I was born in eastern Pennsylvania. My family moved into 112 Estaugh Avenue in Haddonfield, New Jersey around 1967, when I was nearly 2 years old. A year or two later we moved across the street to 115 Estaugh. Another year or so after that we moved across town to Center Street in 1970, just after I turned 5.
Rediscovering my Forgotten Past
For a few years I didn't go back to Estaugh Avenue. It lived only in my mind like a former home would for someone who moved hundreds of miles away. Then, as I got to be 11 or 12 and old enough to ride my bike farther from home, I discovered the old neighborhood on one of these rides. Each time I would cruise through on my bike I had a Twilight Zone feeling that I was suddenly much larger than I was; everything on that block had been so big when I lived there, but now it felt so small — as if the entire street was a 3/4 sized replica of a normal street, or I was suddenly much larger than I was normally. I would ride slowly through, but would not stop, not wanting to break the spell of being there.
My Alternate Reality
The surreal feeling was multiplied a few years later when I got into Junior High School and all the kids from Elizabeth Haddon joined the kids from Central and Tatem elementary schools in one building. I felt another strange sense of recognizing a world that I somehow lived in, but in an alternate reality. I remembered a few of those faces from another time and place. If they had any memory of me from that time, no one ever mentioned it. I don't think I made a deep impression on anyone at that time, so when I would remind any of those people that we did go to school together before Kindergarten I usually got a blank stare of disbelief in return, so I stopped mentioning it. It became my memory alone to the point where I sometimes doubted its truth myself -- even though I had lived it.
Looking back, I felt like there had been a disturbance in the continuum of my life that had marked me, but in some way that I would never be able to fully comprehend. I was aware of my current life, but then there was a shadow life that I could have lived had I stayed at my old house and gone to school at Elizabeth Haddon. It looked very much like the life I was living now, but I had different experiences, and therefore would be a different person. It was a disconcerting feeling, but I didn't know how to let it go. There was also something distant in time for this place. While there was no gap in time between living in one house and the other, it felt to me like Estaugh Avenue existed in a different time, and my presence there took on the vague recollection and persistent feeling that I have since heard associated with a past life memory.
Later still I was shown the house where we lived on Ardleigh Street in Philadelphia. I was told that I had lived here, but had no recollection of that time, while my brother and parents did. It further made this whole sense of 'where I was from' more complex for me. I had something of the feeling of a displaced person. Not because I didn't like where I lived, but because I had a sense of connection to places that I could only recall in hazy images, if at all.
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