“What’s your earliest memory?” asked Ming.
“Why are you asking me this?” Hua said.
“Because it marks the beginning of your life as a human.”
“You’re saying my pre-memory life is not a human one at all?”
“Not in the sense that you’re a self-conscious individual.”
“Well, you may have a point there…. As far as I can recall, it was in a quite busy street, where I was somehow lost, but I managed to cross it on my own, just by following other people, before my dad found me.”
“When and where was that exactly?”
“In Wuchang’s Horseviewing Square, when I was almost three. My father later told me that’s the first time he took me for a visit to my grandpa.”
“No wonder you’re lost and re-found by me, at least in love.”
“You mean my earliest memory set a pattern for my life?”
“Yeah, as I see it, whatever mental image is embedded in our earliest memory functions like a mythic seed, which would grow, bloom, and bear fruit in a cyclic fashion.”
“What’s your first memory then?”
For Ming, this was a one-million-dollar question. While he felt amazed at the fact that his soulmate had such an early and clear memory about her toddling experiences, he could recall little about his life before he was five. He had discussed the matter with his parents quite a few times, but neither was sure about the dates concerning the several situations stored in the closet of his mind.
One earliest memory was about him plodding along behind his mother, with a silver wooden sword hung on his waist, on a street in New Rivermouth on a rainy afternoon. In another mental image, he was playing a game with a group of children all living in the same residential area of the County’s Finance Department. It was a warm and moony evening. Every participant pretended to be a parent. To imitate older children, he and the youngest girl of Uncle Fu, the department head, reached into each other’s crotches and made a stir there with their hands. A third episode took place when he was chased around by a boy a couple of years older with a disabled hand. Just as he tried to cross the threshold, Ming stumbled and hit his head against a brick.
Most vivid was his memory about a marble he had used to have. To him, the transparent ball with something green in its heart looked particularly fascinating because it was like a tender spout encapsulated within a magic glass kaleidoscope. On a cloudy morning, he went to the backyard, dug a little hole with his fingers, and put the marble into it, wishing it would grow into something really big. However, each time he checked the place eagerly, he was disappointed that the marble had shown no growth of any kind.
“Which one was exactly your earliest memory?” asked Hua.
“I can never tell. The only thing I knew was these were my earliest memories before my parents sent me to Lotus Village as a foster child.
“You should try to figure it out with your mother’s help while she’s still alive or before she lost her memories.”
“That’s one of the reasons I’ve come to visit her now in such a hurry.”
Once his earliest memory was confirmed, he would gain a better and deeper understanding of his life. To him, a different mental image represented a different paradigm that had somehow manifested itself repeatedly, each time in a different way, in the course of his life. For instance, the chase picture might well be taken as a symbolic precursor to his grown-up life full of hard pursuits and serious injuries. Similarly, his memory about the pretending game could perhaps help him to understand his relationships with women.
“What if your first memory was about the marble?”
“That would account for why imagination and dreaming about growth have played such an important part in my existence. Just as my physical life has been a long process of chasing and getting hurt, my spiritual life is full of wishful thinking and disappointment.”
“Famous last words,” said Hua.
“Maybe,” Ming replied, “but that’s my way to interpret my life experience, to know myself.”
“If your theory is valid, then I’m fated to constantly cross a street, a helpless situation, all by myself.”
“Isn’t that the case? You are a brave and fortunate girl, in love, as in life.”
Yuan Changming grew up in rural China and has published 15 poetry collections in English. Early in 2022, Yuan began to write fiction, with short stories appearing in Bewildering Stories (Canada), Lincoln Review (UK), Paper Dragon (US), and StylusLit (Australia), among others. Currently, Yuan is working on his trilogy.