The Book I Bought to Remember Who I Was

A few years ago, I ordered a used copy of The Trolley Car Family by Eleanor Clymer—not because I needed something new to read, but because I wanted to see if I could find my way back to something I had once felt.

When it arrived, it wasn’t much to look at. The corners were softened, the spine a little loose. The pages had yellowed in that quiet way old books do, carrying the faint scent of time itself. Someone else had owned it once. Maybe more than one someone.

 

I held it in my hands for a moment before opening it.

 

And just like that, I was back in a classroom—fourth or fifth grade, somewhere in that in-between stretch of childhood—listening as my teacher read the story out loud.

 

There was something about being read to at that age—when you’re just beginning to read on your own—that gave a story a kind of weight. The words felt larger, steadier, as if they had already been tested and approved by the world. And this one…this one pulled me in right away.

 

A family living in a trolley car.

 

It was such a simple idea, but to a kid sitting at his desk, it felt like a small act of rebellion against the ordinary. A house that had once moved, now rooted somewhere under trees. A home with a past. You could feel it even then: this wasn’t just a place to live, it was a story you could step into.

 

The family themselves felt real in a way that surprised me. They weren’t heroes or adventurers in the usual sense. They were just people—children with chores, small worries, little triumphs. Parents trying to make something work. Days that unfolded in quiet, believable ways.

 

And yet, it never felt small.

 

Because when you’re that age, every day is the adventure.

 

I remember sitting there, listening, and feeling like I knew them. Not in a distant, storybook way, but like classmates. Like the kids who might sit across from you at lunch or walk home in the same direction. Their world didn’t feel far away—it felt just out of reach, like if you turned the right corner after school, you might find a trolley car sitting beneath a tree, curtains in the windows, someone inside calling you in.

 

That feeling stayed with me long after the last page was read.

 

So when the Scholastic Book Fair came around—and if you grew up with those, you know exactly what I mean, the folding tables, the smell of paper and ink, the quiet urgency of choosing just one or two books—I went looking for it.

And there it was.

 

Not just a story anymore, but something I could hold.

 

Buying that book felt different from any other purchase. It wasn’t just something to read—it was something I already knew. Something I was bringing home with me, like I was making room for those characters in my own life.

 

I don’t remember how many times I read it after that.

 

But I remember the feeling of it. The way it made the world seem a little wider, a little more open to possibility. The quiet idea that home didn’t have to look like everyone else’s. That ordinary people could live lives that felt, in their own way, extraordinary.

 

Years later, when I began to write—really write, not just put words on paper but try to make something that felt true—I found myself returning to those early days without even realizing it at first. Not to the plot or the trolley car itself, but to the feeling. That sense of stepping into another life. Of creating people who might feel real enough to sit across from someone, to share a table, to be missed when the story ended.

 

I think that’s where it began for me.

 

Sitting in that classroom, listening.

 

Learning that words could do more than tell you something—they could carry you somewhere. They could make you feel less alone. They could take the ordinary and give it a quiet kind of glow.

 

Standing there a few years ago, holding that worn copy in my hands, I felt it all again. Not just memory, but recognition. As if nothing essential had changed—not the story, not the feeling it stirred, not the boy who had once stood at a book fair table and decided he needed this book in his life.

 

I held it there for a moment longer than I needed to.

 

Just to be sure.

 

And when I finally opened it, the years folded in on themselves. The classroom, the voice of the teacher, the small world inside that trolley car—all of it returned, as vivid as ever.

 

When I write now, I’m still chasing that feeling.

 

The hope that somewhere, someone might read a page and feel what I felt back then—that sudden recognition, that small spark of life. That sense that the people in the story aren’t strangers at all, but companions you didn’t know you were waiting for.

 

It’s strange what stays with us.

 

Not always the big moments, or the books everyone says you should remember—but the ones that found you at just the right time. The ones that felt like they were written not for the world, but for you.

 

Even now, I can still picture that trolley car.

 

And I think part of me always will.