童年｜My Childhood

每天五分钟听经典英文故事，读绘本，磨耳朵。一部关于苦难与光的童年回忆，讲述阿廖沙在黑暗中寻找希望的成长故事。The first thing Alyosha remembered was not toys, not the courtyard, not his mother's smileIt was his father lying in the roomThe grownups spoke in low voices, his mother Varvara seemed drained of all strength, little Alyosha did not yet understand why a person would suddenly stop opening his eyes, why every sound in the room had grown so heavyAfter his father died, his mother took him back to his grandfather's houseIt was a lively houseIt was also like a boiling potHis grandfather Kashrin used to run a dye shop, he was small, shrewd, and his temper was as hard as iron, his two sons, Mikhail and Yakov, quarreled all day over the family propertyWho should get more, who had been shortchanged, who had gotten the better deal, they argued until nothing was left between kin but red-eyed enmityAlyosha had barely arrived when that atmosphere closed around himThey quarreled at the dinner tableThey quarreled in the courtyardEven at night, the cursing could not be stifledAt first he thought that when family gathered together, that was home, later he learned that some homes were just places where many suffering people were locked in the same room, left to hurt one anotherHis grandfather's rules were strict, and his anger came fastOnce, when Alyosha made a mistake, his grandfather beat him severely, the child's body was pinned down, the whip fell, and he hurt so much he nearly lost consciousnessPeople in the room watched, some tried to intervene, some were afraid, but no one could truly pull him out of that furyWhen the pain passed, his grandmother came to his sideGrandmother Akulina was not like this houseShe was poor too, she suffered too, she was worn full of scars by fate, but she did not carry that hardness that dragged others down into misery with her, she cleaned his wounds, talked with him, told him storiesShe spoke of God, of saints, of suffering people, of distant places that seemed like dreamsAlyosha lay in pain and listenedHe was still under his grandfather's roof, but slowly another door opened in his heartThis house was not without lightThere was a young man called "Little Gypsy"He was lively, he could dance, he loved to laugh, like a wind that did not belong to this house, the grownups were rough, but he often looked out for AlyoshaSometimes when his grandfather beat the child, he would quietly slip his own arm in the way to take a few blows for himHe was not preaching any great truthHe simply could not bear to see a child in painBut people like that were not kept by life eitherOne day while moving heavy objects, "Little Gypsy" had an accident and diedHis death came very suddenly, one moment a man who could laugh and dance, the next crushed under something heavyThe house soon returned to its noise, life pushed on, as if a kind person vanishing was just a wind that had stoppedBut Alyosha remembered himHe remembered those hands that had blocked the whipHe remembered that even in a wretched place, a person could choose to protect others firstLater, Alyosha saw the old worker GrigoryGrigory had spent his whole life in the dye shop, his eyes were ruined by the work, his body drained empty, when he could no longer work, he was pushed asideThere was nothing beautiful in this old man's fate, he simply fell apart slowly, and was slowly forgottenWatching him, Alyosha vaguely understood for the first time that people did not only suffer for their mistakesSometimes people were just poor, just old, just no longer useful, and so they were cast asideHis grandfather's house grew less and less like a homeHis uncles' fighting never stopped, family feeling was worn thin by money, and faces grew twisted in the struggleHis grandfather guarded his own petty schemes, the more he feared loss, the tighter he held on, the tighter he held on, the more he suffocated those around himHe was not a man who had never known hardshipBut what he learned from hardship was not pity, it was harder methodsAlyosha saw in him a terrible transformation, after life had beaten a person, that person might turn around and beat others with the same painIn those days, there was a lodger people called "Good Deeds"He was quiet, odd, liked to do his own things, and did not fit with the crude voices around him, Alyosha drew close to him and felt this man carried a rare clarityBut in his grandfather's house, not belonging was itself a crimePeople did not understand him, and did not want to understand himIn the end, he was driven awayAlyosha watched another decent person disappear from his lifeHis mother Varvara was also slowly disappearingIt was not that she did not love Alyosha, but she too was pushed around by fate, she left his grandfather's house, then returned, she tried to start over, married again, but the new life never truly caught herAlyosha watched his mother's face grow dimmer by the dayShe had once been the person closest to him, brightest in his heart, but poverty, marriage, illness bent her little by little, when she returned to Alyosha, she no longer had the strength she once didWhat a child found hardest to bear was not just losing his motherIt was seeing her still alive, yet slowly drifting away from himLater, Varvara grew gravely illThe breath of death filled the room againAlyosha had already seen his father die, seen "Little Gypsy" die, seen Grigory slowly worn away by life, but when it was his mother's turn, the pain was newAfter his mother died, the last soft anchor Alyosha had in this world was severedHis grandfather had fallen into declineThe man who once ruled the family, shrewd and strong, was now cornered by poverty, he no longer had the means to raise this child, so he told Alyosha he could no longer hang around his neck, it was time to go out into the worldGo out into the worldWhen those words fell, Alyosha's childhood endedBut he had in fact long been in the worldHis first lesson in the world was his father's coffinHis second lesson was his grandfather's whipLater came his uncles' faces torn by money, "Little Gypsy's" crushed body, Grigory's dim eyes, "Good Deeds'" retreating back, his mother's ever-weakening breath on her sickbedOnly his grandmother was there tooHer stories, her rough hands, her heart that had not turned bad even in suffering, all these stayed with AlyoshaSo when he walked out of his grandfather's house, he carried more than just woundsHe also carried that little bit of light he had seenThat light was not loud, not pure, often pressed very low by darknessBut it had not gone outWith this childhood, Alyosha walked toward a larger world前往小宇宙评论区与主播互动