Pear Gully is located in the mountain bay directly in front of my house, close to the flank of Xia Ji Wan, like the armpit of the jar ping. A small stream flows through, ensuring a carefree dry season here. In my memory, my mother got up early to do farm work there, usually when the fog was not separated by the sun; when she came back from work, it was always a dark night with lights and shadows. In other words, less than a mile from my house to Li'ergou, my mother shuttled back and forth in it, and I inadvertently spent a lifetime.
The reason why such a suitable paragraph appears at the beginning of the article is because in my opinion, this is a pear ditch that belongs to the mother.
Others in the village simply take advantage of the favorable conditions of good water sources and soil fertilizer here, and take advantage of the opportunity to set up almost, without much effort, to obtain some immediate benefits related to the harvest of crops. The mother is completely different, she plants all her emotions here, breathes with it, and shares sorrow and joy.
The name Li'ergou is easy to give people the illusion, because it is not like the sunny slopes that are rich in pears, and even the years of reclamation and utilization may not be long. When my mother married into the jar ping, she was in a special period, and in order to ensure that the family had more rations, my mother dug up some plots of land in the wild slopes of the ditch as her own land, and worked hard to get it, and she actually had a good harvest. In fact, after marrying my father for several years, my mother gave birth to my eldest brother, after which my mother was very contentious, about two years a stage, successively gave birth to a second brother, a sister, me, and a younger brother. The sad thing is that the younger brother stood up and died prematurely before he could look at the outside world.
Perhaps, in a sense, the younger brother should not belong to our world, and his appearance is just a cruel memory left by fate. But he always belongs to Li'ergou. His red, pink body was buried by his father on the shady hillside to the east. As a man who must be strong, my young father had to bear such a heavy and sad feeling, carefully taking his flesh and bones from his mother's side with his own hands, and then fiercely putting it into a small pit of dirt... When the new soil covered everything, the vigorous weeds quickly grew out, as if to replace the brother to live strongly. In the face of this situation, can my father and mother get some comfort and relief from it?
For a long time after that, my mother went to Li'ergou to work, and came home later than usual. When I grew up, I learned that my mother would go to the mound where my brother lived every day and cry sadly for a while, pouring out her inner pain and some kind of indebtedness that she could not let go of. Many times, my mother returned home in a trance under the persuasion and support of others. As time passed, the mother could only try to let go of the sadness little by little, and put all her energy into nursing her four children, and in the process, the pain of losing a child was gradually alleviated. I think that in addition to the wild weeds growing wildly, the elder brother and sister are living healthily and safely instead of their ill-fated brother, which is the biggest reason for the wounds of the mother's heart to heal.
The pear ditch is not big, and it is not necessarily how deep. Down the gully, there are fields and plots of land that are spread out one after another, layer by layer, and the pages are stacked on top of each other. Further inside, there is a small forest, spread on both sides of the creek. The bottom of the ditch is rocky, and the cliff wall is splashed with pearls and jade all year round, and the water mist is muddy, which is quite spiritual.
That summer, the first time I went with my mother to work in the ditch, I drove the cows into the forest, and went to the ditch to catch crabs. Suddenly, but the sound of the water was crisp, only to see a large number of flowing water crowded on the cliff in front of them, falling headlong, forming a waterfall spectacle. Of course, this is not the first time I have seen "waterfalls" - when the rainy season comes, the cliffs across the village will burst into flash floods, forming several waterfalls of yellow soup, but they come and go quickly, and when the rain subsides, they disappear. In Li'ergou, it is so real and close to hanging overhead, looking up, only to see tens of meters high cliffs, covered with a corner of blue sky, occasionally birds chase by, crystal clear water follows, as if the spiritual water falling from the sky, random splash a few drops, you can moisten the lush grass and trees. At that moment, I had a brief dizziness, but more than that, I could not express my admiration for beauty. Until the mother cried out urgently and came out with a soaked body, she saw that the cow had eaten a small half of the seedlings that were growing.
Needless to say, my mother, who was particularly distressed about the crops, scolded me. I wasn't even a little frustrated, because my mother's cry made me a new discovery—whatever you say, you can reply to something in the ditch. That is, what a wonderful thing it is that a person's voice gets the same response from the earth here. I couldn't figure it out and repeatedly verified it. I sing, it also sings; I call my own name, it also calls my name; I want to eat candy, it also wants to eat candy... It reacts quickly and accurately enough that, as I said earlier, it probably takes less than half a second to repeat it, like a prankster little friend hiding in the shadows.
For years afterward, I wondered: How many untold secrets are there on earth that lie in our hearts that are difficult to penetrate or decipher?
One year during the National Day holiday, I went back to my hometown. The cement road has reached every household, but I chose the mountain road next to the ditch to walk into the village. It was early autumn, and the weeds were growing wildly, and grasshoppers were flying, flooding the paths that were once as bright as lights. The roadside rice paddies emit the sweet tail of the autumn harvest, but the fields in the ditch are full of weeds, proving that they have been helplessly abandoned by the old people who are unable to do so.
On that day, I spent a long time standing and listening for a long time, picking up scattered pieces of memory, such as the back of my mother's early greed and hard work, such as the moody love and hatred released by my brother to the world through the weeds, such as some kind of complex that I had been entangled in for a long time, and so on. But I didn't naughtily shout anything like I did as a kid. I was afraid that once the sound was made, my mother's back and the fragments of memory that remained in my heart would dissipate one by one with the response in the ditch.
I thought that if I insisted on not opening my mouth, they would surely stay at the bottom of the ditch, as if they were stored forever.
Source: Qiyi Client