Same Lady, Different Van

Déjà vu experiences, much like birds, come in a variety of plumages. They swoop in unexpectedly, often leaving you stunned, or smiling, or maybe wondering about the trajectory of your own life.

There are those magical time travel moments when— whoosh—you’re suddenly back in a previous day, and then, amazingly, even what happens after you make the connection is exactly like what it once was, down to the slightest gesture or expression, as if the same movie is playing. Your friend puts the dark blue mug on the counter while “Let It Be” plays in the background, there’s a knock at the door, and you can’t for the life of you understand how it can all happen a second time. This kind of thing I might call “déjà vu extraordinaire” – a rare bird.

And then there are moments, more common, when you catch yourself doing something that is uncannily like something you did before; the feeling comes over you in a wave, only with enough accompanying differences that you’re obviously in the “now” and not the “then.” This I’ll call ““déjà vu regular.”

Matter of fact, just as I started to write this while in a restaurant, I overheard a bartender telling his colleague that he was positive they had been in this same conversation about Shandy beer before. He wasn’t too surprised by the discovery, didn’t whack his forehead or anything in disbelief, so I’m guessing he knew that this topic might have a good chance of coming up more than once when the two of them were working.

Then, stick with me here, there is a third kind of déjà vu experience— a kind that’s almost more physical than it is mental, when you’re thrust back into a sustained activity that’s like an altered version of the one you used to do, and you start making a kind of “compare and contrast” list to get your bearings, to figure out if life has in fact gone forward, or if you’re circling back.

Until recently, I thought my van driving days were over, but it turns out they were just lying dormant, preparing to undergo a metamorphosis and burst forth again, changed.

At my new school in Lawrence, students need to be transported to jobs every day. Some go close, others pretty far. Here’s how the rotation works: Tuesday—sophomores; Wednesday – freshmen; Thursday- juniors; Friday—seniors. On Mondays, the classes alternate. We have a team of drivers that make this operation work. Occasionally, however, a regular guy takes a week of vacation and the substitute guy cannot fill in. Then we’re in a fix, and one of us has to step up. And I do mean step up, because it takes an ascent of a couple of levels to get into the seat. Not so easy if your knee is bothering you, either.

The van is bigger than the one my own kids used to pile into, but not big enough to require a special license. Last week, my colleague and I had to share the responsibility of one particular route, so each mid-afternoon off I went on my appointed rounds— clear up to Manchester, NH, as if I were heading home, except not quite as far. Although I never used a GPS back when I was rushing off to soccer and hockey games, trusting instead in printed out Map Quest directions, this time I learned to rely on the contraption to help me find the various workplaces, corporate and otherwise, with their stylish signs or perhaps no real visible markers, located down winding roads in office parks, or on main thoroughfares where pulling over briefly was the only option.

At the very first stop, when I saw a student emerge from a lobby, I’d feel palpable relief. Surely the others, wherever they were, would soon end up in the van too.

The driving to unfamiliar addresses, in traffic, brought some stress, but there were real rewards: besides seeing where they worked, at least on the outside, I had a chance to get to know a bunch of teenagers, especially once everyone had been collected and we turned back south towards school. Sure, some of them put ear buds on and disappeared into their own relaxation – who could blame them?  But others were game to talk —about their other jobs, college decisions, family matters, music. I was the driver, but they didn’t mind my being an adult listener, either. On the days following, when I saw these same students in the hallways, they stood out in a certain way, almost glowed, just because I knew them better.

I’d give a nickel now to recall some of the conversations that went on in our family van on the way to practices and music lessons. They were pretty choppy, with me asking questions that my kids mostly didn’t want to answer. Occasionally one might say something like “Wanna hear what happened to Sam today during recess, Mom?” Usually, we were just going around town, and the distances were relatively short and predictable: down the hill, and then back up again. For travel sports, it was a longer haul. I don’t recall ever worrying that I wouldn’t find them, because I had usually been the one to get them wherever they were in the first place. Just about always, my van journeys of yore were for delivering kids to play, not to work.

See– I’m not going in circles after all; my current driving of young people is really a whole different species from my old driving of young people. Life is progressing, definitely. It’s OK to glance in that rear view mirror once in a while, though, isn’t it?