With a true heart, pass on the True Scriptures!
Hello everyone! The first long essay of the New Year, I wrote to my father to thank him and my mother for their nurturing grace.
【Father's Eightieth Birthday】
New Year's Day, the beginning of the yuan, the renewal of Vientiane, the joy of the door. Our four small families of brothers and sisters set up a banquet for my father at the Makoto Restaurant in Qingyang, Chizhou.
In China, the eightieth birthday is also known as umbrella shou and cane dynasty. Umbrella shou is an ancient age title that refers to the 80th birthday. Because the cursive shape of the word "umbrella" resembles "eighty", it is called "umbrella shou". The cane dynasty is derived from the saying "eighty staffs in the dynasty", which means that eighty years old can enter and leave the imperial court with a staff.
The concept of "shou" has been recorded as early as the Book of Shang. "Shang Shu Hong Fan" put forward the concept of "five blessings", that is, shou, fu, kangning, you haode, and examination of life, and "shou" ranked first. In the Shuowen Jiezi, "Shou" originally means "long". But one of the most unique aspects of China's "shou culture" is that although people pursue health and longevity, they do not blindly rely on the gods of heaven and earth to pursue illusory immortality. As early as the pre-Qin period, people's pursuit of "shou" shifted to themselves, and soon became associated with social ethics. The Book of Rites repeatedly associates "shou" with "rituals". On the one hand, it warns the world to be filial to the elderly, and on the other hand, it implies the respect and desire of people in society for longevity. This "ritual" can be said to coexist with Chinese culture and lay the essence of Chinese etiquette. The concept of "respecting the elderly and filial piety" associated with it, through the play of Confucius's "renshou, filial piety", Mencius's "old man and the old man", and the advocacy of successive emperors, has formed a trend of respecting the elderly and providing for the elderly in society, and has been internalized into a social moral norm with the development of history, which has had an extremely extensive impact on Chinese culture.
【Father's Life Journey】
Father's childhood
Father's childhood was bitter. Because of his grandfather, he lacked fatherly love since he was a child. I have described it in detail in Memories That Cannot Be Forgotten. Later, as my grandmother remarried to the Xu family, I also endured a lot of grievances, and my entire childhood should have been soaked in bitter water.
Father's juvenile
Father's adolescence was tough. In his stepfather's house, weak shoulders prematurely shouldered a burden that was not commensurate with his age. In addition to going up the mountain to cut firewood, four seasons of farming, but also to release two large yaks, endured a lot of hardships, which also cast the father's disposition not to accept defeat.
Father's youth
Father's youth was hard. Under the introduction of the matchmaker, the father and the mother's family are married to the daughter of the Jiang family raised by the stepfather in this village. Two young men lean against an old house and a little pot and pan to build a new portal. In that large collective era, every day in order to earn work, suffered a lot. Two sisters were born one after another, and the birth of the older brother made the burden on the shoulders of the parents heavier. Written on Father's Day - Teacher Ah Bao's "Composition Sutra" (22)
Father's middle age
Middle-aged fathers are hardworking. When my father was thirty-three, I was born. With the third plenary session of the Eleventh Central Committee, the implementation of the household contract responsibility system, the family was given more than six acres of paddy fields, and some dry land for tea and mulberry cultivation, and my father became very busy. Every morning, after carrying a few loads of water from the well, he carried the hoe down to the field until breakfast. After breakfast, it was busy all day. All year round, almost every day. Especially in the double rush season, the hard work is very bearable. Father used his tenacious peasant spirit to make the best of all the crops in the paddy fields and drylands. The yield of various crops is one of the best in the village. The living conditions at home have also improved a lot, and the Huangshan brand black and white TV set, the camel brand floor electric fan, the bicycle, the tape recorder have also been added. Rice cultivation is the hardest, from breeding to harvesting, in which I do not know how much sweat is soaked. Moreover, in order to produce more yields, in addition to early rice, medium rice and late rice are also planted throughout the year.
Poetry in the Village: Teacher Ah Bao's "Composition Sutra" (98)
Tea picking is also very hard, picking fresh leaves in the tea field of Dadao Mountain, and then baking and processing in a special stir-fried tea pot at home, kneading into strips, and rushing to the county town to sell the next morning. At that time, hawkers especially liked to undercut prices, and they also did tricks when weighing, which made honest and loyal fathers often eat dumb losses.
The hemp grown in our hometown belongs to ramie, peel the hemp from the hemp field, go home and soak it in the pond, then fish it up and scrape the hemp, push the hemp head, and finally dry it. Except for peeling hemp, I have done all the other tricks. Especially peeling hemp, very wasteful hands. The sticky hemp juice is difficult to clean clean. In a few years, the price of ramie has risen, which is also an important cash crop for the family.
Sericulture is a long job, divided into spring silkworms and autumn silkworms according to seasons. Starting from the silkworm, as the amount of food of the silkworm baby increases, the amount of mulberry leaves also changes from leaf silk to leaf, and finally the whole mulberry strip is simply cut down. It has been busy until the silkworm "goes up the mountain" (the silkworm spits silk and weaves a cocoon on the grass dragon) to breathe a sigh of relief. When raising silkworms, in addition to the special silkworm houses to be clean, it is also necessary to disinfect them with quicklime powder, in addition to preventing the destruction of rats. At that time, some people in the countryside were accustomed to stealing mulberry leaves at night. My father had to make a makeshift shack in the largest mulberry garden in his family, and slept in the shack at night to watch over the mulberry leaves to prevent theft. I am afraid that only those who have experienced it will experience it more deeply. And whenever I remember the years of sericulture, I always think of an old text - Mr. Ba Jin's "Spring Silkworm"
Spring is the season for sericulture. Whenever this happens, I often think of my mother. Before liberation, our family was very poor, so my mother exchanged silkworms for some money and paid tuition for our sisters and brothers.
There were a few mulberry trees on our doorstep. As soon as spring arrived, as soon as the mulberry tree sprouted, the mother took out a few silkworm seeds as usual. Each silkworm seed is no more than a foot square and is covered with brown silkworm eggs smaller than sesame seeds. When the mulberry leaves grow to the size of elm money, there are many very small silkworms squirming on the silkworm seeds. That's how the life of the silkworm begins.
The mother smiled and shook these little lives into the small plaque. The plaque has been sprinkled with a layer of tender mulberry leaves cut into thin wires. This was plucked from the mulberry tree by my mother, wiped clean, and cut thinly and evenly.
The silkworms grew bigger day by day, and the mulberry leaves were cut thicker day by day. When the silkworm grows to half an inch long, the small plaque is replaced by a large plaque, and the whole mulberry leaf is fed. Every morning, my sister brought the mulberry leaves back, and my mother instructed me to wash my hands, dry the mulberry leaves with a towel, and then gently and evenly sprinkle them in the plaque.
The silkworms are getting bigger and bigger, and it is too crowded to stay in one plaque, so it is divided into two plaques, and then divided into three plaques... Plaques are added one after another. My mother and I took my sister and me to clean up one of the rooms next door as a jam room, and moved seven or eight plaques into it.
Every night, my mother always had to get up to add mulberry leaves. When I woke up, I often saw my mother holding a candlestick to feed the silkworms. The flickering candle shone on her wrinkled, kind face.
Pushing open the door of the Jamsil Room, there was immediately a rustling sound, like rain. It was a silkworm eating mulberry leaves in large gulps. In those days, the burden of picking mulberry leaves fell on my father's shoulders. My father used a large mulberry shear to cut off the mulberry leaves and carry them back in bundles.
The silkworm was about to "go up the mountain", and her mother had to get up twice a night, and she was tired and had back pain. My sister and I used to get up to help. The mother cleared the silkworm sand from the plaque in a big hug, and the sister put the mulberry leaves into the plaque in a big hug. When I used a dustpan to touch the silkworm sand, I always saw sweat oozing from my mother's forehead.
Silkworms "went up the mountain". They were caught on a "mountain" made of bundles of wheat straw. A few days later, the "mountain" was covered with white, yellow cocoons. While picking the cocoon, my mother gently said to me and my sister, "Child, you have to work hard in school!" This tuition fee is not easy to come by..."
I looked up and saw that my mother's sideburns had added some silver wire.
RainWater Love: Teacher Ah Bao's "Composition Sutra" (1000)
Father's old age
Father's old age is happy. Waiting for all four of us to start a family and my father to grow old. The originally strong body was a little stooped, and the sonorous and powerful pace of the original walking had slowed down a lot. In the 1990s, the village where the old family lived was requisitioned by the government for the development of an industrial park. We had to move to the county seat, and our family was assigned the second phase of resettlement housing. In the days of waiting for the house to be handed over, the parents and brother's family had to rent someone else's home until they got the keys to the resettlement house and had a stable home.
Father's body was originally very tough. However, because he suffered too much when he was young, he left some root causes. Asthma is one of them. So, every winter, we worry about my father. Secondly, my father also suffered from chronic nephritis. I once took him to Huangshan City and Hangzhou City to see a doctor, and my brother took him to Nanjing and Bengbu to see a doctor.
【Father and Me】
Since I resigned from public office in 2001, I have been more and more distant from my parents. First was Tunxi District of Huangshan City, then Yueqing City of Wenzhou City, followed by Minhang District of Shanghai and Hangzhou City, where it now works. Every year, it is only during the longer holidays such as the Spring Festival that you can go home to see your parents.
In the summer of 2004, a school in Yueqing City, where I worked, organized school administrators to travel to Liaoning and Shandong, so I could bring my family, so I took my father with me. To this day, I still vividly remember my father's excitement when he first flew on a plane; the satisfaction of the first time my father and I took off our shoes and walked barefoot on the fine sand of a beach somewhere in Shandong; and the freshness of our first stay in a star-rated hotel. My father and I visited the Aquarium, the Eight Immortals Seaview Area, etc., climbed Laoshan Mountain, and traveled to the north district of Qingdao City. I'm glad I made the right decision. If you put it in these years, not to mention whether your father's physical strength can keep up, the epidemic alone will make people unable to make the trip at ease.
My fathers have been there. At the earliest, assigned to Lingyang Town, which was more than eighty miles away from home, my father took a minibus all the way bumpy to see me. On one occasion, my father and my mother went to Lingyang Town. Every time I went, my father would bring some fish with him. My father, who was not good at words, would always say something in front of the leader to make the leader care for me.
When I went to Wenzhou, it was precisely because the trip to Liaolu was from Wenzhou Longwan Airport, and my father came to the campus and stayed in my dormitory for a few days.
In Hangzhou, I remember taking my father to Zhejiang Provincial Tongde Hospital to see asthma. I took my father to the West Lake, visited Yue Fei's tomb, and toured the Xixi Wetland. Unfortunately, my father was afraid that I would spend money, and even eating an ordinary rice bowl would hurt me for spending money. My father had paronychia in his toenails, and I took him to a foot bath shop for a pedicure, which was the first time in his life. Father's Day and Fatherhood
When I was a child, my father had high hopes for me. I have had good grades since I was a child, and my father is even more encouraging. Later, I was admitted to the normal college with the first place in the overall score of the middle school entrance examination, and my father was very happy, and there was finally an "iron rice bowl" in our family. I remember that after the acceptance letter arrived, my father also held a banquet and invited the school teacher and relatives at home to eat wine. What my father could not let go of was that after working in a public school for six years, I broke the "iron rice bowl" and resigned to go to a private school. To this day, my father occasionally mentions that my "self-assertion" was a form of recklessness.
【Epilogue】
Today, my father and mother are living in the ninety-square-meter house in Qingyang County. The two old men held hands and entered the era of silver hair and the age of golden marriage. If you don't raise children, you don't know your parents' grace. Now that I have become a father of two children myself, I have a deeper understanding of my father's hard work. I hope that my father can listen to his favorite Huangmei opera when he has time. A jugger - Jianshu
On the occasion of the New Year, my father celebrated his eightieth birthday, which can be described as a double happiness.
With this article, I wish my father a long life and a hundred years! I wish the second elder good health! Peace and joy!