My Son Described His "Other Mother" From "Before"

My son was three, chatty, sweet, and completely normal in every way except for the things he sometimes said with total calm about a life none of us had given him.

It started with small comments. He would say, "when I was big," and describe doing adult things. We thought it was imagination and thought it was cute. Then one afternoon, out of nowhere, over a snack, he told me about his other mother.

He said it plainly, the way he would tell me about a cartoon. He said his other mother had different hair, long and dark, not like mine. He described a different kitchen, yellow, with a window over the sink that looked at a road. He said his other mother used to sing to him in the car. And then, still calm, still eating his crackers, he said that the last time, the car went into the water, and his other mother cried, and then he "came to find you."