” I was distressed to see how little I relived my early years. I found the Vivonne narrow and ugly alongside the towpath. Not that I noticed any great physical discrepancies from what I remembered. But, separated as I was by a whole lifetime from places I now happened to be passing through again, there was lacking between them and me that contiguity, from which is born, even before we have perceived it, the immediate, delicious and total deflagration of memory.” (Proust, Vol.VI. 2)

I think this is when the narrator is differentiating his childhood (or early)memory and adult. I also think this passage shows the (lack of better words) evolution of the narrator from “boyhood” to “adulthood.”  I think this is important because yes as you get older and you come back to things that you use to do as a kid or see everyday as a young adult, child, whichever you see as an adult differently. For the narrator it’s Combray  and the paths he took with his family and the people he interacted with such as Gilberte. He even notices the difference in his memory of the church of Combray. I remember in the first Volume when the narrator talks about the church at Combray he talks about it how the steeple looks like a loaf of bread and he describes the cathedral using magical imagery and metaphors. Now he describes it as dull, dark blue and even colourless. When Gilberte tells the narrator that she has liked him all along and that as a child/ “young naughty girl” she gave him signals to convey her attraction towards him. The Narrator then realizes that he not very perceptive of not only of his own memory but women too because he then goes into how he perceived Albertine too.