Childhood memories: the parrots cage
Believe it or not, the reason for this entry is that we are in the season of celebrating our independence, because this is one of those memories that come to my mind every time someone mentions the traditional lantern parade on September 14th.
It was the year 1993, my second year of school, and I had to go to the lantern parade. I wanted a lantern that was made and decorated at home, not one that was bought for me. Besides, my sister always brought one that my grandfather had made. By the time I was in school, my grandfather’s lantern was a bit unusable, but I thought it was unfair that my sister could bring a family relic to her lantern parade while I had to buy a paper lantern… (kids’ stuff :P)
The thing is, September 14th was approaching and I didn’t have a lantern. I asked for help from everyone and very skillfully the individuals in my family ignored me… until my cousin Daniel remembered a device stored in the attic that could be useful for our super lantern…
It was an empty parakeet cage, the parakeet had “escaped” (I think a cat ate it or something and no one had the courage to tell me), it was round, a normal cage made of bars, and in the center was still the parakeet’s perch.
The cage was wrapped in paper of the three colors of our flag… instead of the parakeet’s perch, a candle was placed, in a very laborious way because there was no way to hold it since the cage was round and covered with lots of tricolor tissue paper. In fact, the first time we lit it, the candle fell and the lantern almost caught fire, clearly my heart almost broke… so we ended up patching up the lantern.
But anyway, finally around 5:30 in the afternoon, I left my house accompanied by my sister (and the laughter of my family who knew the raw material of the lantern)…
holding the handle from which the cage of my former parakeet was hung…
I must say it was the most successful lantern parade of my childhood… everyone liked the cage… I mean my sophisticated and original lantern.