【Boyhood Past】Fig Mai Ren Jujube | Essay Picked Up

Whenever I recall my childhood, three things immediately emerge: figs, wheat kernels, and dates. Strangely enough, my memory of before the age of four is so deep that my childhood seems bland and thin.

At that time, my mother taught in a primary school in a county town in Shandong, many of the teachers lived in the school, and my mother took me to have a dark room.

At that time, my mother, who was the class teacher, was very busy, not only to teach the students but also to lead them to work, and I had only fallen asleep in bed since I was born, and my mother only took time to come back to see if I was safe. I lay like this for ten months, until more than ten months I couldn't help but be so confined, tried to move freely, and as a result, I often fell out of bed. Afraid that I would fall down like this and would delay my life, my mother sent me to an old grandmother's house next door to the school and asked her to help take care of me until I was four years old and I was transferred back to Nanjing with my mother.

Grandma's house had a yard, which was quite large in memory, and several large fig trees were planted in front of the hall house. Grandma hurt me a lot, and everything delicious in the house always made me the first to eat and let me eat enough, so this fig bento became the most and favorite thing I ate.

Whenever the fruit tree bears fruit, I stare at it for a long time every day, to see when it will turn from blue to purple, thinking about how long it will take to eat it happily!

As a child, I loved two other things besides figs: wheat kernels and dates.

My mother has a good colleague, Teacher Zhang, whose family lives in the countryside. Teacher Zhang's daughter, I call her the sister of the handmaiden, when she was seventeen or eighteen years old, always liked to ride a bicycle to take me to her house to play.

My sister rode with me and ran all the way home singing. Whenever she passed by the green, green-stemmed wheat field, she parked the car, carried me to the wheat field, put me aside, and dragged a handful of wheat ears in her hands and rubbed them. She kept rubbing her hands, and kept blowing air into her mouth, and when she spread her hands and brought them to me, it was a handful of green and soft wheat kernels that were sweet and tender in her mouth.

Usually we always have to eat enough to get out of the field and come home with a mouth full of sweetness.

When I arrived at my sister's house, there would still be a delicious one waiting for me on the date tree in front of her house!

I don't know if my ability to climb the tree is too high, or this jujube tree is too easy to climb, the impression is that I never use a bamboo pole to hit the dates, but like a small monkey "rubbing" three or two times to get on the tree. Then sit on the pole and wander around, happily grabbing the firm, sweet and sour dates in your mouth and chewing them. Maybe the adults already knew about my trick, so they never stopped it, but only looked up at me with a smile and groan, and the eyes were clearly saying, "Hey, a full little hungry cat!" ”

In a flash, more than twenty years have passed. During this period, I never saw the deceased again, nor did I ever eat figs and wheat kernels, and although the dates could be bought, they could not catch up with the sweet taste of the year.

One day this summer, I was waiting at the station. I glanced at it and saw a man carrying a burden to sell fruit, because I didn't see what the real thing was, but my heart actually beat faster with excitement. As he hurried toward the man, he whispered in his heart, "If I'm not mistaken, it must be a fig!" ”

Sure enough, I really found it with this glimpse.

I was thrilled to be close to it again after more than twenty years.

Holding the fig home like a treasure, washing his hands, slowly tearing off its thin skin, slowly bringing it to his lips, and gently biting it...

Alas, I thought I was back in the past!