Patterned Memories

Do others experience this sort of thing? A movement, routine nearly on a daily basis, triggers a moment once experienced years ago?

For example my morning shave recalls a number of ‘packaged’ memories. At one moment of the razor’s facial journey I remember a morning in Durango, Colorado when preparing for the day with my family. We were in a motel and were getting ready to go for breakfast, then on to a train ride on the Silverton/Durango Railroad. It was a beautiful day in late summer. The sky was blue and the air calm and comfortable. We were excited about the train tour. We were in the final week of a 3-week vacation which would take us on a total trip of nearly 7000 miles when finished. All by mini van and trekking through deserts high and low, mountainous regions (three of them!) and a lot of coastal sight seeing in California as well.

That morning in Durango was not super special. But the memory remains. Always triggered by a brief moment of the daily shave.

Another example: positioning the shower curtain so it will not leak shower spray, I’m bending down and sealing the curtain against the shower wall and I recall a small home we considered buying in Oregon, Illinois about two years ago. I have no idea why I think of that house or its shower at that exact repeated motion. But I do! Of course that gives me the urge to take a drive to Oregon, Illinois! For no good reason other than that past house hunting trip was an adventure in pursuit of a future life outside metro Chicago, and the prospect of country living, new friends, and new routines.

Rides during that period of our lives was focused on finding the next phase of our life. It was a bittersweet time; we didn't really want to leave our home, neighborhood and community, but financial realities said we needed to. So we looked far and wide for possibilities. We even considered Salt Lake City, for God’s sake. Not a happy place for a gay couple! Mormons don’t care for our kind.

Changing life phases is drudgery if you don’t capture the excitement of potential in it. Although not always welcome, a life change is an adventure and exciting. It is a pulling toward a new future. I find that interesting and energy boosting.

Two specific memories – well formed and often repeated. Nearly always triggered by the same motions and routines. Odd or interesting or both? Do other folks experience this sort of thing.

If I put my mind to it I will most likely recall more such triggers and memories. Certain aromas take me back many years to a time I lived in another region of the country. The sound of traffic, the smell of passing traffic, the waft of a breeze…that sort of thing triggers a memory of a morning in Pasadena, California.

Or passing a diner at a specific time of day will place me in a small western town once visited on a family vacation – road trip – when I was 9 years old. Very specific memory. Repeated in nearly identical fashion. From one very specific trigger.

This is not déjà vu. It is trigger and recall. Carbon copy memory of a long ago moment.

Why that trigger? Why that particular memory? What made the moment in past time so special to be remembered in this way? I don’t recall the specialness now. I doubt it was special, just a memory of a time of contentment and calm, perhaps?

If anyone has these same experiences, let me know. And if anyone in the readership has an explanation of this phenomenon, please share with the rest of us?

For now I am not in a panic. I see this as normal. I’m not calling a psychiatrist anytime soon. Or might I?

January 27, 2015