I get attached to things and people very quickly and reminisce a lot about them - and feel very very sad when I can't be around them.

Simple things - like the corner shop where I used to buy candy from my kiddy-bank savings when I was 5 - no longer there... replaced by a massive apartment complex. The empty lot filled with sand hills where I used to run barefoot flying kites that I made out of magazine center-spreads - gone - replaced by yet another massive apartment complex. Friends' houses, relatives' houses, neighbour's houses - all gone - replaced by massive structures.

All my childhood memories are just that now - memories. I have nothing to show for them.

So I just travel now - and make new memories knowing fully well that these memories cannot break my heart as I know fully well while I'm making them that these are memories just for me - not to be shared with others...
eg: how can I share the unique moments that Mercedez and Yolanda (2 wonderful women who live at the bottom of the Colca canyon in Peru) and I shared on that moonlit night sipping chicha-de-jora? How can I share the unique moment our local bedouin host Mohammad and myself shared while I sang and he played the drums for hours for the whole gang - under the stars in the White desert of Baharya in Egypt? How can anyone truly understand what and how much it meant? Even I cannot dare go back to see if these memories will be as dear to me again - if I ever meet these wonderful people in these wonderful places again.

So my advice - definitely go - but with an open mind. Fully prepared for whatever you may find there. If you can't find your old memory there, don't brood - make a new one with the person you are visiting and enjoy.

Kamala