Beaconsfield Time Warp

"The Child is father of the Man"
--Wm. Wordsworth

I'm older now and have less confidence in memory than I once did, but I will tell you this: the Beaconsfield stop on the green line trolley in Brookline, Massachusetts is a time portal. I discovered it when I brought my son to nursery school there.

The above-ground trolleys charmed us when we first moved from Brooklyn to Brookline a few months before, but as the D train rhythmically chuh-chunked into the Beaconsfield station, an overwhelming feeling of familiarity came upon me, an eerie feeling of peace. Not déjà vu exactly, it's more like sensing but not quite hearing a distant music I've never heard before, but somehow know by heart.

Step off the train into a sunny morning and look up to see a large crow winging across an expanse of bright blue. Look down to smile at my son beside me. Look up again and the crow-- a raven maybe?-- has vanished into an empty sky. Another time we see a small flock of wild turkeys in the parking lot there-- then suddenly gone, too quickly to be accounted for by our brief lapse into conversation. It's the Bermuda Triangle of train stations; a doorway to another dimension. The New York City subways we left behind roared and screeched into their cramped and teeming stations, but the Riverside-bound green D train can gently chuh-chunk you into eternity.

The platform is never crowded when we arrive, often empty, and the only sounds we hear are birds and the trolley rolling off into the distance. We climb the outdoor stairway, and my son runs up ahead of me and smiles down from the top step. A light breeze ruffles his hair, and out of the corner of my consciousness the peaceful feeling grows stronger, morphs into bliss.

The strange familiarity intensifies as the staircase lets out onto street level. Dean Road curves blindly here, and there is no crosswalk, only a small yellow warning sign. Dutifully placed I think, but minimally useful. Dozens of parents walk their preschoolers across this road to the church basement a tenth of a mile ahead. It's an accident waiting to happen, I think. Or consider this: it's an accident that did happen. That park across the street from the station-- was that the last thing I saw before my car slammed into a tree when, in a life prior to this one, I swerved to avoid a pedestrian? Or maybe I was the one who got hit? Because I've never thought or felt this way before, but the air is telling me I might have died here. For the next year and a half that my child attended that nursery school, there was never a time I was not visited by a mysterious frisson there, like a mystic cloud descended on an otherwise ordinary suburban public transit stop. Avalon, to a believer.

Afternoons, my son takes my hand and we skip together, swinging arms; or I race him up the sidewalk; or we amble, chatting about his time at school. What was his favorite part of the morning? Who did he play with today? "Name five words you heard in the story-time book." "Do you remember what we had for dinner last night?" And I remember, too.

I remember how I loved these memory games when I was his age. The nursery school I attended was in a synagogue only a few miles from here. I felt proud when my father would quiz me about my day and beam his approval. I had such good faith that I and my super memory would find a bright future in a hopeful, welcoming world. Am I making this up, or do I remember that I played a kind of memory game of my own? Take in the sights and sounds, the overall feeling of a place. Then focus on one feature to remember it by-- a cousin's red and white striped pajamas, or a street sign. I had a series of these intentional memories scattered like pebbles along the path of my early childhood. The game was won, it brought me joy, to periodically revisit them. Was this, then, one of my memories? Could I have looked up at that sign that says "DEAN" with my three-year-old eyes?

My father died a few years after my boy left nursery school, and looking through old photos with my mother I startled upon one I'd never seen before. It's of me, age 3, and my dad in his youthful prime, sitting together in the park at Beaconsfield and Dean. Lifetimes ago it feels like, as unreal as any past-life fantasy my imagination might conjure. Lifetimes later, I have a child with a wonderful memory, and less confidence in my own. But still-- good faith.