Qixin Yu
09/09/2016
Memoir Bridge Project 1
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” quoted by Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher. At the moment I understood it, I suddenly realized my childhood had vanished in the air.
A few days ago, while packaging and organizing things to leave home for college, I accidentally found an old-fashioned flashlight in my drawer besides the bed. Covered by silvery iron sheet, a little rusty at the hoop of lamp base, this flashlight used to belong to my elder cousin when he was in middle school and lodged in my home. With a big red button on its body, I could adjust three different brightness, which was sort of advanced technology back then. It had to be two D size batteries to be able to charge the flashlight. Like other temporary flashlights, with totally new batteries, the shinning light could even make you blind and as time went on, it would become darker and darker. Though to me nowadays, it was still ponderous and unwieldy. You would never want to hold it for a long adventure, in that your arms and hands could not sustain such a heavy object that feel sore and numb.
However, using this awkward flashlight, my cousin and I completed many great adventures in those innumerable nights.
To attend middle school, my cousin lodged in my home for three years when I was once a junior in primary school. Our relationship were like true brothers and the best friends in the world. We almost shared everything with each other during that time, bowls, clothes (though most of his were too loose for me), car models, bikes, and of course, the bedroom. So, this was how the adventure began.
Suddenly on one night, he fished out this flashlight out of nowhere. To a little child who was always forced to sleep after his mother killing the lights, a shiny and new big flashlight seemed to be the best gift ever. By a flashlight, nights were no longer full of darkness and haunted ghost. My surprised and delighted mood was about the same as that of human first producing fire in their own cave. Since then, every nights after my mother’s footsteps disappeared in the dark, my cousin would draw the flashlight out, sometimes at the bottom of a drawer, sometimes under or in his pillow, calling me to his bed. Certainly, we had always been trying to keep the voice low and walk on tiptoes, and meanwhile, also be aware of any sound from the direction of my mother’s bedroom.
Before he turned the flashlight on, we had to make sure ourselves covered by a quilt from the bottom to the top. At the second he pressed the red button, we within the quilt became a large lantern. Thus, we would never feel lonely, accompanied with so many superheros and legendary stories in countless comic books mostly borrowed from my cousin’s classmates.
My cousin soon graduated from middle school and left the city. In the eve before he left, he said,
“from now on, this flashlight belongs to you. Take care of it.”
At that time of such a young age, I was unable to understand the meaning of separation and even felt happy and proud to become the host of the flashlight. Unfortunately, since that crossroad of my life, I had never experienced the same joy, excitement and tension while reading those comic books by myself. Then I went to the middle school. Gradually, also with more and more pressure in study, I have forgotten since what time, I had suspended it and left the flashlight in the drawer. Suddenly on one day, I read the the famous quote by Heraclitus and realized the truly attractive things were not those comic books or legends, but the intimacy and great time with my cousin that would never come again.
The flashlight still lies silently in the drawer, getting rusty, just like the memory sleeps deeply in my heart, turning misty.