My Deepest Memory of Childhood
Slowly but quietly, spring is coming towards us. The weather is getting warmer and warmer, branches of trees begin sprouting new leaves, and all different kinds of birds fly merrily in the sky. Color is everywhere, above all green. It stays lighter longer, a wonderful respite from the dull, dark, dreary days of winder. Flowers begin to blossom. A new year, full of life, has begun.
Looking at the tender green leaves of the trees through the window, I can't help thinking of my childhoods. When spring is coming, wheat begins to grow after a long winter, and its small and long leaves get greener, shaking with the wind. Rapes (a kind of flower) bloom with golden flower and give off a heavy scent. The trees begin to bud, and in a short time, there are leaves, green and vivid, a happy reminder that the long winter is behind us and that we have happier, celebratory seasons before us and that we will not be facing the poor weather again for some time. We celebrate life, we celebrate nature, and we celebrate our close connection with both.
My deepest memory of childhood is the downstairs lawn, which was green all year round. This green lawn brought us infinite happiness as a family and as children. I recall how we would gather out there, as a family, and enjoy the lovely weather; how we children would run amok and play children’s games out there in the cradle of nature. We were a fully integrated part of it, and it was a fully integrated part of us. We were one with the lawn, inseparable.
Celebration was always important. We would have many social events on the lawn. We children would run about getting into trouble while our parents conversed with each other, enjoying one anothers’ company, enjoying the nature themselves, though perhaps not quite as hands on as we children did.
There were always a large number of bugs on the lawn, such as grasshoppers, butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, ants, earthworms, and so on. There’s no denying that the lawn was not only their paradise, but also our fairyland where we little children could sing and dance, play all day long and enjoy life to the fullest. Of course, being children, we had to take our entertainment where we could get it, and the bugs and nature supplied a very rich source of entertainment for us. Most of the time, we would pick up a beautiful flower, catch a butterfly, or secretly take away a melon seed that other people had put out on the lawn to dry, and then would begin to eat with our not-yet completely straight teeth. Of
Everything was wonderful as long as we could casually find an empty bottle in the house. Once we arrived at the lawn with it, we would just make a mess with some extremely tiny dry twigs on the lawn, and then the grasshoppers would jump out from everywhere. When we would spot one grasshopper, we would just wait a few short moments until it rested on the grass, and then we would quickly come up with the bottle, and would cage the unfortunate grasshopper in no time. When it would jump to the walls of the plastic bottle, we would put the bottle away and cover it with the lid. Meanwhile, we would puncture a few holes in the bottle with a needle and sprinkle in a few pieces of grass, and then everything was OK again for the grasshopper.
Childhoods are Like a Sweet Elixir
I still remember how I once caught a particularly clever beetle, which unexpectedly folded up the pieces of grass I sprinkled inside the bottle and used them as a sort of staircase, in order to climb up to the highest point. It got out of the bottle and ran away, making a break for it. I was totally surprised; however, I could not help gasping in admiration for the great intelligence of that beetle. Such a sense of self-preservation in such a small creature with (presumably) so little to fight for. Afterwards, I ran quickly into the house to my mother to tell her all about it; but she was doubtful of the story. Ouch! I felt very badly at the time that she had not believed me. But of course, she had not seen the amazing process with her own eyes, so after all, who could blame her? It was an unexpected and unbelievable event. I’m still to this day amazed that I had the joy and revelation of witnessing it myself.
Apart from the downstairs lawn, we also liked to go to visit the dam alongside the lawn to enjoy ourselves. There was a small pond that lay there. When we were tired of playing on the lawn, we used to play a game of "feed the fish" around the pound. We would break a piece of willow twig, with a freshly steamed bun tied to one side of it, and as soon as we put the steamed bun into the water, a crowd of red brocades would suddenly swim up to eat the bun, making popping sounds from time to time as they tried to grab a bit of bread but instead would get only a bit of air in their puckered and eager mouths.
Sometimes, the red brocades would swallow the entire willow twig. When the bread was gone, they would wim off, paying no further attention to us; we were only of interest when we had something of use to them. In the spring, the dam was always surrounded by the croaking of frogs; on occasion, we would capture one, but we would always let it go again; there were more than enough to go around, so we didn’t need to capture them as we could always find one if we needed to. The fish, on the other hand, while abundant, were harder to catch; we would see them swimming below the surface near the bank, only inches away, and try and grab them; but they were too quick for us, and all we would end up with were wet hands.
Moving forward about fifteen meters from the dam, you could see a little farmer’s market. There were all kinds of stands, most of them fresh vegetables, goods from local artisans, etc. But the man who sold chickens seemed most conspicuous. Every day, he would kill dozens of chickens, and we, of course, knew this and did not like him because of it. We could sense what he did, and he did not try to hide it. He would kill the chickens right out in the open. Every time we saw him kill a chicken, we young children would keep a straight face but still pout, solemnly saying to him, "The law doesn’t allow anyone to kill small animals." Of course, this was untrue; that law only applied to some of the local wildlife, not farm-raised chickens that were raised to become food; but he would still reply with, "No provisions against killing a chicken!" without looking up. "The chicken is an animal!" We would tell him, firmly and clearly. Then he would answer by saying, too loudly, "The law forbids harming wildlife!"; and suddenly, the eyes of everyone in the area would focus on him. He would grow visibly agitated, uncomfortable, not wanting the focus of everyone in the marketplace’s attention on him, yelling at a group of children about killing small animals. It probably was not good business practice, after all.
"All right! All right!”, he would then shout, his face red and sweaty from being nervous. The man had no choice but to compromise, he would say rather absent-mindedly. We would laugh and run off, but never let him completely off the hook. After all, it was his job to kill small animals. We only played with them.
So we then we would go back to the lawn to play, fairly satisfied with ourselves and our stance, having stood up for the poor, defenseless chickens, and not in the mood to care any longer whether he had killed them or not. We had moved on to other things. Passions could be fleeting back in those childhood days; you could care about something more than anything else in the world for a few fleeting moments, then instantly go back to the innocence of it all, to playing with friends, to capturing yet another grasshopper, to being amazed at its extraordinary abilities as an escape artist, and to not spending another thought on the local man who killed chickens for a living. How little we knew back then about the adult world, about the pressures of earning a living. I suppose we could have learned more from the chicken man, had we not wished instead to taunt and tease and embarrass him.
Childhoods End, but Forever in Memory
Day after day, time passed, and our childhoods disappeared forever, leaving us only fractions of memories. The carefree joys of childhood slipped gradually into the realities of an adult world in which we understand why the chicken man had to kill the chickens. But I still cannot help but laugh whenever I think of the happy and carefree childhood life. While it may just be childhood memories, they remind us of our roots, who we are, and who we wanted to become as people.
