記憶中的老地方

Do you guys like jelly beans？ I sure do！ And a bag of beans was all I needed to get me through the day， growing up. My mom would give me around 5 dollars a day， depending on my recent behavior， to spend on lunch and whatever other necessities an urban adolescent might need. Well， a dollar used to buy lunch （a giant slice of pizza and a small soda）， but the rest of the money would go towards jelly beans， from the candy shop on the corner （before it was replaced by a Subway sandwich shop）. And there might have even been enough cash leftover to play a few games of Street Fighter or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the local arcade. Man， I miss the old days…

This month’s features are all about the way things used to be. In our first article， The Little Store， Eudora Welty recalls “the Little Store” as the place with many strange sights to behold， for a girl whose mother rarely required any sort of shopping， especially with their own cow in the backyard. Our second feature is Grasshopper Lessons in My Childhood Field of Dreams， in which Bridget Campion looks back on the time spent with her ragtag circle of friends， exploring patches of nature in her hometown on the outskirts of southern Ontario. And our third feature， Disappearing Roots： Remembering the Singapore of My Childhood， Corrinne May opines on the current state of her homeland， compared to the rustic look of years gone by.

It seems I’m not the only one who misses the old way of doing things. But it could just be that we long to relive the happy memories we created all those years ago， more so than the actual goings on. And those memories can be the hardest things to let go of. But if we don’t let go， how can we be open to all the amazing things today’s world has in store for us？ A quantum dilemma indeed…

你們喜歡豆粒軟糖嗎？我非常喜歡！小時候，只要給我一包豆粒軟糖我就能高高興興地過一天。根據我平日里的表現，媽媽每天會給我5美元左右的零花錢，作為我的午餐和一個城里的青少年可能需要購置的日用品的開銷。嗯，一美元用來吃午餐（一大塊披薩和一小杯汽水），而其他的錢則花在了街角的糖果店（現在已經變成了一家“賽百味”三明治店）里的豆粒軟糖上。也許還有足夠的錢剩下來讓我去當地的一家電子游戲機室玩幾局“街頭霸王”或者“忍者神龜”。天，我懷念從前的那些時光……

本月的主題是記憶中的老地方。在我們的第一篇主題文章《小小雜貨店》里，尤多拉·韋爾蒂回憶起了小時候的那家“小雜貨店”，視之為一個擁有種種奇景的地方，因為那時她媽媽甚少需要出門購物，尤其是在她們家后院還養了一頭奶牛的情況下。我們的第二篇主題文章是《“蚱蜢地”的童年遺趣》，在這篇文章中，布麗奇·坎皮恩回顧了她和她的“草根”小伙伴們一起在其安大略省南部市郊的家鄉探尋野地的美好時光。而在我們的第三篇主題文章《消失中的鄉根》里，符美蕓就其家鄉的現狀發表個人看法，并與其過去的樸素面貌進行比較。

似乎我并不是唯一一個會懷念過去的人。然而，我們可能太愛重溫過去的那些快樂回憶了，而沒有足夠在意當下真實存在的事物。而那些回憶恰恰是我們最難放下的，但是如果我們不放下，我們又怎么能敞開心扉地去接受當今世界為我們營造的一切新奇事物呢？