In the Footsteps of My Father (5)

Serial No. 5 ——

Unfortunate old age empty sadness

Bao Xia/Wen

The eighties were a hot time. After the reform and opening up, the whole country attaches importance to scientific education, respects knowledge and respects teachers, and the conditions for running schools in Mingsha Middle School have been greatly improved, and the quality of teaching has also risen steadily. Rural life has improved a lot, we have grown up, joined the work, and my father has spent a period of leisure and happiness.

If it is said that the father's adaptation to Mingsha began to rely on freshness and enthusiasm, relying on a heart dedicated to the Great Northwest, then, as his father received the care of the Mingsha people, with his full efforts over the years, this feeling has been blended with each other. Later, as the material conditions became better and better, after the once bloody slogans disappeared, my father still taught in Mingzhong, and successively refused the hiring of other urban areas or superior conditions, large and small, and never returned to Tianjin.

In May 1990, my brother (23 years old) died unexpectedly, and my father's spirit collapsed with a blow of white hair and black hair. Gradually, the father's body showed slight symptoms, the quality of sleep was poor, and the body became increasingly emaciated. At first, my family and myself didn't pay attention, my left foot thumb trembled, I walked slowly, I felt unstable at a fast pace, and I could fall at any time.

In 1992, my father obviously felt that he was unable to stand and lecture, so he sent a report to the school leaders to request an early retirement. Principal Ma Zihai said Mr. Bao could sit on a stool and teach. In 1993, my father's illness continued to progress, his hands and head were shaking constantly, he could not feed his mouth, on the table, and on the ground was scattered everywhere. Experts from Yinchuan Affiliated Hospital, the capital of Ningxia Autonomous Region, were diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome.

In February 1995, the Department of Labor and Personnel of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region approved his father's request to retire from illness, and his father bid farewell to his 40-year teaching career.

In July 1997, the 26-year-old brother was electrocuted, leaving his three-year-old daughter to school in Qingtongxia and Yinchuan with her birth mother. The child crossed from the rural school to the Yinchuan school in the autonomous region, and the students who were originally the top few students became the bottom few in Yinchuan, and she cried desperately and did not even want to go to school. After her father knew, he enlightened her in a serious tone, and took out only a little retirement salary to let her find a good teacher to make up for the class. Every winter and summer vacation, her parents come to Yinchuan, to the boarding she to do a good job of eating to increase nutrition, before leaving, from head to toe new clothes to buy, but also to give hundreds of yuan of pocket money, father said that girls spend more money. She knew how to be grateful, did not live up to her grandfather's nurturing feelings, in the years before her father's death, his father was seriously ill and hospitalized once a year, sometimes twice a year, she rushed to the hospital to serve her grandfather.

His father took the school as his home, took root in the education cause of Zhongning County, and worked hard until he retired. I wanted to spend my old age in the family home, but as the young teachers moved to the city, there were only a few retired teachers left in the school's family home. Every winter, on weekends and holidays (especially winter vacation), because the school does not attend classes and the heating is not timely, the family home is cold, the water supply pipe is often frozen, and the mother has to go to the homes of farmers outside the school to carry water to maintain her life. In order to heat the house, a stove was built, and the kang was beaten, and it was necessary to go to the surrounding farmhouses to find some firewood to burn the kang for heating, and there was no toilet in the house, so I had to go to the public toilet far away. Fathers with Parkinson's disease had difficulty going to the toilet, and they could not squat, and they had to be supported by their mothers, and their mothers were tired and sick for a long time. As parents age and illness increase, hospitalization becomes a need anytime, anywhere. Mingsha Middle School is far from the hospital, it is very inconvenient to see a doctor, and sometimes it is impossible to find a taxi for sudden illness at night. What's more, the houses allocated at that time had long been dilapidated, the bricks on the ground were broken, the doors and windows were loose and could not be closed, and the rain leaked in the house. In 2009, the family home near the Qixing Canal was identified as a dangerous house by the School Security Office of the Zhongning County Education Bureau and demolished within a time limit.

My father has been working in a rural secondary school and has not enjoyed housing reform, let alone preferential policies such as housing reform subsidies or housing subsidies. The monthly retirement salary of more than 2,000 yuan only maintains the daily life and medicine of the old couple. Hospitalization also requires a child allowance. To this end, I held materials to the Zhongning County Education Bureau, the Letters and Visits Bureau, the Construction Bureau, the Housing Management Bureau, and Zhang Guoshun, deputy county magistrate, and begged to solve my parents' set of low-cost housing.

In January 2011, the then governor of Zhongning County specially instructed three teachers of Mingsha Middle School, including their father, to enjoy preferential treatment in low-cost housing. After my father became seriously ill, the leaders of the Education Bureau, many relatives and friends, and my father's students came to visit.

In 2015, my father passed away. Among the many couplets, we have collected this one:

Forty years of preaching, teaching, teaching, educating people, and reasoning are absurd

Eight thousand yaner disciples in a lifetime built the country in groups.

Li Jingzhong in Shanghai and Ren Tianci in Henan summed up their father's life with a seven-law poem:

Jia Kui cai learned to fight Fang Fei, guan Bob's teeth bloomed green, the pen was raw and painted river loops, and the basket altar golden whistle judged the wind and thunder.

Tianjin students play foolish, Mr. Ningxia buckles firewood, talents are three thousand feet away, and heaven paintbrushes write reincarnation.

(End of full text)

(Special thanks to Alumni Chen Xuefeng for revising this article!) ）