01
When my daughter counts her loved ones, she always has to mention You, a nanny who once took her.
That year, my family moved to Hexi.
My mother was weak, my wife and I had to work, and the child needed to be entrusted to a nanny during the day.
Introduced by acquaintances, we met You, and she lived near my house.
In fact, You has not yet reached the age when Hunan people can be called grandmothers, about fifty years old, but watching his son work as a temporary worker to pick up soil is too hard, in order to let him enter the factory, he retired early.
She was straight-talking, her heart was wide and fat, and when she laughed, her face bulged with two balls of flesh, so squeezed that she couldn't even see her eyes.
Her laughter is a public resource for this neighborhood.
After tea and dinner, you can often hear this familiar laughter coming from afar, jumping into the window in pieces, landing on the petals of the cuckoo or on your unfolded newspaper, adding color to your state of mind.
The child began to be afraid, crying that he did not want her.
But it didn't take long for the child to calm down and enjoy her laughter.
The child tries to touch her fat face with his hand. She opened her mouth wide with a smile, turned her face away, and suddenly "sighed" and turned back, and made a grimace to make the child feel stimulated and interesting.
She could repeat this simple game carefully countless times, each time laughing with the child.
The child has since had an extra grandmother.
You's husband, who is also a retired worker and is good at cooking, is often asked to help out at restaurants and doesn't return home for months.
Two sons work in the factory, a fan fishing, a good violin, the salary is not high, and they are in the love stage, naturally lack of money to spend, eat and drink at home, and sometimes look for their mothers to subsidize.
Grandma You often said with red eyes, "My two losers are not as good as me Han Han." How much money can I have? When I cried, she also cried, wiped my tears, and asked me to eat oil cakes. A string of tears fell as he spoke.
Han Han is my daughter.
02
Summers in the south are hot.
By the middle of the night, the house was still like an oven, all the furniture was hot and baked, the cold water was smeared, the dark water stains were quickly divided, and then the pieces were shrunk and evaporated to nothing.
People are so hot that they breathe heavily, and they all suspect that they have the smell of cooked meat on them.
On such nights, even mosquitoes are much less, probably burned to death and lose their sharpness.
Of course, the child can't sleep soundly on such a night, and just close his eyes for a while and wake up "wow" hot.
I don't know when, we heard someone calling downstairs, to the balcony to listen carefully, only to know that someone is calling the child's name, it is Grandma You coming.
Carrying a heavy body of flesh, she climbed the stairs breathlessly and was ushered into the house by us.
She said that she heard cries in the distance at home and couldn't sleep. She could hear that Han Han was crying, so she said that she would carry the child to her.
She doesn't have a special cooling recipe, it can only be to fan the child all night, or carry the child out for a night tour, looking for a windy place.
All summer, the coolest bamboo bed and the most airy location in her house belonged to my daughter.
Whenever the sun fell on the high wall on the other side of the transport company, Grandma You began to spray water on the ground in front of the door to clear the heat, placed the bamboo bed under the plane tree, and wiped it with cool water at least twice to prepare for my daughter's overnight stay.
Her son accidentally sat on a bamboo bed, and she immediately shouted, "Is this for you?" You guys are full of anger, a hot ass, sitting on what's hot. Go for a walk, without your share! ”
Daycare has almost become a full-day care. We want to give her money to process, and she resolutely refuses to accept it, pushing and shoving as if she wants to fight with you.
Later, Grandma You's health gradually deteriorated, and the doctor said that she had a heart problem.
It was time for the child to go to kindergarten, so we sent her to her grandmother's house, where there was a nice kindergarten. It's far from my house, and the kids can only come back on weekends every week.
In the first few days of the child's visit, Grandma You lost her soul and came to my house from time to time to inquire about the child's recent situation.
My daughter goes home every Saturday from kindergarten to elementary school.
It was still far from home, and she was going to jump off my shoulders, and the wind ran towards you, until she pounced on Grandma You's arms, and as soon as she plunged in, she wouldn't come out.
There are always many children of neighbors in the youjia family - and often relatives from the countryside, who use tractors to bring rattan chairs, cutting boards, bird cages, melon fruits to sell in front of the youmen's doors, and also bring the smell of rural sounds and rural sunshine - the children lie there madly to watch the liveliness, and do not want to go home for a long time.
03
In 1988, my family moved to Hainan Island.
Every time her daughter ate a novel tropical fruit, she would say, "Grandma You is here to let her taste this." ”
She wrote some letters to Grandma You. You can't read many words, and most of the replies are ghostwritten by people.
I was worried about You's heart disease, and I didn't tell my daughter about this worry, afraid that she wouldn't be able to accept a world without Grandma You.
She still often writes letters to Grandma You, and often receives replies from Grandma You. Every time she read the letter, she held the letter paper and laughed at the sky again and again.
To my surprise, she smiled like Grandma You.
Her face, the upper half resembles mine, the lower half resembles her mother, but her laughter undoubtedly comes from the wanderers: she laughs so unreservedly, without scruples, as freely and forgetfully as she wants.
I remember the group of neighbor children who often came and went in and out of the house, and all of them had this kind of laughter, which was really habitual and sound-like.
No matter how many diseases Grandma You suffers from, she will not die.
This is not because she will leave five or six digits in her passbook, nor will it be related to rank or academic title, and her worn-out furniture and old-fashioned wooden oven will eventually be thrown away by posterity.
But she left joy on the children's faces, leaving their smiles blooming like flowers.
The autumn rain is continuous, and the autumn rain is continuous.
Even if I was thousands of miles away on the island, I would wait in an empty mailbox for her laughter from afar.
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