Love hidden in a smile

On the weekend, I went to pick up my son who was staying at the school and went home. While waiting, I recalled an interesting thing, and the pleasure that came out of my heart was unconsciously all over my face, so that I didn't notice it when my son was out of school, but he glanced at me with two eyes straight towards the school door. To be precise, what my son saw at a glance was the smile on my face.

On the way home, my son did not discuss with me the missing points of the weekly test as usual. Instead, he said to me briskly: Dad, as soon as I see your smiling face, I feel relaxed; your smile makes me feel very at ease, and there is a sense of strength. At that moment, my son's few sour crepe words struck me like lightning.

When my son was still in his infancy, I gave him countless smiling faces. Every day, the first thing after entering the door after work, I went to pick up the little guy, grinned at him, and made an exaggerated giggle to tease him.

My son grew up, and the smiling faces I got were getting less and less. Especially after school, I gave him more of a black face. Perhaps in my bones, I have always adhered to the old tradition of strict fatherhood and motherly kindness. The love for his son is hidden in his heart, and his face is full of severe colors.

A few days ago, a character newsletter written by an editorial colleague made me deeply moved:

In the early 1980s, a rural mother suffered from severe mental illness. That year, my brother was eight years old and my brother was four years old, which was the age when I needed my mother's love the most. But what they get is a fright from their mother, who is so powerful when she gets sick that she hurts people everywhere. Father had no choice but to lock her up for a time. The mother was not free, so she howled hysterically.

The young brothers were both frightened and unbearable, so they took turns to accompany their mother. Then, at some point, they accidentally found that as long as they smiled at their mother, she would gradually become quiet. The two brothers agreed from then on: no matter how big the emotion, in front of our mother, we must pretend to be very happy, laugh and talk to her.

In order to abide by this "love convention", no matter how wronged the brothers encountered in the years to come, as soon as they wiped their tears and turned around, they were like a brilliant sunflower, opening towards their mother.

Thirty-seven years have passed, my father has long since passed away, and my mother, who is in her seventies, is still a treasure in the palm of the brothers' hands. And now these two middle-aged peasant brothers, with their faces full of vicissitudes, always have a thick smile on their faces—they have been exercising against their mother for decades.

I hadn't seen the two brothers laugh. But I can be sure that for everyone who knows their story, that smile is the most vivid face in the world, straight to the heart.

One day in the middle of summer this year, I was on the phone with my sister. When it comes to fathers in the countryside, we invariably talk about a phenomenon: the old father seems to have changed as a person recently, and he often laughs a few times on the phone. The laughter was short and even abrupt, but it was so healing that I unconsciously called my father more frequently.

I remember when I was a teenager, my father's laughter was miserly, especially for my son. Watching "Dream of the Red Chamber" as an adult, I read my father's shadow in Jia Zheng. Even though I later worked in the city and occasionally returned to my hometown with my wife and children, my father still did not smile at me.

Some time ago, I finally learned the answer from my mother: my father had been hunched over his shoulders in the mountains for many years, and he was full of pain and pain, but he could not cure the disease. The sexually straight and tortured old man often sighs inadvertently during the conversation with us. The sigh always made me feel bad like a pinprick. Every time I hung up the phone, the feeling of powerless guilt and self-blame often wrapped my body and mind for a few days, if I was in the haze and rainy season. My mother learned in a small talk with me that when we returned to town, she talked seriously to my father about it.

After hearing this, my father woke up like a dream, and he blamed himself one after another. After that, he tried to stop sighing, and after a few months, it turned into a hey-hee laugh...

As a son, I am so selfishly eager for my father's laughter; but as a father, I am so stingy to give my son a smile. I think of a poignant quote: We always try to give a smile to colleagues, friends, and even strangers, but we give bad emotions to the people who love us the most.

For the rest of our lives, no matter how hard it is, the moment we turn around, we all remember to put on a smile to face our loved ones.

Hide love in your smile. (Jin Xiaolin)