Rainbow Shadow: As a mother

It wasn't until I became a mother that I felt her pain deeply.

As a mother

From the autobiographical novel "The Hungry Daughter" to "The Flower of Good Children", the two books are separated by ten years. These two books write about myself and my mother, about my hometown and my escape, and I want to understand what kind of a person I am. The difference is that my personal identity has changed, before I wrote about my mother as a daughter, and now as a mother, I write about a mother, and the listener is my daughter.

I had seen my mother sacrifice for me and for this family before, and as one of the ordinary women, she had become a victim of this era, and I didn't think it through enough to understand the depth of her sacrifice.

The tragedy of her mother continues, and what she cannot bear most is not from her enemies, but from her relatives.

When it comes to children, I am still different from my mother. My situation is much better than my mother's, I have no financial worries, and I will reduce many problems with the outside world and my family. She was facing much harsher difficulties and obstacles than mine, and she alone took on a world that would overwhelm her. My mother was braver than me, more fearless than I was.

survive

One version of what my family gave me was that my mother lived very well in her old age, did not worry about food and clothing, and had children and grandchildren filial piety. When I was at the funeral, I was shocked to learn that my mother was picking up trash in her later years. The family's explanation was that the mother had Alzheimer's disease. Mother is consciously doing such a thing, being abused, not enough to eat, hungry, she can't find someone to talk about her inner depression and talk about her heart, she wants to go out of the house, to penetrate the fresh air by the Yangtze River, she goes to the river to pick up garbage, sell money, can buy buns and flower rolls to eat.

My mother had two dark periods in her life: the first dark period was when she conceived me, in 1961, when she was in a difficult period of hunger, and my husband was working on a boat, because of poor nutrition, he did not have enough to eat, fell from the boat into the river and was injured, and was taken to the hospital. No way to get the message across. His mother had not heard from him for a long time and was in a state of despair. She took all the children and asked each child to pick up what they could eat. Five children and her hunger was unbearable. At that time, a young man was a temporary worker who was a temporary worker picking sand, and when others bullied her, he stood up to help her, he gave his own rations to his mother, he did not eat, and gave them to the children. The two fall in love. Mother's life is very difficult, but there is a little light in her heart, that is, the love of this man illuminates her, because she has such a light, dare to conceive me, dare to give birth to me, an illegitimate daughter.

In the second dark period, the mother picked up garbage in her later years, and the matter of picking up garbage was first of all not understood by her children at home, and then she was hungry, so she naturally went to look for food and pick up garbage.

Her mother was caught up in memories of the past, and the darkness that had passed away for more than forty years gave her a contrast. A very lonely old man, knowing that her life is coming to an end, she uses the most romantic and passionate period of her life to remember the bits and pieces of her life with my biological father, to survive the despair in front of her, to resist the darkness of reality, as an outlet.

My mother survived like this for years, and I didn't know it.

Punishment and reward

My mother never beat me, but always looked at me coldly, as if her life's misfortunes were all related to me, which was my real feeling before I was eighteen. On my eighteenth birthday, I knew why, because I was an illegitimate daughter, and she had to bear the lifelong punishment of her by her family and society.

One year for her birthday, I rushed back from England to give her a big birthday at Goose Ridge Park, and she said that was the reward I gave birth to and raised me. I didn't look across my face, I didn't dare let her see my eyes red.

The first time I heard the phrase "a good man comes out of a golden stick" came from my junior high school chemistry teacher, his son who was playing truant at home. The teacher's dormitory is just northeast of our classroom, with a slope of more than twenty steps of stone steps. He said this famous saying while hitting his son. It was recess, and he was hitting his son on the head, unaware that there were so many spectators under the stone steps. Years later, I met a classmate who talked about the old story, and she said that the son of a chemistry teacher was admitted to Chongqing University.

After my daughter was born, I told her this story, and after she did something wrong, she reached out and asked me to punish her. I didn't. I said to her: I will punish myself and shut myself in the house, you have thought outside the house.

Spatial barriers allow two people whose hearts are tied together to think alone about what happened. Such results are more useful than corporal punishment.

Growing up, I never got a reward from my mother or father. I also rarely get rewards in school. Just like some time ago, there was a magazine manuscript, and when they said they had biennial awards, I said I had never won an award. He was surprised. I'm a person outside the border, and from that point of view, it's not necessarily a good thing. (Rainbow Shadow)