~a column about Jefferson by Colleen O’brien
One of the very clever Jeffersonians who moved back to town over the last decade calls herself and the rest of us returnees the “deja vuers.”
This is an astute observation, a droll way of calling us what we are, for the French phrase “déjà vu” means “already seen.”
Not only have we all seen one another before, we’ve seen Jefferson from the very beginning of our lives, and there are enough places that look the same – the post office, the courthouse, the former high school, the pool, parts of the hospital, the library, the A&W, the cemeteries. And now, to see one another on the street gives me a feeling of this chance encounter having happened many times in my past, however much weightier, gray-haired and decrepit we might be now compared to our déjà vu memories.
There is something about family and old friends: we are indeed old, but most of the time when we’re talking to one another we see our early selves, when we first knew one another. It’s one of the good things about the deja vuness of living in Jefferson in old age.
The phrase déjà vu also means “something overly familiar,” which I find true as I stroll around town catching glimpses of a very young Colleen running along a sidewalk or diving into the pool or walking into the high school band room. Sometimes I see me peering over the top railing of the rotunda in the courthouse. These are places that are so completely familiar to me, so imbedded in my memory, so . . . well, so familiar.
Another definition of “déjà vu” is “the illusion of remembering scenes and events when experienced for the first time.”
This is a little trickier, but I confess to seeing myself in this definition also. For example, the first time I walked into the Greene Bean, I became slightly disoriented, thinking I’d done this before. I hadn’t. It was never a coffee house, for one thing. And during my entire lifetime, in whatever incarnation the building was used, it did not look like it does right now. I had never been there, whatever my mind was trying to tell me.
I suppose that if I live long enough, everything will take on the déjà vu definitions. After all, by one’s eighth decade, one has seen quite a bit – more than I planned on, sometimes more than I wanted, often more surprising than I ever dreamed life might be; so why not consider oneself an “already seen,” “overly familiar,” “illusion”? This is indeed what advancing-into-old-age is – all of these deja vus.
It makes aging less like a new trail and more like a path I’ve been down before. It is worn, it has weeds growing up the middle, it has a few derelict buildings from long ago, a few ghost-like faces pop up and disappear, but it is familiar, I know this place. Is this just because I live again in Jefferson?
Yet, it is simultaneously an illusion, for the I in the picture is about as recognizable as a cousin in NorthDakota I’ve never met.
Aren’t I still young? Forty-five at the oldest? Fit, working, secure, with a memory?
My illusion is that I am not losing it yet, whatever it is that I actually am losing continuously now, whether it’s my mind or something I’m unaware of losing until it’s gone; or at least gone south. Chins, plural; ear lobes lobing, skin creping, upper arms flapping. I prefer the “overly familiar” Colleen, the one of a single chin and neatly tucked ears, firm skin everywhere, not merely on my little fingers.
It is a weird phenom to think of oneself as a déjà vu– an already seen, overly familiar illusion. Who woulda thought, when I left town in 1962 that I would ever return to live here at all, let alone as an illusion? It’s almost beyond wrapping my mind around . . . this is an example of that earlier thought of mine – “more than I ever dreamed life might be. . . .”
That’s I the deja vuer – more than, less than and by definition not really here at all.
