A Saran Wrap Moment

The Boston Herald

A pretty little blonde walks down the street, a young teen, ponytail bopping, legs pumping, arms keeping rhythm, a happy, purposeful walk. And I who have looked up from my desk and out the window have "Hey, Em!" in my throat and it's on my lips when I remember: Emily's away at school. She's in college. She isn't 14 anymore.

It's like stepping out of movie theater at noon - going from black to bright, from story to reality. I see then this girl is not Emily. Emily's hair is short now, and when she's home she doesn't walk down the street, she drives. And Emily sways these days; she no longer bops.

Still, I have to pull myself away from this delusion that Emily is small. I have to shout to myself that this girl outside my window is not Emily.

It's a Saran Wrap moment. The past, clear as plastic, gets stuck to the present and for a few long seconds you can't unstick the two.

It has happened before. Once, some summers ago, I walked into a restaurant up in Maine and there sitting at the counter was Franny Noonan, a boy I knew in high school. He hadn't changed in 30 years. He had the same short hair, the same lean build, the same freckles, even the same crooked teeth. "Fran!" I whispered. I was halfway to the counter, a smile on my face, when it dawned on me that it was 30 years ago I knew Fran Noonan and that this boy couldn't possibly be Fran because this boy was still in his teens. My brain registered this. My brain did the math. Still, I stood there midstep, stuck between what I knew was real and what used to be real.

Sometimes, many times, people just look like people you used to know. Walking past a group of high school girls Wednesday afternoon, I was struck by how so many of them reminded me of my children's friends and how they reminded me of my high school friends, too. Sure, they had different clothes and different hairstyles. But something in their youth and their energy, in the way they walked so close to each other, in the trill of their laughter, in their open affection for one another, made it easy to see Ann Boyce in the short brunette, Patty Lyons in the taller girl and Jean Sneddon in the blonde.

But this kind of thinking is part invention. Some guy at the gym reminds me of my son. My neighbor's bald baby makes me think of my bald babies. This is the brain just making connections. The other is a prolapse of the brain, a yielding of now to then, and is a whole different thing.

It happened to my friend Anne just last week. Her husband had emergency surgery and she was expecting my arrival at the hospital. Walking to the coffee shop, she saw a woman "who looked just like you" she told me later. The woman was with a little girl with blonde hair. "My first thought was, oh good. You brought Julie," she said. "I actually started hurrying toward the two of them when it dawned on me that the woman couldn't be you. But for a few seconds, I didn't remember that Julie is grown."

This isn't the mind wanting to play a game of reverie. This isn't about wondering where time has gone. This isn't even the result of anything that happens before it. Too much wine. Too much talk of old times.

This is a spontaneous double exposure.

When I see Rosemary, my friend since second grade, I always see the child she was. That little girl is permanently superimposed on the woman she has become. When I see Peter and Dotty Scott, I still see a young couple with young boys, though two of the boys are in college now. My father looks at me and sees a child. Sometimes, time gets stuck.

But Saran Wrap moments aren't like this. They're in class all by themselves. Maybe they're the four-leaf clovers of memory, rare, unexpected finds. Maybe they are the doorway we all seek. If only I could go back.

And you do. For an instant, when you least expect it

Beverly Beckham