Still

As we drove from the airport into Prague, my wife and I watched the Gothic architecture, church towers and rows of old stone buildings that looked like they had been standing long before anyone thought to build a road.

The sky was cloudy and grey, sitting low over the rooftops, and it made everything feel quieter and older than it already was. My wife said it felt like we had driven into a Disney movie. I agreed, and then said that it feels like time has stopped here.

We were in Prague for an Indian wedding. The groom is my oldest friend, someone I've known since we were four years old. At the welcome event, I saw his parents for the first time in over a decade, and my first thought was how well they had aged.

As they greeted me, I remembered being in their house as a kid, playing with their son and spending all of our time together. There was a familiarity in their warmth that brought those years closer again. They still see me as that kid, I thought hearing their words, and for a moment I could feel how much of me as a kid was still here today.

Back then, time was something we had more of than we knew what to do with. We saw each other all day at school, and when the bell rang we found reasons to keep going, his house or mine, with our families getting together on weekends too.

Today, even with the people most active in my life, closeness looks like a few messages a week and seeing each other every few weeks if our calendars line up. I'm grateful for that time we had as children, as it is something I don't recognize anymore. Why did time become something I ration?

The next morning my wife and I joined a walking tour of Prague, passing Gothic churches, beautiful facades and buildings from later centuries. As we learned about the country's relatively young democracy, I kept looking at the much older city around us. So much had happened here while these buildings continued to stand, and I began to wonder how much of my impression that time had stopped came from seeing things that had survived it.

The Indian wedding unfolded over several days, with multiple events and outfits, and it was by far the smallest Indian wedding I'd ever attended. That meant that there was time to spend with the groom, the bride, their parents and immediate family, to catch up across the days rather than squeeze everything into a two-minute greeting.

The groom's brother is four years older than us, which growing up meant he was always a foot or two taller, someone we looked up to in every sense. Talking to him now as an adult, as a peer, felt unfamiliar at first. Four years and a few feet had once been an enormous distance between us, and somewhere along the way we had grown into the same conversation.

The main wedding ceremony took place at a Baroque palace on the northern edge of Prague, built in the seventeenth century. During the day it welcomes visitors, and that evening it was closed off for our celebration. Inside the grand hall, paintings covered the walls and ceiling, surrounding us with scenes from hundreds of years ago. Sitting there at my oldest friend's wedding, I kept looking up, trying to take in the room while memories of our childhood were already occupying so much of my attention.

When I was asked to give a speech, speaking about those childhood years brought me back into them. They were memories I had carried for a long time, and saying them aloud, with him and his family there, made them feel close enough to step into.

Later, when the dance floor opened and music from the nineties started playing, our high school years felt close too. I still know this feeling, I thought, surprised by how familiar so much of the weekend had been.

So much of what I write is about change, about becoming someone different and learning to let go of who I used to be. I still believe that, and I know there will be more change ahead. But this weekend gave me time to notice what had stayed familiar through all the chapters in between. I am so used to looking for what had changed that I overlook what remains.

On that drive into Prague, I had been looking through the window at a city that seemed to belong to another time. Over the last few days, I found something of that same feeling among people who had known me for most of my life. There was comfort in discovering how much of my past I could still feel from where I am now.