Text/He Xuesong
On September 27, 1948, my mother was born in a compound on Changping 6th Street. A family of four, Grandma takes care of life at home, Grandpa does a small fruit business, and there is an uncle. Although financially poor, the family was together and the room was full of laughter.
I thought that such a happy day would continue steadily, but when my mother was 12 years old, her fate changed, because her grandmother died of illness that year. You can imagine what it's like for a 12-year-old girl to not have a mother.
Later, my mother told me that after my grandmother's death, she saw her friends coming home at night, and her mother was waiting at home to cook a meal, and when she was young, she still had to do it herself, which felt very sad. How many times have I woken up crying at night. Especially when she sees people's mothers booing and asking for warmth, and treating children as pearls in the palm of their hands, her heart is like a knife. How helpless a 12-year-old girl experienced the pain of losing a loved one prematurely!
Grandma died, Grandpa's health is also very bad, the family's economy is very tight, there is no money for her to continue schooling. In the end, my mother only read the fifth grade of elementary school and dropped out of school.
Two consecutive blows filled mom's childhood with painful memories. But here, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the kind people around my mother.
When I was a child, my mother often told me about the families in the compound, including the neighbors on Sixth Street, who always took care of my mother in life. As soon as there is good food, she will call her past, it can be said that she grew up eating a hundred meals, because she grew up in this special environment, and her mother is full of gratitude to the kind people around her. It also made her understand that if she wants to live a good life, she must work hard to struggle.
So, I've always felt that my mom is my role model. Because in that situation at that time, if she treated life negatively and complained about the unfairness of fate every day, everyone might stay away from her. But with her optimistic spirit of life, she infected the people around her, and everyone was willing to help her.
I admire this very much. It can be said that Mom saved herself!
During the days when I was out of school, my mother got a reading card at the Changping County Cultural Center, ran to the cultural center during the day to read books, and borrowed books at night to go home to read, such as "How Steel is Made", these books were read at that time. During that time, although it was materially barren, it was spiritually rich. She learns about the colorful world outside through one story after another. This 12-year-old girl is fascinated by reading, and a fan is a lifetime: love the good habit of reading, always accompany her.
Because she read a lot of books, her thoughts and expressions have obviously changed a lot, making her extra charismatic. The young boys and girls on the sixth street always went to the house to find her, and everyone got together, and their mother shared the wonderful stories in the book with them. The scene at that time was very similar to today's cultural salons.
Whether it is in the mother's house or in the in-laws' house, the mother has a group of loyal friends around her. The reason for this is that she has an interesting soul. Through knowledge, she has built herself into a magnetic field that strongly attracts those around her.
There are many photos of my mothers and friends in our family when they were young, and I envy them from the bottom of my heart, enjoying the beautiful friendship in the carefree era. These friendships are the warmest memories of their lives.
I'm often told, "Cedar, your mom really doesn't look like a 5th grader, her eloquence is no less than a college professor," and I know that people admire her culture and eloquence. Now that I think about it, the books my mother read at that time were really her needles!
When my mother was 17 years old, she wanted to visit her uncle who was a soldier there in Jiamusi, but she had no money. She made a bold decision: get on the train first! After the train left the station, she went directly to the conductor, explained that she did not have money to buy a ticket, and told the conductor that she could make up for the ticket by cleaning the road from Beijing to Jiamusi. In this way, I impressed the conductor and actually arrived at Jiamusi smoothly.
What a brave and resourceful one. Now that I think about it, I have to give my mother a thumbs up!
By combing through my mother's youth past, I suddenly felt that my mother had not lived up to her youth. Although I am in the face of adversity, I still live a prosperous and steaming life, and I think this is what youth should look like.