M. and I were introduced by a mutual friend. She knew we were both young moms, married to Swiss men, and that we both spoke primarily English and little German; she figured we might have something in common. She was only partially right: we actually had a lot in common.
We quickly bonded over the many things that, I had always felt, always made me stick out like a sore thumb in the conservative city of Zurich: we were both in our twenties but married, with children; we were both Ausländer, foreigners, a word that was often spat more than spoken; we both spoke a foreign language and weren’t yet proficient in German, mostly because we didn’t enjoy the language much; we laughed more often and spoke louder than people around us, making fun of the no-cell phone signs on the tram and the shushing noises from other passengers when we talked, which only made us break into uncontrollable giggling.
I had found, unexpectedly, a kindred soul in a place where I felt different from everyone, like I was never going to fit in. (Nor was I sure I wanted to: a quiet, grumpy Italian? An abomination, undoubtedly.)
We spoke on the phone a lot, met as often as we could (though a little less often when I moved to the countryside); we talked for hours every day, sometimes about “serious” stuff, sometimes not. We vented, laughed and discussed everything; we got closer and closer while sharing silly things (The Swiss were without a doubt among the worst dressed and worst-coiffed in Western Europe, despite the money!), as well as important ones (holistic health came natural to both of us).
You could say that in a way I fell in love with her, a non-romantic love, but love nevertheless, the kind of love you feel for your best friend when you are a young child and you never want to be apart, the kind of love you never thought you could feel as an adult—because surely it is ridiculous and immature, even pathetic, to feel that way about anyone, at a time where people prefer to think themselves as islands, independent and fun on their own just as much as in the company of others.
I loved how easy it was to share things with her, and how easy it was to find something to talk about, and how easily we found things to laugh about. I loved that we both loved fashion but weren’t obsessed with it; that we both loved our children but wanted the “mom” aspect to be part of our personality, not the only thing about us; that we agreed the route to health and healing was better walked by natural means than artificial ones, and that we didn’t care if that made us sound like unhip tree huggers (this was before green was cool), because we were hip and cool and didn’t need to prove it.
