Old Friends - Walking Diaries

Summer seems to be the time so many people return to Perth if they are living overseas or interstate ... this is possibly due to the great summer weather, but more likely due to the fact it's also a long school holiday period.

I like catching up with people I haven't seen for awhile. I might put a restriction on that, I like catching up with people I haven't seen for awhile if they are friends and I like them!

I had reason to catch up with a few people over summer, but one was a friend I haven't seen for a few years. We knew each other when we were like 17 and starting our nursing careers together. This was a time we all 'grew up' from innocent childhoods to adults who help really responsible jobs and met incredible people in awful circumstances (the patients). We witnessed all those embarrassing mistakes one makes in the transition - you have to stay friends because you all have so much 'dirt' on each other!!! In those days (oh dear ... I am coming off old now!) we did our nursing training on the wards, and very little in the classroom - we played and worked hard.

The catch up was like re-reading a diary. Snippets of gossip about people we still saw, changes in our own lives and changes in people around us. It stimulates memories, feelings and thoughts from the past the same way reading an old diary can do.

Old friends, diaries, memories, photo albums - like it or not the past determines part of who we are.