Deja Vu

                       
                                            Deja Vu


Recently I had the experience of running into a woman who I had worked with thirty two years ago. I didn't recognize or remember her, but she recognized me. 
I was very surprised that she remembered me, my name, my face, and the doctor that I worked with, and it took me back to those long-ago days when I worked in a doctor's office. 

This chance meeting set off a wave of filed away thoughts and memories about that time in my life when I was newly married, and didn't yet have the blessing of children. I was working my first day shift position as a nurse, so I was actually awake during the day for the first time in two years! 

Looking back, life seemed so simple, so focused, so unencumbered by outside events. There was a beauty in the uncluttered life, so to speak. I remember fully enjoying my work in that office, and really enjoying being an awake member of the working world. 

This chance encounter with another Kathy, raised a mirror reflection to my mind of how I saw myself in the earlier years of my life. This reflection took me back to a time when I saw life quite a bit differently than I do now. I saw things through very rosy lenses, which I no longer tend to do. Some of my nursing experiences in those years have stayed with me, and I even remember some of the difficult patients, and why they were challenging to deal with. I also remember the incessant phone calls from very demanding patients. 

As I reminisced with Kathy about those days in the office, I was also thinking about how she viewed me back then, versus how I am now. The catapult back to those years seems light years away from who I am now, and what I have learned since those office days. Thirty two years seems like an eternity!!

As we said goodbye, I sensed within me a fleeting nostalgia for my former self. There is a certain intangible quality that I wish I could recapture and bottle up. I don't fully know how to describe the essence of it. Maybe it is the naivete mixed with the ability to see always the best in every situation and person, without getting caught up in the myriad negative details. This realization is what has stayed with me since this random (or planned?) encounter. I have come to the humbling conclusion that I used to intuitively know much more than I currently do, and I need to recapture some aspects of my former self.

~Kathy~