The heart leans on the bright moon to the hometown
Text/Wang Shuzhen
(Web Photo)
In the spring of 19, my father went to Jinan to participate in the gathering of comrades-in-arms for thirty years, and was later picked up by his comrades-in-arms to go to Jiangsu Xiaoju. After returning, he asked me to go back and help him record the phone numbers and WeChat of his comrades. The old people in the mobile phone photos are full of energy and perform standard military salutes, just like when they were in the army. I carefully recognized, trying to recall the sounds and smiles of their youth, and pointed them to my father one by one. The father couldn't help but smile and nodded, "Well, it's your Uncle Wu... Yes, it's Old Song..." For a long time, I finally couldn't help it, "What about Uncle Xiaocai?" What about Uncle Guan? The father narrowed his smile and pondered, "Sichuan has changed a lot in recent years, and several of their Sichuan warriors have not been able to contact..." I was speechless for a moment, allowing my thoughts to fly through the dappled years and stop in the time that had been.
There are many things in the world that are inadvertently fleeting and never come back. Such as growth, such as experience, such as the beauty of the past. In the years of life, they have stayed for a while, leaving a beautiful shadow, and then quietly left with the rings of the year. But it is like a dream, forever left in the depths of memory.
The time of childhood was deeply and brilliantly rendered by the green of the military uniforms of his father and his comrades-in-arms.
That year, my mother and I and my brother had a special status: military dependents.
My mother was teaching at the elementary school near the garrison, and my father was too busy with the work of the battalion headquarters to take care of me and my brother, and let us play like happy little fools.
His father's unit was the Lanzhou Garrison, located near gaolan mountain and the ancient Silk Road. The barracks are built against the mountain, and the rows are neat and mighty. The barracks are made of stone blocks from the mountains. The gray-blue of the house and the green of the soldiers' military uniforms became the main colors of my childhood.
The road paved with small gravel, the feet stepped on it, and the collision of stones and stones made a crisp sound. We little children always ignore it, jumping and running around, and from time to time kicking the big stones as sandbags. What often caused my mother a headache was that within a few days, the shoes on our feet would wear out prematurely, revealing a few panicked little toes. At that time, my mother was busy with work, and the clothes and shoes of our sisters and brothers were all made by my aunt who was far away in Shandong, and they were packed into a package and carried by someone. When I was a kid, I was a little naughty, or maybe it was intentional, and my shoes always had to be green and yellow. At that time, I was a little careful, a little thief, when I stood pitifully in front of my father with bad shoes, my father would be busy sneaking my brother and me into the city to buy. Favorite shoes, beautiful clothes, and food that makes me salivate will make me all fit in. My mother blamed my father for not being frugal, and my father smiled and responded to the next attention, but when I entered the city again, both father and daughter seemed to have forgotten my mother's instructions and returned with a full load again. Of course, there were not many such opportunities, and my father was very busy, although he was close at hand, and there was not much time to see him. When I grew up, I suddenly felt that the happiness of my father's company at that time seemed to be more exciting than the excitement brought by those things, and the reason why I could let my father put down his work and accompany him for a while was also the reason why I repeatedly used small tricks.
Uncle Guan and Uncle Xiaocai were the youngest soldiers around their father. Uncle Guan's book business is strong, he speaks Sven, and after completing the training task every day, he still insists on reading and writing. Especially the brush characters, the atmosphere is vivid, and the bottom of the pen is as beautiful as flowers. Uncle Guan can be said to be the enlightenment teacher of reading and literacy with my brother and me. Uncle Xiaocai's original name was "Cai", and after joining the army, Uncle Xiaocai said that the word "Cai" was too vulgar, and noisily changed it to "Cai", and finally got his wish. Although Uncle Xiaocai did not read much, he was intelligent and skillful. A handful of grass, a few branches, flipped and folded in the hands of Uncle Xiaocai, has become a rare thing in the eyes of our children. At that time, Uncle Xiaocai's back would often chase a slip of dolls, noisy, becoming a different scenery in the serious military camp.
I love all kinds of bamboo baskets woven by Uncle Xiaocai, which can be called exquisite. Flat, square, round, big, small... For me, only like is love. So many years later, my cognition has always been: Sichuan people are skillful, can weave bamboo, can carve, can sing or babble or high-pitched mountain songs!
As the saying goes, the iron battalion is a soldier of flowing water. At the parting moment of each year, the new recruits come to the veterans to walk as if in an infinite cycle. My tough guy father was always at the moment of sending off, smiling and instructing, and unconsciously his eyes were red. Recruit training is the training of troops leaving the barracks base and going to the field for marching, camping and live-fire simulation and actual combat training. My father has always retained this good style, and whenever there is a training task, he will follow the team with full equipment. A few of us little children would look from afar, and envious eyes would follow them far and far. After a long time and more visits, we learned to judge the length of time they traveled each time according to the weight of the equipment they carried and the speed of the march.
Although life away from the city was a little monotonous, those years were the happiest childhood times for me. Outgoing, I made friends with several children who spoke local dialects and were also family members. Although it is more difficult to understand each other's words, over time, one look and one action can understand. Such as going to the shallows of the lake to catch fish and shrimp, such as touching bird eggs in the grass at the foot of the mountain.
Deep in my heart is the joy of following Uncle Bing's truck to the slopes of the mountain to pick wild sunflowers in autumn; the joy of eavesdropping on the reeds of the shallows of the lake; and the shock of following the soldiers' ranks to the camp every weekend to watch an open-air black-and-white movie. The most memorable thing was the attraction of the box of picture books in the reading room of the camp, which opened a window of knowledge for the ignorant me and gave me a pair of wings that yearned for free flight.
In my memory, there was a mountain not far south of the troop battalion headquarters, which was not high in altitude, stretching for tens of miles, like two wings with open wings. Probably because of the monsoon climate, most of the time the jungle on the mountain is short, and the appearance of the crab is. Every year in May and June, the dense trees are wrapped in water-soaked greenery and become a sea of low forests full of life. At this time, I would beg Uncle Cai to take a few of our little children up the mountain. It takes about 3 hours to reach the summit along a slightly steep, thick, winding path. "In the high place, the scenery is infinite, and the flowers are gradually charming." If you get closer, you will find that under the trees, in the crevices of the rocks, next to the cliffs, the stars are dotted, and the orchids of various colors are blooming. They are beautiful in the steep, and feminine in the bold, like a shy girl, showing a feminine but resolute smile.
Looking around, in the mountains, red, white, pink, yellow... Colorful orchids sway in the wind, dotted among the bluestones of the blue sky. I prefer an orchid that grows mostly in the crevices of the cliffs, topped with clusters of blue-purple flowers with small, broken buds that bloom in the mountains. When the wind blows, the fragrance of orchids spreads faintly, making Lanzhou, the "State of Rulan", more worthy of its name.
Many years later, the family returned to Shandong with their father. The city called "Lanzhou", the place that makes me feel like my hometown, will often appear in my dreams. It is still as familiar as I was a child, just like the song about Lanzhou: "No longer see the wind like the corner of the teen plaid shirt raised, since then the lonely White Pagoda Back Mountain quietly rained tonight, for the East of the Yellow River water to the ripples of the moment, thousands of miles away on the tall building you did not sleep all night." ”
Yes, that hometown engraved in my heart, haunting my dreams, at this moment, I miss you again.
【About the author】Wang Shuzhen, a native of Yanggu who lives in Liaocheng. Good reading, love slow life, reverence for words. I like to write essays and small essays that show my mood slightly.