It was a rare quiet evening. I brewed a cup of light tea and sat on the balcony, watching the hustle and bustle of vehicles below. Many cars had already turned on their headlights. Looking from front to back, there was a neat line of white lights; looking from back to front, there was a row of neat red lights. It was like two giant snakes, one white and one red, twisting and winding at the intersection of the traffic lights.
Watching my 5-year-old son tirelessly arranging his puzzle toys on the bed, scattering them and stacking them up again, building them only to knock them down, I couldn't help but feel the passage of time, fleeting as a white horse passing through a crevice.
Yes, I'm 32 years old.
At 32, can I still find the pure joy of childhood?
Childhood... childhood... my childhood... the birch forest... the castle.
About 100 meters away from the entrance of our home was that birch forest. The grove wasn't too big or too small, but it was very peaceful. On an early summer noon, if there was a breeze, you could hear the rustling of leaves, a sound that enveloped your body along with the warm but not scorching sunlight, accompanied by those gentle breezes. In the central area of that grove, there was the "castle" that my cousins and I had "built" together. The shell of the castle was a large discarded ball mill shell. We spent many afternoons cleaning it up and used soft and comfortable twigs picked from under the willow trees by the nearby stream to line the bottom. Then we broke off sturdy twigs to create a "gate" blocking the two exits of the "castle." The beams of sunlight filtering through the holes in the "castle walls" made us feel endlessly amused. If we got tired from playing, we would lie side by side on the "bed" we had made and take a nice nap. Sometimes, we would oversleep and forget the time to go home, making our parents unable to find us. Then we would hide inside, not daring to make a sound, waiting for the elders to move to the next search spot, then we would sneak out from there and each return home...
I don't remember when we stopped going there to play. Maybe we grew too big to fit inside anymore. Or maybe growing up made us no longer find the castle as interesting as in our childhood. Perhaps, as we came to know more about the world, we abandoned that birch forest, abandoned our castle.
Our childhood has been unconsciously abandoned by ourselves. Only when we suddenly look back years later do we remember the us from decades ago, remember that simple yet truest happiness.