The memory about autumn

As autumn approaches, the muggy weather and the chattering crickets in the grass suddenly pull my thoughts back to the past. Everything feels so familiar. Yet, times have changed, and it is no longer like the old days. The people around me are long different, leaving me with sighs and mixed emotions.

Growing up in China, early autumn always marked the beginning of the school year. In my heart, there was an inevitable reluctance to let go of the summer vacation, mixed with anticipation for the new semester, the new school year, and the new environment, along with a lingering sense of apprehension about facing the unknown. My deepest impression is the day I transitioned from elementary to middle school. My mother had been worrying about me ever since school started—the new environment, the new teachers, everything was new. Moreover, I was a day student, and the school was two kilometers away from home. I had to eat three meals a day, which, plus the evening self-study, meant making four round trips daily. I was dark and skinny back then, and my mother was always afraid I wouldn’t be able to handle the physical toll and couldn’t last a single day.

When I went home for lunch on the first day of school, she was busy cooking in the kitchen. Seeing me return, she asked with concern, “How is it? Can you handle all the running?” Teenagers have plenty of energy; I just wasn’t quite used to it. So I told her I was fine, just that my thighs ached a bit from the trips, muttering as I looked down at the new cloth shoes on my feet. Looking up, I saw her stop the rolling pin in her hands and ask nervously, “What should we do then? You still have a long way to go later. You must have a lot more classes in middle school now. What subjects do you have?” I answered her one by one, telling her what books had been handed out and how many subjects were on the schedule. She grew even more anxious: “How come there are so many new subjects? It’ll turn a person’s brain to mush. How can you memorize all of this~” It was as if she were the one taking the classes. I just replied calmly, “Whatever class it is, I’ll just memorize what’s needed.” So many years have passed, and my mother has been gone for almost three years now. The image of our conversation back then has gradually blurred, but the feeling autumn brought me still remains. Muggy, damp heat.

Especially at night, lying in bed with no air conditioning and no fan, the weather was stifling, and the crickets chirped endlessly. I would unknowingly fall asleep, only to be jolted awake early in the morning, hurriedly washing up and heading out for school. Along the way, there were the crickets again, along with a slight chill. The damp, cool air settling on my arms made me instantly wide awake. I would bump into classmates along the way, our numbers growing as we gathered, until fins autumn mood, I spent year after year, until I left home and lived on campus during high school and college. It was like this every year. My feeling of autumn has always been consistent, and my memories of autumn over the years are quite continuous, without much change, except that the people around me have changed over and over again. Truly, year after year the autumns are similar, but year after year the people are different.

In past autumns, I would always think of those old days filled with the chirping of crickets. This year, I finally wrote down this nostalgia and feeling. In the end, things remain the same while people change, no longer like the past. As the poem goes:

In the past, a flower-picking child; Today, a busy, toiling bug. The spring breeze was once like a dream; The autumn rain falls into emptiness. That loving voice can be heard no more; In the cool night, I whisper to autumn crickets. The distant mountains have never parted; How could things remain as they were in the old days?ally a large group of us walked through the school gates together.

In the evening, a cool breeze would blow into the classroom, and I would listen to the occasional sounds across the quiet campus. In thi