Grandpa

Sang Lingshu, Lexi

In the midst of my memory, there flickers a firefly—that is my grandfather. I can no longer remember his face, but only the fact that I once had a grandfather, a grandfather who loved me dearly. He never raised his voice at me, not once. Instead, he always smiled as he bought me little treats and told me to study hard.

He passed away when I was still a little girl. I don’t even know exactly when he died—it was so long ago. My last memory of him was at a hospital: his flimsy body lying on a bed far too large for him. His eyes lit up when he saw me, and he greeted me with a warm smile, “Tongtong, do you miss grandpa?”, while I tugged at my mother’s sleeve, impatiently begging her to let me go home.

As time went by, the weight of the years buried the fragments of memory, and I grew older. One summer, back in my hometown, Tai’an, I wandered mindlessly into the yard while the adults were chatting. I pushed open a rusty, heavy door, and a wave of damp air rushed to my face. A narrow beam of sunlight slipped through the tiny vent, spilling on dusty boxes stacked inside. They were filled with the toys I once loved playing —most of them, I suddenly realized, were gifted by Grandpa.

While digging around, I found an old iron box, with a number lock on it. The spotted rust on it made it stand out among the plastic toys. On the lid of the box, in neat handwriting, grandpa wrote, “Tongtong’s Wishes.” The lock’s code was set to my birthday.

Inside, the box was filled with folded notes:

A small house

A Barbie doll

Little leather boots…

all the things I had once wished for as a child.

At the very bottom lay one final note, written in shaky, uneven strokes:

“Tongtong, Grandpa doesn’t know why you don’t seem to like me, and I don’t know if you will ever see these things. But Grandpa always remembers the things you wanted. Grandpa has gone up to the sky to make those wishes come true for you.”