"What's this little guy doing over here?"

It's the unexpected remembrances that are the most painful. A stray phrase I hear in my head, Bethany's voice. At once memory can no longer be held by the levies that months of forgetting have built. One phrase a crack in the dam, and the pain collected and barricaded is released.

I was at the Monet museum in Paris. I had been wanting to go for a while, but hadn't gotten around to it until the trip was almost over. It's not nearly as well known as the others, but I actually found it to be one of my favorites.

Throughout my trip, I had been looking for a museum where I could go to write; there was only so much money I could spend buying drinks at cafes in order to sit at the tiny round tables, barely big enough to hold a saucer with a cafe creme, a book I occasionally would pick up and pretend to read, and my little black Moleskine.

Orsay was too crowded all the time, and the seats were always taken. The Louvre was filled with school groups and Americans who talked, and the incessant images of Jesus bleeding while on the cross weren't exactly inspirational.

But the Monet museum was quiet and small, and I really liked the Monets - haute art for the pedestrian, covering post cards and notebooks and posters, yet still "art". There was one room in particular, a round one on the bottom floor, with almost 360 degrees of water lilies and benches in the center. I sat down and turned from one painting to the next, studying them and resting my tired feet at the same time.

An American family came in, in shorts and non-stylish jeans (I was in Paris, and my inner snob couldn't help but come out). They talked about the paintings, and the kids were bored just like I had been when I was their age. And I'm a little amazed that I just wrote "when I was there age" - today I was sitting on the floor by one of the low tables in Uncle Joe's and when I got up my knees cracked and I groaned and I though "I am SO old". But anyway I wanted to walk up to them and tell them "Wait a few years, you'll be glad your parents brought you here."

But then I looked at one water lily, dark blue and a pale yellow-white. It was similar to the other ones, but there was one lily off in the corner, all alone. It stuck out to me as I knew it would have stuck out to her, and I heard in my head her voice and the comment she would have made had she been there. By that point I had been alone in Paris for 8 weeks, and alone everywhere for 4 months, and that little comment, which would have been followed by a laugh, it stung me.

I never went back to the Monet museum.