childhood memories

In this memory, I’m eight years old. It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m attending a weekly group class on music theory with my friends at a local music school for children. About six of us sit in the tiny classroom with a shiny upright piano, waiting for our teacher to arrive. She’s running late today. “She’s […]

The year when I was ten, in early May, my parents and I went to the annual large family gathering held in a coastal city several hours drive to the south from our town. We arrived at the hotel earlier than others, and my father and I decided to go for a walk to the

In this memory, I’m four years old. Every day, around midday, I sit for a snack-and-tea time with my mother. She prepares milk tea and takes out McVitie’s chocolate biscuits, two for each of us. I always look forward to this one-and-only snack time of the day and want it to last as long as

In this memory, I’m five years old, just a month before my sixth birthday. I’m participating in the annual showcase of the local YAMAHA music school with my two best friends and classmates. Wearing the same outfit as last year, the only difference this year is that two of my family members are missing: my

In early May when I was eight, my father’s college friend came to stay with us for several days. What was exciting was that all his four children travelled with him. The eldest was a boy four years older than me, followed by a sister two years older than me and another of my age,

In this memory, I’m five years old. One day in early December, my mother takes out the box of a Christmas tree kit from the storage and bring it to the living room of our tiny half-dilapidated apartment. It’s a small fake Christmas tree that was bought in the winter my family moved into the

It was when I was in Grade 2. That year, we had a gardening project to grow sweet potatoes. Early summer, each of us planted a sapling, and it was our assignment to continue watering the plant throughout the summer vacation. Over July and August, the saplings grew into a sea of dark green leaves,

In this memory, I’m four years old. Every afternoon, after coming home from playing with my friends, I watch a few TV programs before supper time. One of them is called With Mommy, an educational program designed for kids of my age. In it, young adults with different talents engage small kids in creative activities.

When I was in kindergarten, I often got pinkeye. Whenever that happened, my mother would drive me to an eye doctor, and on the way home, we sometimes stopped by at a grocery store right around the corner from the eye doctor’s office. The store was old and dark inside, but much larger than the

Growing up, my father was not big on cooking. It was my mother who prepared all the meals for our family of four. However, when I was about five, one TV show inspired my father to try out a dish on his own. The show had a cooking section where a male amateur chef shared