On Losing Things.

I woke out of a sound sleep this morning to the ring of my cell phone. Disoriented, I answered to hear my brother's frantic voice. After spending 5 days in Boston for the Harvard Model Congress, he was boarding his early morning flight home when it hit him: he'd left his bag of newly-purchased vinyls somewhere in Chicago O'Hare International Airport.

"I don't know what to do! I retraced my steps, I ran all the way back to the concierge desk in the Hilton and asked around to see if they'd found anything, I talked with airport security. They can't help me find them and I can't remember where I left them," he said, his voice frustrated and strained.

I listened and tried to comfort him, but we both knew that his souvenirs were lost forever. Sadly, a $75 stack of vinyls won't wait around for the one who leaves them behind. If he's anything like me, he'll probably lose more than that.

I remember the feeling well. When I traveled abroad in the fall of 2008, it seemed like I left pieces of myself all over Europe. In the midst of doing something as simple as fumbling for my passport, I'd forget the item I set down next to me.

It started with a bag of fresh-market grapes I left in a train station in Slovenia, and then it was a stack of postcards (written and stamped), a pair of jeans, my cell phone, my camera, my laptop charger, and sometimes, I think, my heart.

Minutes, hours and many miles later I would realize that I was empty-handed and there was nothing I could do about it.

Mementos, possessions, they're replaceable, maybe even forgettable. Nevertheless, the moment you realize you've left them behind, a deep ache, an inconsolable sense of failure sets in.

Sometimes, life feels that way. Memories, bittersweet and vivid as they are, won't replace the tangible feeling of a weathered album between your fingers or the weight of a friend in your arms.

You're on a train, a plane, in the car, and every second is taking you further and further away from reaching back in time to that moment when you held everything in your hands.