Lone Wolf Traveller

My home was Versailles, “une banlieue” (suburb in French), but not by my North American standards, as walking through this ancient town was as delicate an act as sipping tea from fine china. This town deviated from the big box store garnished burbs I knew. Adjusting to life in Marie Antoinette’s former ville proved to be a struggle despite its charm. I babbled through words, learned to embrace being laughed at, forgot about having a “nice” vocabulary, and longed to show Versailles, Lauren. I soon learned to forget the notion of showing Versaille me. One day during my French lesson, my ears lifted sharply like my dog, Ella’s do when she hears a piercing noise or the rustling of food wrappers. My teacher was explaining the meaning of “Madeleine de Proust,” and the clarity I gained from his explanation lumbered towards me like a tree thudding to the ground. “Timber!” In English, the term is “involuntary memory” and does not resonate with me. The French term beholds a story and is as romantic in name as in definition. Proust, a philosopher and writer, describes being transported to a time during his childhood after eating a madeleine cake.
It was in this moment, learning about “Madeleine de Proust” that I more accurately understood an experience and I understood it best when thinking about it in French.
A few years earlier, I was walking in a shopping centre parking lot when I was home in Nova Scotia, Canada. It was early June and the heat generating from the pavement had a strange effect. It transported me to another time: I was back in Malta, a small archipelago situated south of Sicily.
Compacted by vast concrete, Malta was an inferno in the summer. When I closed my eyes, I was there. I was in Valetta: the streets crowded, the buildings short and clustered in clay formations. I was at the residence. I could hear the Italians call, “Let’s all go to Paceville.” I made eyes across the pool and tried to catch my breath as he approached. The bright luzzus bobbed in Marsaxlokk while we bought fish that they had fetched just hours before.
I then realised that language was about more than memorising enough words to carry a basic conversation, but rather seeing things from a different side, a different shape.
And, how I want to see the shapes, smells, savour the laughs and sweet voices heard from adventures past. I see the world as a lone wolf traveller but I’ve learned that I carry the places that I’ve discovered in ways I have yet unraveled.