Sun Li: The memory of the mother

My mother gave birth to seven children and only one of them supported me. One year, there was a plague in the countryside, and in a month, she died three children. Grandpa said to his mother:

"If you can't think about it, people will go crazy." You go out and fight people with cards! ”

Later, my mother developed the habit of playing cards with women in the spring and winter, and often said to her family, "This is what your grandfather ordered, don't leave me alone." ”

In the two seasons of wheat and autumn, my mother worked like crazy for the crops in the field. Every day, as soon as she heard the chickens crowing, she went to the field to help harvest and fight. I came home late every day. Her body was covered with dirt and her hair was covered with firewood. The blue cloth pants were wet with a layer of white alkali, and she always lifted the placket of her pants to wipe the sweat from her face.

Her slogan was: "Fight for the wheat!" "Raise troops for a thousand days, use soldiers for a while!" No one in the family wants to be lazy.

When I was born, I had no milk to eat. My mother dried the steamed buns and crushed them into a paste to feed me. I was sick, and whenever I was sick, at night, my mother always put a bowl of water on the windowsill and prayed to the gods of the past. The mother said to the people, "My child will not be filial piety, because he is what I asked for from the temple by burning incense and making a wish." ”

After the family was well-off, her mother tried her best to help the lonely and hungry in the village, and for those who passed, all who asked for her were enthusiastic to help. There are two nuns from distant villages, who always come to our house every year after the wheat autumn harvest. In addition to giving them a lot of food, their mother often kept them for food and lodging. I remember a young nun with a clear eyebrow. Living at my house in the winter, she carries a grasshopper gourd and barks very well at night, which I want very much. Early the next morning, my mother told her that the little nun had given me the grasshoppers.

During the War of Resistance Against Japan, near the village, the enemy installed a turret. One spring, I came back from a distance, afraid to go to my house, and went around to the courtyard hut on the edge of the village. When the mother heard about it, she was so happy that she did not know what to give to the child. There was a moon tree in the family, and my father raised it for a spring, and just after a big flower, she folded it and sent it to me. The father was very heartbroken, and the mother smiled and said, "I said why this flower, which does not bloom early or late, suddenly bloomed today, because my son has returned, and it must first send me a letter!" ”

In 1956, I was in Tianjin, I fell seriously ill, and I had to go to a foreign country for convalescence. My mother was in her eighties at the time, and when I came out of the house, she stood in the porch and said to me, "When others are sick and go home, why are you sick and go out!" ”

This is my eternal recipe with my mother. While I was recuperating, my mother died at the age of eighty-four.

February 12, 1982