This summer, I went back to visit friends from high school, whom I hadn't seen in about 14 years, in the town I haven't visited much since then. It was one of the strongest experiences of sense-memory - the kind that allows somnambulists to drive themselves to work in the unconscious middle of the night.
My body knew where it was going: watching the curve of the off-ramp come into view; feeling the curve in the tilt of my car; knowing when to slow down.
Driving from the Putney Road strip into the little downtown: they've redirected traffic, one way past the Common now, so where I expected the stop sign I'd failed to stop at during driver's ed. - with Mr. S. jamming on the breaks - there was none. Down the slope. Past the library on the right, where I'd spent so many after-school afternoons.
I couldn't believe how much has stayed the same over the decades. The same businesses with the same awnings, not updated in 20 years.
The sign remains on the back side of the Common Ground, though the restaurant is no more. It was a true hippie spot: a cooperatively run restaurant, on the second floor, with creaky floorboards, a bottomless bowl of salad with great tahini dressing, and dense, buttery cornbread.
Over other storefronts, new signs are there: shiny, with spiffy, computer-designed lettering. But they are in keeping with the spirit of the town: a store selling natural body products, another new-age bookstore.
I parked on Main Street, across from the Shoe Tree - there for as long as I can remember. Above those buildings to the east I see the top of Wantastiquet, that huge hump of a mountain I'd walked up and down with these friends so many times (or parked with in its secluded lot at night), rising up abruptly from its foot in the Connecticut River.
I looked up Elliot Street and saw that familiar block between Main Street and the Harmony Lot, where we'd always circled slowly a few times before finding a spot.
There was McNeill's Brewery on the left - where, years later, my future husband and I celebrated our first New Year's Eve together - and Maple Leaf Music on the right, where I'd had my first real job (lots of dusting and re-alphabetizing of sheet music).
Down the steep hill to Flat Street, I saw the slanted storefront of Mocha Joe's coffee shop, where I'd had my second job. I loved working there. It was fun to be an insider in what felt like a hip coffee club, but I probably also enjoyed it because I'd felt so grown up, standing behind the counter serving grown-ups their morning lattes.
* * *
On this day, everything inside was exactly the same. Four steps down to the counter, the display of Bodum pots, tea things, and T-shirts on shelves on the left, a little round table to the right, the milk-sugar station, and the high counter straight ahead. The sound of The Smiths filled the rooms. Was I 17 again?
When the four of us saw each other there, after 14 years, we were happily amazed at how much we all looked just like ourselves. It's hard to express the feelings in our looks and hugs. We'd known each other so well, and then had been so far apart. In our almost instant comfort with each other, we all felt as if we couldn't explain why we'd lost touch.
From there, we walked down the hill toward the bridge, to the Riverview Café. We sat on the deck above the river, looking over the Connecticut at Wantastiquet. Our personalities - it seemed amazing! - were exactly the same, though we were all more comfortable in our own skins. We talked more like adults, less like self-conscious teenagers.
I knew their voices so well. And their laughs, mannerisms, bodies. It was like seeing distant cousins you used to know well, but more complicated.
We didn't do much reminiscing, in part, I think, because our group memories weren't always happy. There was also the feeling that we didn't need to repeat old stories. All of those shared memories were in our looks more than in our words. We had a decade and a half to catch up on: The 14 years when we became “grown-ups” and made our lives what they are now.
One has traveled all over the world and lives in New York City, where he writes headlines for The New York Times. Another lives in her childhood house, works the land of Circle Mountain Farm, and sells her organic eggs and produce to the locals. A third is a scientist studying the impact of climate change on different species, including humans. One is working on a Ph.D. in literature, writing a blog about local food, and moving from Alabama to Rome.
All of these endpoints, and the paths that took us there, made perfect sense for who we were, and at the same time seemed paradoxically outlandish. When I told Amy my dissertation was about 18th-century British literature, we both started laughing. Shannon laughed at herself for knowing so much about the different beetles that are killing off the trees of New England. Hamilton laughed about having a job that feels like professional ADD, and Amy said, “I'm a farmer.” We all laughed.
The food we ate was mostly local: goat cheese salads, grass-fed cheddar-bacon burger, pulled pork. But as we ate, and the hours went by, we barely noticed.
As I drove up the hill, I knew all the little Y intersections and 19th-century houses along the streets that led up to Western Avenue. I took a right onto the Interstate, but if I'd gone straight, I could have turned up Orchard Street, the hill I'd walked and rode my bike up so many times, to Meetinghouse Lane, and home - a concept that lives on as feeling in the body's memory.