Spring

I realized the other day that (surprise) we are getting old!  I had supper with one of my oldest and best friends on the weekend, and we were lamenting the whole passage of time thing, as her husband had just turned 60.  Yes, he is “a bit” older than she is, but I clearly remember their first date  – at a party at my house when I still lived at home with my parents.

He had just  finished university and was starting up a company, and she and I had not yet graduated. And all of a sudden, it’s retirement time!

So in all this, of course nostalgia wiggled its way into the scene, and we looked back at all the years gone by and all the parties, dinners, holidays, brunches, dim sum breakfasts on Sunday, ski trips, all the good times, and we were highly mortified when we discovered that some of these memories are incomplete. Fragments of  dreams, like  pages missing from a  book, a story without colour, a song without sound.  She recalled events one way and I another. I had forgotten entire things – but so had she. Not as comforting as you might think 🙂

Over the course of our dinner we managed to piece together some of the defining moments of our friendship and I have to say that it was a hilarious conversation. “Remember that time in Banff?” is how it started because of some photos she’d posted on Facebook. I vaguely recalled some of the details bur she filled in all the gaps.

Another reclaimed story I had almost lost – one May long weekend, camping at Falcon Lake, it poured rain for 4 days (as it usually does on the May long weekends here) and our tents were flooded the first night we were there.  6 of us spent the entire day drinking lemon gin in my car listening to 8 track tapes on a portable “tape deck” till the batteries died ( I had forgotten about tape decks). And not quite drunk enough to spend another night in the torrent, we made our way to her parents cottage not far away to wait out the weekend.  On the way, we told half the campground to come over for the party and given the weather, why were we so surprised when about 100 soggy kids showed up to join us!?

I was happy to get that one back! It was a great party too! I do believe the RCMP also made a visit – but neither one of us could confirm that fact – it was just a bit too long ago, and we were just a bit too over refreshed to recall those exact details!!!

So.. fast forward back to now, doing more iphone photography, I made this image while getting my geraniums ready for the garden. It reminded me of those old days – the ghosts of which are ensconced somewhere in my brain, and all the stories that I would like to piece together sometime before I die or get alzheimers and forget it all. It’s been quite a ride so far 🙂