She would claim to recognize details of restaurants she'd never been to, and occasionally greeted total strangers as if she'd met them before. ![]() As often as several times a day, in fact, she was struck with what sounded to Susan like an intense sensation of déjà vu, a familiarity with a place or situation that - logically, at least - she couldn't have encountered before. Later, though, Pat admitted to Susan that she was having such experiences frequently. "Only when she is determined to make me think that something has gone on that way," he said. Susan asked if the episodes bothered him. "Oh, it happens every once in a while," he said. Worried, Susan called her father later that day and asked if Pat had ever claimed to recognize strange people or places. They, too, she said, had certainly been there before. She couldn't place when exactly she'd been there before, but she felt positive she'd seen the women.Īllison returned, and as they left, Pat noticed two nuns on the sidewalk. "No, they were there last time," Pat insisted. "Ma, the chances of the other woman, who doesn't know that woman, coming to the parking lot, smoking a cigarette -" ![]() "There's that woman who was smoking a cigarette, with the scarf on," she said. Then Pat noticed another woman, smoking and chatting on a cellphone. Looking up, Susan thought the comment strange it seemed odd even that her mother had been to this store recently. "I saw her last time I was here," Pat remarked. From the front seat Pat noticed a woman who seemed intensely familiar getting into a nearby car with a baby. She was sitting in a car outside of a store with her daughter Susan, while another daughter, Allison, shopped inside. ![]() One day last December, however, an odd thing happened to Pat Shapiro. "She can remember details from our trips to Europe years ago that I can't." "Her long-term memory is meticulous," Don says. Her short-term memory isn't quite what it used to be, she says, but it's nothing that impacts her life. "Don, we haven't had an 'icebox' in years," she'll say, interrupting one of his winding stories. After 56 years of marriage, Pat and Don have a playful repartee that borders on "Ozzie and Harriet," and her still-sharp mind is on display in their running banter. She lives with her husband, Don, in a white two-story Colonial in Dover, Mass., a picturesque town set on the Charles River east of Boston. Pat Shapiro is a vibrant woman of 77, with silver hair, animated blue eyes and a certain air of elegance about her.
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