the luxury a little less 'unknown'. After all, we are adults now. Driving cars is what we do. On lost Saturday afternoons, we drive them over to eachother and remember when we didn't.


Pictures of that time are now neatly ordered in albums, the result of some carefully conducted grieving proces. We take them in with greed and an appropriate amount of 'oh yeah..!'s The old citywalls where we spend our coffee breaks. The riverbanks where we played soccer till it was too dark to see the ball anymore. Where we jammed torches into the earth and drank cheap whine from plastic cups and watched the stars rotate above us. A sheet of paper that was passed around the library, scribbled on till there was no white left, entitled 'Examweek is...' Too much coffee. Walking half the city to find the best icecream place in your break. Coming in the UL so often that after a week you cannot for the life of you remember where you put your coat this time. There's the pictures of initiation rituals, first years standing in 'our' creek at 1 AM to sing the union song, and the one's from when we baked 1284 waffles in Ben's backyard.


It's the names we like best. Saying them outloud again, to someone who knows them too. Hannah, Joris, Rik, Christine, Andrea, Rob, Willeke, Wubbo. Some twenty more. To be a part of that group again. Just for a moment. Ignore the weddingcards we got sent, even today, and be us for a bit. Until the albums disappear in bags and on shelfs again. She goes on applying for 7 more traineeships. Maybe somewhere next year someone will take her. I sit some more couches. We are now waiting for the rest of our lives to happen.