He heals himself with writing
Andre Alexis (Canada), author of Childhood, may sound a little unfamiliar to Chinese readers, and his works are few books, only two books, the other called Fifteen Dogs. However, both books are winners of multiple literary awards.
"Childhood Rover" tells the story of Thomas, after suffering emotional setbacks, the death of his mother, and the death of Henry (which can be regarded as his adoptive father), he lived in isolation for a whole year, and healed himself through childhood memories and writing.
He doesn't do business every day, tidying up the house, feeding the dog, reading poetry, walking, reading... At first glance, it looks like a very comfortable old age.
However, there is no doubt that his heart is painful and chaotic, because he has always thought about his girlfriend, but has never been able to tell the love story between them - it is a good way to start writing about it where you can look back, such as childhood.
Grandmother and childhood
Thomas had a special childhood.
As soon as he was born, his parents parted ways, and he was sent to live with his sixty-five-year-old grandmother.
Grandma didn't seem happy to nurture him. She is past the age of magnanimity and has a bad temper.
Grandma is not a cruel woman, but her temperament is changeable.
She loves only homemade dandelion wine and Archibad. Lampman's poems.
When Thomas was six or seven years old, he was injured in a fall and cut his hand by a glass bottle, and he went to get the bandage of the bathroom cabinet himself, but accidentally knocked over iodine. The drinking grandmother came over, and just as she was about to hit Thomas on the head with a frying pan, he raised his hands and screamed as he recited the only passage of Lampman's poem he had memorized. Although he didn't understand what that meant at all, the poem appeased his grandmother.
"Smart monkey." Grandma said.
Then she stumbled back to the kitchen and her kitchenware.
Thomas is by talking to his neighbor Lillian. Schwarz's chat learned some of the past events that happened to his grandmother and his mother.
Grandma started teaching in her twenties, using Archibald. Lampman's verses have infected countless children. She retired at the age of sixty-five, just in time to take care of her grandson, Thomas.
For many years, Grandma's house has been a meeting point for book clubs. A group of women get together to discuss Charles. Dickens' novel.
One day, conflicts and quarrels broke out among the women, and the reading club died quietly in an unseemly way.
Years later, stories of my grandmother's brutality are still being circulated.
This was the first unfortunate event in my grandmother's life.
The second is the death of my grandfather.
On a sunny day, Grandpa and Grandma were talking about something on a street corner when Grandpa stepped out of the edge of the sidewalk and he was hit by a car.
Mother
When my grandfather died, my mother was twelve years old. Instead of becoming introspective or depressed, she became more extroverted, more expressive, and less reserved.
The mother's life was full of turmoil.
When Thomas was ten years old, his grandmother died. Fourteen days later, my mother returned, and she was twenty-nine years old.
She knocked on the door, and Thomas opened it and answered:
"What's going on?"
The mother said in a soft voice the first words he heard her say:
"Thomas?"
Then she leaned over and hugged him. Although he was not very comfortable, he still let her hold her.
"We have to go." She said.
He didn't know why, but he knew it was his mother.
So he was taken away and left the town where he had been living and took his mother's boyfriend's car.
The car is not very good, stop and go, because they need to fill the radiator with water.
They had nowhere to stay, sleeping in cars and tents.
They had no money to buy food, so there was a bad incident of encouraging children to steal food.
And after that? Thomas and his mother were simply abandoned and had nowhere to go.
Then there was a big twist of fate, and the mother finally decided to bring Thomas to Henry's side.
Mother with Henry
Henry. Moon, a handsome, tall black man of Chinese descent, forty years old, in love with a woman eleven years younger than him (Thomas's mother), compiles an encyclopedia with limited enthusiasm, perhaps Thomas's father.
Thoughtfulness is the most appropriate word to describe him, thoughtful and affectionate.
He was rich and cultured (his polite attitude would have seemed "old-fashioned" even centuries ago), owned a gentleman's laboratory, and had thousands of ancient books from the floor to the ceiling. He settles for his eccentric world, and, despite Thomas and his mother's lies later, Henry can tolerate it all.
Such a Henry made her mother feel tired and overburdened, and sometimes she would say that this man was exhausting, but the desperate mother chose to stay here.
Henry was an almost perfect father.
He showed eleven-year-old Thomas the chemistry experiment of how to extract gold from raccoon poop.
He taught Thomas sex education in almost literary and scientific language.
And, when his mother discovers twelve-year-old Thomas stealing her clothes, Thomas tells a very lame lie: "Henry asked me to take it." "Why?" "He wants you to buy something else... He never likes your clothes. ”
So, the mother took her son to confront Henry: "Thomas said you asked him to take these things." ”
"I want him to take it?"
"Yes, is that you?"
"Did Tom tell you?"
"Yes."
"Then I admit it." He said softly, "It's me." ”
"You want my son to sneak into my room to get my clothes? How can you do this? ”
"I'm sorry."
"Why don't you tell me you hate my clothes?"
There was another pause, and then he said:
"Tom told you I hate your clothes?"
"Of course."
"I'm sorry, Kada."
Their relationship withstood Thomas's theft and lies and continued for months.
Henry and Thomas
The mother then moved out of Henry's house. Thomas chose to stay at Henry's house because he did not have a bed (although his mother bought another bed with her salary four months later).
They talked about philosophy books together and did chemistry experiments together.
When Thomas was eighteen, he began talking to Henry about love.
Henry sighed and said:
"This will pass, Tom."
If he thought about his mother, Thomas replied with a sigh:
"This will pass, Henry."
How will he feel?
At that time, Thomas did not understand how fortunate it was to fall in love at a young age.
"This kind of thing will pass." Not a denial of his feelings, but an expression of sympathy.
First love dies before a person realizes its beauty, and that is not:
"This will pass, Tom"
But:
"(Unfortunately) this will pass, Tom (but if you're lucky, you'll meet a deeper love)."
It wasn't until the present, when Thomas began to look back, that he began to understand the extraordinary dignity that Henry's passion represented. Hopelessly in love with a woman who has not yet rejected you, patiently waiting for her return without falling into despair, busy with the trivial matters of survival, rummaging through books, engaging in endless experiments, maintaining an empty heart, like cleaning out a guest room, hoping ... Believe...
If he had found the love of his life in his twenties and thirties, he might have done this for a while. But wait for decades? Still in your forties, fifties, or even sixties? For years he had thought Henry was somewhat despised, but over time, in his imagination, Henry's wait slowly changed from contemptible to something else.
Of course, he assumed that now he knew more about Henry, at forty he knew a man who could not be understood at eighteen; But perhaps too much is assumed. Could it be that Henry. Wen is both the absurd person he thought back then, and the person who lives in the dignity of love? Both? Neither?
Today, the most honest statement is that he never really knew Henry and does not understand him now, but he was deeply touched by the memory of Henry's death.
Mother with Thomas
The best thing about her mother's later life was that, although she loved Henry, she thought she was happier without him; Without emotional burdens, she seems more at ease.
She had that blessing. No matter what she did, she couldn't break Henry's feelings for her. She could come to see Henry as often as she wanted, or she could show up rarely.
Her love grew over the years.
Thomas was tempted to write "she changed" or "I changed" or "we changed," but those were meaningless words. When are we not changing? When have we stopped changing?
The mother is still changing, even though she has been dead for months.
It was as if death exuded vigor.
Henry with his mother
One day, Henry made a phone call during Thomas' work hours.
"Tom, I need you."
"Are you all right?"
"Me? It's so good. ”
"What's that about?"
"I need your eyes."
"Okay, I'll go over tomorrow."
"How is it tonight?"
Thomas rushed to Henry's house, where books were piled up everywhere. It was as if a tornado had swept through the study.
Henry asks Thomas to help him find a Ramon. What Lu Yi wrote. He was too old to read his footnotes.
On this night, Thomas leaned on the fragments of the thoughts of a long-dead author, reading those foreign words to a man he loved, and felt a mixture of pity and contempt.
Thomas can't witness this side of Henry: he can't control his body freely, and it's not sacred at all.
Over the next few months, Henry called Thomas frequently to help him with his studies. When he thought he had found a possible cure, he asked Thomas to help him prepare the lab for testing.
After that, Thomas found various reasons to escape this awkward task. He went to see him less and less.
The mother was sick. Thomas went to visit his mother and learned that it was terminal cancer, and there were only a few days left.
The incurable disease suffered by her mother turned out to be the kind of disease Henry had been unusually seeking a cure.
Henry's death followed his mother's death by a day after her.
There is hope, there is faith
At the end of the book, Thomas also does not elaborate on his current state: his relationship with his girlfriend.
In the last paragraph of the book, he writes:
"The past has its shape, but only when you open the distance does it look less blurry and perishable. During the holidays, I see more clearly and if necessary, I start to reminisce about another episode.
That's all I can do, I mean: wait.
Actually, in retrospect, I started doing this very early on: be quiet, observe, wait.
I used to think Henry's patience was a bit too much, but I don't know if it was waiting that connected me to him, because for him, waiting is love.
My patience is not as good as his, but, you know, I believe I can wait. There may be anxiety, there may be sadness, but like Henry, there is also hope... There is faith...
No matter what time will bring. ”（END）