April 2 came around again. On campus, the plane trees had just put out their first leaves, fluttering faintly in the spring wind.
Birthdays in childhood fell between farm work and school. My mother would get up before the roosters and cook a bowl of longevity noodles at the stove, with a poached egg on top; golden droplets of oil floated on the broth. As I hunched over the square table eating, my father had already shouldered his hoe and headed for the fields, his back gradually swallowed by the morning mist. I didn't understand ritual then. I assumed everyone lived that way.
In college I celebrated a birthday properly for the first time. I used money saved from tutoring to take my roommates to a restaurant. That night, lying on the metal bunk, I kept rubbing my fingertips over the number on the receipt; my stomach churned with the grease of braised pork and a faint ache of regret. Moonlight came through the screen window and cut a pale wound across the concrete floor.
Youth is a book flipped through too quickly. Before I could read it closely, I had reached the final chapter. My twenties had seemed long, but they went like morning dew—gone once the sun touched them. People and things I once thought I would never forget have blurred in memory; those I tried hard to forget have stayed close, impossible to shake.
Last night before dinner, my wife suddenly asked, "What gift do you want tomorrow?" I looked at her lovely, somewhat tired figure. "I have everything I should have," I said—and only then realized it was something my father used to say.
The plane trees on the street have put out new buds again. I remember this time last year: the same tender green standing on the branches. Plants can be reborn year after year, but a person can only move forward, with no way back. Time has taken youth, but it has also settled some wisdom into me; it has stripped away impulse, but given me composure. Between gain and loss, which weighs more? Even the sharpest accountant could probably not work it out.
What the future holds, I don't dare guess. I only hope the years pass quietly and my parents stay well; I only hope that in the hurry of passing time I can keep a little clarity inside; and I only hope that when my hair is white and I look back, I will not be too ashamed.