A chance encounter with childhood friend, a flood of memories
Jack Van Arsdale and Michael Dobie. Credit: Susan Van Arsdale
My wife and I were having dinner a few months ago in the garden patio of a restaurant on Wooster Street in New Haven, not far from my old Connecticut stomping grounds. We had just placed our order when a fellow diner who looked to be about my age approached the table and, after a few pleasantries, asked whether by any chance I might be Michael Dobie.
Wary but curious, I confirmed my identity and asked who he was. When he replied, I was astonished.
Jack was one of my childhood friends, part of a tight-knit group of five who palled around the neighborhood. We did everything together all the time but grew apart when we went to different high schools. It had been well more than 50 years since we had seen one another. Jack said he first recognized my aunt, our dining companion who is 94 years old, then ID'd me when I joined the table after parking the car.
We wrapped each other in bear hugs, and started to catch up on our lives. The serendipity of our encounter was not lost on me. But I was more overwhelmed by the torrent of thoughts and images unleashed by Jack's appearance.
Suddenly, I was 9 years old again, in the streets of our suburb with Jack, Dave, Eddie and Gordon. We would roam the neighborhood playing cops and robbers with my family's garage as the jail. We played football and whiffle ball in the street and in our backyards, and basketball — always basketball — everywhere.
We never used doorbells when we gathered. If I was getting the group together, I'd go around to the back door of Jack's house and yell, "Oh, Jackie!" until he emerged. Then we’d go to the back door of Dave’s house and summon him, and so on until the group was complete.
As Jack and I chatted, I saw us as boys again. I saw me telling him I'd do a bush — a football play where I would run across his yard and cut to the bush — and him delivering a perfect spiral for a touchdown. I saw the five of us careening through the neighborhood on our bikes, and running from the cranky old man whose bell we rang on doorbell night, the evening before Halloween. I saw us in the uniforms of the youth league basketball team that won a state championship, exploring the woods across the street from my house, and piling into someone’s kitchen for lunch.
Psychologists have a name for what happened to me that night. They call it involuntary memory. It's when something from everyday life elicits recollections of the past without your doing anything to summon them. The phenomenon was described wonderfully by the author Marcel Proust, who wrote in his novel "In Search of Lost Time" about how dunking a madeleine cake in a cup of tea set loose in him a flood of childhood memories.
The effect of these moments is powerful, satisfying — and sustaining. The emotions are rich and pure. The memories might be sparked by a smell in a kitchen, a song on the radio, an old photograph, an object discovered in an attic, or a chance meeting.
If we're lucky, it happens with some regularity. If we're blessed, the memories are sweet.
Proust's novel was first translated as "Remembrance of Things Past." It's a reminder that care must be taken. Recalling the past is good. Living in it is not.
A couple weeks ago, my wife and I started to clean out a storeroom in the basement. Among the boxes are photos, letters, old schoolwork of our daughters, souvenirs. Each a potential conduit to time misplaced and now recovered.
May we all find our own madeleines and dunk them in our tea.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
