Time Travel in your mind

I have gone back in time – almost 20 years. I open doors and see people who are no longer in this world. I look at an oak tree and see a blue baby swing hanging from a low branch that is not there. I step into a laundry room and see the litter box of a cat that has been dead for quite some time.

No – I am not hallucinating and have not gone off my rocker. I am experiencing what I believe is called context dependent memory bursts. The improved recall of specific episodes or information when the context present at encoding and retrieval are the same.

Brain cells releasing snippets of memory kept dormant for years – unleashed when you are placed in the exact same place/context.

I am in our suburban home, a house we lived in for a long time before moving back to central Austin. The house is usually leased out and just came up temporarily vacant.

I came to walk the house with the property agent on a sunny morning. We opened the front door and stepped onto the foyer. The tall vaulted ceilings had prisms of sunlight stuck to them. The beautiful open living areas were awash with almost white sunshine. The Bradford Pears in the backyard were visible through the open plantation blinds. The mantel over the fireplace looked empty but expectant. I stepped into the refurbished kitchen. I paused to open light-pink shell colored cabinets, I had opened countless times in my life to get ketchup, salt, cookies.

We walked the rooms. My daughter’s bedroom has been painted white. But I could clearly see the Sesame Street characters on the large wall. Cookie monster stuffing his face and cookie crumbs falling down all the way. The master bedroom looked large and open, the pear leaves almost touching the window close to where our bed used to be. The bathtub in the large master bath squeaky clean, but I saw water splashing in it and my 3 year old playing with her bath toys. Ernie and Bart getting dunked.

I was filled with such a strong sense of belonging that I decided to live in the house for a week. It was an experiment to relive a time that has gone by.

My experiment has yielded delightful results – I am a Time Traveler now.

How we all wish we could get back the past… At least some parts it! The milky breath of our newborn, the first kiss, the first time we saw Eiffel Tower or Van Gogh’s Starry Night, the first time we turned the key to a new house.

My mind is flooded with images. These images are almost sensory. I sit in the formal living room and see the white front door. I hear taps on the bay window. If I open the door, Connor, my daughter’s inseparable 5 year old friend from next door, with pale blonde hair, blue eyes and pudgy hands would be standing there. He would say in his baby voice –

“Sree, Can Meghna play?” except he would pronounce Meghna as Menna.

A bay window into the world

I go running and by autopilot run the route I did some 15 years ago. I pass trees I know, fences with familiar cracks and rose bushes that still haven’t bloomed.

In the late evening, I sit in the backyard and look at the lanky and lonesome sycamore tree still swaying perilously. I remember nursing crushing heart aches in the same place with the sycamore as the only witness.

I talked to my daughter, a college senior with a double major in Economics and Psychology.

“It is context based memory – Mom.”

Is that all?

Have you never wondered – if everything really got over? The golden day on the beach when you were 18? Your mother’s proud smile on graduation day? The heart-drenching feeling after reading The English Patient? The first fierce love you felt in your belly for someone who was practically a stranger?

I don’t know much about psychology, but I am loving whatever this is.

I see things like the old avatar of Kate Winslet in Titanic, when she returned to the ship. People dancing in the ballroom and a young Leonardo opening the door – a vibrant and light-filled world inside. I see a young version of my husband crawling on the carpet, giving our 5 year old a horsie back ride.

My mind feels like an ocean – pearls sway in the deep blue abyss. A virtual and limitless treasure box right inside me. Life’s redolent moments and threads floating in it. All I have to do is reach way down – do eeny, meeny, miny, mo and sweep my fingers around. I will then have in my fist a memory that throbs as sweetly as the heart of a dove.

Time and space are relative. But my memories are absolute. What is time except the gray strands showing up in my hair? It is only the physical changes that are ascribed to time. And if you take out the physical you are left with forever.  I remember when my cat dug up the carpet because I would not let her into the bathroom while I took a shower. I instinctively looked for the hole in the carpet yesterday.

I see everyone and everything. I feel all the love I gave and received.

How can anything be lost?