Not long ago, when I returned to my hometown, I saw that my second uncle had gone through all kinds of hardships, and that he had become a family in his forties and was happy to have a noble son, and I was really happy for him.
In fact, the second uncle and my father are not brothers, but cousins who have not yet produced "five households". With his compatriots, there are five brothers, according to the older generation in his hometown, it should be "many children and many blessings", but judging from the experience of the second uncle in the past half of his life, it cannot be said to be a good blessing.
The second uncle has suffered a hard life since childhood. Malnutrition in the mother's pregnancy, when he was born, he encountered many disasters and difficulties at the end of the fifties, coupled with the fact that his eldest brother was already a "man", it was obvious that he came to the world with a "male body", which was no longer the "half-daughter" that his parents thought, in their family with deep feudal consciousness, both children and daughters were the greatest wish of parents, and from the name his parents gave him, it was the name of a girl. Perhaps dominated by this idea, his parents "madly" "produced" five brothers for him in less than a decade, and finally added a sister. Of course, in China in the 1950s and 1960s, although it was not surprising that families with many children like this were to be pulled apart, it depended on their ability to survive. The second uncle and brothers grew up "tenaciously" under the domination of their parents' concepts of "wide planting and thin harvest" and "extensive management". At that time, there was no joy in their young minds, only hunger, and schooling at the right age was not the top priority of their parents.
The second uncle was very late in his enlightenment, probably when he was twelve or thirteen years old before entering elementary school, fortunately, his innately low height could temporarily narrow the height gap with his classmates. However, the second uncle's innate intelligence is not high, but it has widened the gap with his classmates, often at the end of the semester, he has to hand over a few "duck eggs" to his parents. Because, in school, his classmates bullied him, and he felt ashamed. The disdain of the teacher, the discrimination of the classmates, and the fiery temper of his parents accelerated the process of his dropping out of school, and when he reached the third grade of primary school, he was killed and unwilling to enter the school, so he willingly "repaired the earth" with his parents at home.
Since dropping out of school, the second uncle has officially entered the society. At the beginning, he still felt quite fresh, working in large groups all day long, talking and laughing with everyone, and completely without the serious atmosphere of school classes. But over time, the heavy physical labor of lifting stones, carrying cow dung, and ploughing the fields was not something that his body as a child could bear. He had always wondered why he could not get paid the same amount of labor as an adult. At this time, he had a more "in-depth" understanding of society.
As if in the blink of an eye, the second uncle and brothers have grown up one by one, just like a handful of seeds sown by his parents in the spring, and they all mature in the autumn, while his parents do not have the joy of the "autumn harvest" at this time. As the saying goes, "men should marry, women should marry", from the concept of early marriage of the hometown people, their five brothers have indisputably been classified as "difficult households" in marriage. In fact, as far as the marriage of several brothers in the second uncle's family is concerned, it is indeed the same. The eldest brother did not "get married" until he was thirty years old. He was in his thirties, and after several times of "plugging in the door", he was taunted by the widow's family of men and women and children, and he was not capable of "beating mandarin ducks" and rushed back to his hometown. The third brother also passed the age of establishment, and only then did he find a wife who was many years older than him. The fourth and fifth years have passed the 30th, and now they are still alone. Even the youngest sister found her in-laws before their brothers, and now the babies are a few years old. In the face of such a "severe situation", it was really anxious for his mother. If it weren't for his father's early years of repairing aqueducts and being thrown to death, I don't know how anxious he would have been!
The second uncle finally started a family in his forties. Although it continues to be "inverted door", it is better than being a "light man". According to him, life is now enjoyable. This is all due to the fact that he learned the craft of dot brick with the help of my father's "forced" help in his twenties, and now it finally comes in handy. He also said to me complacently that he was not like those migrant workers in the village who went south and north all year round, like a tramp, and in the end he could not earn a few dollars, even if he did not have to go out, he would help people in his hometown to make a pig and cattle pen all day long, cut a triad land board, make a simple powder water, and earn him three or five hundred yuan a month in addition to "throwing" his mouth outside. And what makes him more satisfied is that every day he leaves early and returns late, he can still be with his wife and baby, what is so bad about this day?
Second uncle, my second uncle who suffered a hard life, the lucky second uncle!
