I've been doing something lately.

You know those little things you leave behind when you move, or that you remember having as a child years ago, or that you're sure you don't have any more since you and so and so split up?

I'm getting them back.

Not everything, to be sure, and not that I'd ever want to try to do that. Some things are better left behind. But bits and pieces here and there. Things that don't mean much in and of themselves, but as a whole, they represent little moments that you don't mind revisiting. A model sailing ship, a nick nack, a book. Things of little intrinsic value, but bits that recall simpler days, that somewhere in the back of your mind are supposed to be there when you turn around and look over your shoulder. Things your memory tells you are yours, whether you still "own" them or not. Things that you had somewhere along the road to becoming who you are.

So in the fashion of a journey of self discovery, I find myself remembering the odd item from the past, and thumbing through the grand rummage sale that is the internet, occasionally recovering the prized posession that crossed my mind. The most recent of these is a trio of books that I was given as a boy, the "Tell Me Why" books by Arkady Leokum. This series was filled with questions children (and adults) commonly ask, everything from science and physics, to art and culture. As a child, these books were the mental building blocks for the person I was to become, and remember reading them cover to cover many times. I lost my original copies when I was forced to condense all my worldly belongings into what would fit into one room and a small storage shed when my mother passed aways and I had to live under my estranged father's roof for a year. Anything that didn't fit had to be left behind.

A quick search found a good number of copies on www.amazon.com , from the original printing. The second and third volumes arrived today, and the first shouldn't be far behind.

Funny how the little things stay with you as you through life. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you find them again...