Sometimes it’s the songs that get to me, but not just any song. Not the songs I’ve heard thousands of times, but the ones I hear rarely. This morning U2’s “Angel of Harlem” brought me back to the mid-1980s and the excitement of being in my 20s and being in love, standing there in that foyer with “that’ person in that the Somerville three-decker. Then I heard the Jackson 5’s version of “Never Can Say Goodbye,” and I could see my mother in our Bay Road house, standing tall at 5 foot 7 inches, with her big black hair, her pink lipstick-ed mouth saying she loved that song. She stood against the backdrop of our raised ranch living room that led to the kitchen. I was a child, everything was new, and I imagine the living room at dusk with a bright yellow kitchen light and mom saying, “I love that song.”

But it’s not always songs, sometimes it’s places. Recently, I accompanied a young Indian couple to two open houses at a condominium complex I lived in as a teenager. They have been renting and are looking to buy. I am not a realtor, just a friend of the husband. The couple are in their early 30s and good people. I was thinking about that lately, good, genuine people versus those I don’t trust. There are some people I would not accompany, but I will accompany these two.

We entered the Knollsbrook complex where I lived in the mid-1970s. The perfectly mowed grass remains, every blade the same length; the clean streets are a sight, no litter, no garbage, no autumn leaves. There are, however, goose droppings — the community still has a flock of geese that makes noise and causes cars to stop in the streets when they cross the road. A man-made pond was built for their bird ancestors circa 1972. But other than the goose droppings, Knollsbrook is spic and span.

The first condo we entered was the same model I’d lived in as a teen, but not the actual one. I had lived across the pond, on the newer side of the complex. When we entered the front door, I was struck by how small the condo seemed; I didn’t remember it being so compact and condensed. I’ve been living in a house for nearly 23 years, and although it’s not a large house, it feels airier and roomier, by far, compared to this condo whose kitchen, dining room, and living room could easily fit into my kitchen at home. I did not expect my surprised reaction. I had expected the desire to move right back to this neatly coiffed community where I didn’t need to worry about lawn care or snow removal or paying for heating oil. Not only did I find the condo tiny, but I also found it looked old, despite the remodeling that had been done. It needed a paint job, the closets needed to be fixed so the floors met the walls correctly, and there was a 1970s gold bathtub in one of the bathrooms that had not been replaced. It stuck out like a yellow weed in a rose garden.

After visiting this first open house, I remembered (I think) my mother saying about our condo: It’s like a little dollhouse. I didn’t see it that way in 1975, but I saw it now.

I was more interested in seeing the second condo with my two friends because I had spent time in that one during my high school years: 35 Erin Road, one of the bigger condo models, three bedrooms, three baths. And yet upon entering, it, too, seemed small, the kitchen nothing more than a square with new appliances and flooring. Like the first condo, it was remodeled, but at least this one was freshly painted. The staircase to the second floor was narrow and covered with dark brown carpet, and while not worn, not new either — dark and old fashioned, depressing to me.

The couple and I made our way upstairs to see the bedrooms and upstairs bathrooms. There was a large foyer at the top of the stairs, which seemed like wasted space. What would you do with that open space? It’s not big enough to be a room, and yet it’s large enough to wonder about its purpose. And again, another 1970s gold original bathtub, this time in a bathroom separating two bedrooms. In the third bathroom, the ensuite bathroom in the master bedroom, the wallpaper was peeling, old fashioned wallpaper with flowers and doilies that no one decorates with anymore, and again, abandoned from care, despite so many remodels completed downstairs.

Eventually I headed downstairs on my own because I was getting warm. The sun was beating into the master bedroom windows, giving it a nice, bright feel, but also a stuffy and uncomfortable air. As I reached the lower level, an older woman was standing in the small kitchen with a bunch of brochures on the counter.

“I’ve been here before, you know,” I said to her.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Yes, when I was in high school.”

She asked me if I knew the original owner. The original owner, I wondered, why would I know the original owner?

“What do you mean? Who owns this condo.”

She told me it was Tracy Dimmock.

“She still owns this place?” I was dumbfounded. “She’s owned this place after all these years?” to which the woman said yes, that she’d loved it so much, she stayed that long.

I told her I was friends with one of her daughters, Linda, when we were in high school, and that I’d spend some time in this condo and with friends listening to music and talking while we sat on the outside patio. Linda had a sister with whom she shared a bedroom upstairs. I pointed out to her that the front bedroom on the first floor was where her brother, David, slept when he returned from the Vietnam War.

I remember Linda idolized her brother; he was older and had been a soldier. Perhaps he’d even come back slightly damaged, which gave him a certain respectful mystique.

The woman nodded throughout my reminiscing. She told me Linda was now working with David in the same town, and that her mother was now living with her older sister. And by older sister, that would mean she now was in her late 60s. Certainly no longer in her 20s.

“Tracy Dimmock,” I said the mother’s name, “she must be in her 80s.”

“She’s in her 90s,” the woman said.

I stared at the patio and tried to feel something, even the fear that enveloped me that day. In 1977, at age 15, Linda, myself, and Annie (my best friend) had smoked pot in the woods near Knollsbrook, and there we were on the patio high as a kite. The difference is they enjoyed themselves immensely while I freaked out from the drug. Nothing seemed real, not the brick wall, not the chair, not my own hand, which kept crumbing potato chips, as if it had a mind of its own. Everything seemed to shimmer in a dreamlike (or nightmare-like) haze of unreality. And every time I tried to move, either move my hand, or get up to get a soda, I lost time, as if I had blacked out and come back to consciousness only to find myself in a new place or in a new position on the chair, still crumbling potato chips. I found the experience terrifying.

Now it’s 2024, close to 50 years later. The passing of this much time, itself, is now freaking me out: not 20, not 30, not even 40 years, but nearly 50 years since that fateful day. And I call it fateful because that day of being high in that patio would set off a life-long condition of panic disorder and agoraphobia. In many ways, much of my life has been a struggle just to get out the door and be in the world. Sometimes life was terrifying. I am 62 years old and still take medication to manage the conditions. It’s been a long time, so I’m pretty well managed.

On our way out of the condo, as we reach the sidewalk, I tell my Indian couple friends the story of that afternoon, and they laugh. They laugh because I told it funny. All these years later it strikes me as funny. I’m no longer terrified.