Text/Yu Lan
When I was a child, every New Year's Day, my family would buy a calendar.
The new calendar, along with the Spring Festival on the door, the New Year paintings on the walls, and the paper cuts on the windows, add a strong sense of festivity to the home. Looking at it, my heart is full of hope, I feel that everything is new, it has just begun, and life has infinite possibilities.
Mother hung the calendar on the wall and turned a page every day. Those tumbling days are like falling leaves falling in the depths of time. I gradually understood that life is a calendar with page numbers, and I understood that the days turned page by page and never came back. It makes me anxious, it makes me sad, I haven't done anything yet!
I don't hang out with the kids anymore, I shut myself up alone, I desperately write my homework and read books. When I finish my homework early and finish reading books that no one else has read, I feel a little relieved.
I had a grandfather who treated me well. When I was a child, for a long time, I lived in my grandfather's house. My grandfather was a hunter, and he went hunting in the mountains, and I followed behind. When he wasn't hunting, he sat in the yard weaving baskets, baskets, baskets, bamboo sieves, and I sat next to them and watched. When he is idle, he loves to read books, especially "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Three Heroes and Five Righteousness", "Legend of Chu Liuxiang", and also loves to tell me. At that time, the wind was gentle in the summer and the snow in the winter was fluffy and white.
Then my mother took me home and I went to school. In the blink of an eye, I'm in third grade. I think I'm a big kid and have to study hard. I rarely see my grandfather anymore. I want to wait until I grow up, and then I and my grandfather will go to the mountains to hunt pheasants and hares, watch him weave all kinds of beautiful bamboo utensils, and listen to him talk about water margin, three kingdoms, Chu Liuxiang, and three heroes and five righteousnesses.
One day my mother told me with red and swollen eyes that my grandfather had died. My grandfather was gone, and I could no longer go hunting with him in the mountains, watching him weave bamboo and listening to him write books. I forgot about him.
My father died early, and I grew up with my mother. The house was always deserted, and when I came out and went in alone, my mother and I were the only ones. Every time I think back to the days with my mother, I can't help but think of the lonely woman in Zimei's "Beauty". The bitterness in between can probably only be experienced and experienced.
One day after school, it was still very early, and the sunset of the western sky was still burning. I sat under the grapevine at the back of the house to write my homework in the sunset of half a day.
Mother came back from working outside. She carried a hoe, and behind the hoe was a basket. The setting sun was pouring over her, her hair was messy, and her face was a little pale. She seemed to be suddenly old. I was amazed, how did she suddenly get old?
I called out to Mom.
She was happy, "Ah! You're back? ”
I don't seem to have seen her in a long time, which of course isn't right, we see her every day. Didn't she get up every day before dawn and make a fire to cook for me? Doesn't she make her meal every day at noon and wait for me to come home? Didn't I wake up in the middle of the night to see her still working under the lamp? But I didn't see her in a long time, and I knew I had forgotten about her.
When I grew up, I also bought a calendar every New Year's Day, which became a must-do thing every year.
Twenty years ago, the old calendar of turning a page at a time is rare, and now the calendar is a calendar with a clear view of the day on the desk, but I will still try my best to buy the old calendar. I count down the days of the year above. Turning a page a day, one less day a year. It makes me anxious, it makes me sad. "Life is a lifetime, go to Ruo Chao LuXi." Counting down, life is more than 20,000 calendars, one page a day, easily turned over. So I filled every day without letting it have a single gap.
One year, because I was busy with school things, I forgot to buy a calendar. After everything is busy, it is already February of the solar calendar, the calendar is early on the market, tell me where to go to buy a calendar, and it is still the kind of old calendar that is rare?
One day, when it was completely dark, he stood breathlessly in the doorway of my house and put a calendar in my hand, the kind of old calendar I wanted to turn pages.
Although it was february in the solar calendar, the lunar calendar was still in the waxing moon. It was the coldest time of the year, and it was snowing early outside. There were no more people on the street, and people were hiding in houses and roasting fires.
I don't remember if I had the slightest hint of regret in front of him, but he braved the cold of a few days to run through most of the city and walked through an unknown number of streets, just to buy me an old calendar that turned the pages. When the lights finally came on, I found that old calendar in a shop that was about to close. When the old man, who was black and thin, reluctantly held up a horse lamp and pulled out the last calendar, he was even happier than when he first won the award from elementary school as a child.
My eyes didn't feel hot.
I suddenly remembered that on the evening of the winter I was studying for the students, he took a bus through most of the city to pick me up at school and send me home; I remembered that he helped me move, he didn't let me move, he let me sit, box by box of books was moved from the first floor to the sixth floor (at that time I rented the old neighborhood, there was no elevator); I remembered that I was going to take an exam, he was more nervous than me, stayed up a few nights to check the information for me, and finally sent a thick stack of information to my hand... Why hadn't I noticed this before? It was I who forgot about him.
We later had our own little home, and buying a calendar for the New Year became a common ritual for us.
I still solemnly count down the days of the year on it, and fill each day up. It is only gradually understood that the top of the mountain may be beautiful, but the scenery along the way is more moving.
There is more calmness in life on the calendar: a suddenly cheerful text; to visit a famous mountain ancient temple; or to go to the flower market to buy a handful of plums that are fragrant enough to penetrate the cottage, a pot of white dazzling daffodils; or one day to go to a country market to buy a new shoot this spring, a handful of new shoots just out of the toon, a few eggs that have just been picked up from the chicken nest and still have a body temperature...
The days end up turning over irresistibly page by page, and instead of anxiety, why not let go of your heart, walk slowly, and appreciate.
(Image from the Internet)
【About the Author】Yu Lan, formerly known as Wang Xiaolan, a native of Hengyang, Hunan, Bachelor of Arts, Master of Education. He has published more than 400,000 words of essays and novels such as "Medicine Fragrance", "Mother's Child", and "A Good City". He currently lives in Chengdu and is a middle school Chinese teacher.
Sponsored by the Shandong Provincial Prose Literature Society, Contemporary Prose is a bimonthly prose journal, which mainly publishes the works of members of the Shandong Provincial Prose Literature Association, and welcomes Shandong prose writers to apply to join the Shandong Provincial Prose Association. The Shandong Provincial Prose Literature Association holds various prose activities throughout the year to provide book publishing services for writers. Submission email: [email protected], [email protected]
One Point Number Contemporary Prose