Text/Bower
When I was a child, there were no street lights in the countryside. If you encounter a cloudy day, as soon as the sky is dark, it will be pitch black, and the daytime scenery will fall into darkness. The most memorable thing is the night walk to school at that time. At that time, going to middle school was to go to the evening self-study. The evening self-study ends, around 9 p.m. At that time, the school did not have dormitories, so as soon as the self-study was over, I hurriedly packed up my school bags and hurried home with my friends from the same village. We half-grown children like to walk close, so we walk through an empty and quiet reed in the night, cut a short way, and return home. At that time, the economic conditions of each family were not good, there was no hand lamp, and it was almost a night walk in the dark. In the middle of every month, we can use the moonlight to go home with the bright light emitted by the stars. Now that I am older, I always love to reminisce about the past, and when I think of the scene of walking at night, I always love to sigh: The moonlight in the countryside in my childhood is really bright, and the moonlight is so beautiful!
We grew up in the countryside and have always grown up in the countryside. Therefore, the happiest thing when I was a child was to sit in the courtyard after dinner and listen to the adults who had been busy for a day with a bright moon to tell us about what they experienced when they were young. At that time, we sometimes asked our parents such a question, why do you always like to talk about your childhood. Their answers to our questions were always vague and ambiguous, and by the time we were old now, the question finally had an answer. We're doing what our parents were doing and telling our own next generation about what we went through as a child.
The nights in the countryside were quiet, quiet enough to hear the chirping of various small insects among the grass. Occasional dogs barking in the distance break the tranquility of the whole village. Sometimes there is no moon in the sky, especially when it is cloudy, there is no trace of light, and the eyes are pitch black. At that time, when we were young, accompanied by adults, we stood in front of the house and looked at the whole village, and at this moment there was only the faint light emitted by the thick window paper in the huts of our neighbors. Seeing this scene, if there is no adult company, the heart is very scary. Especially if you occasionally think of the terrible stories of ghosts and foxes that adults usually tell, you will suddenly pounce into the arms of adults, or hold the hands of adults tightly. The night with the stars, especially the night when the moon is shining in the sky, naturally dissolves the sense of fear in the heart, so the heart naturally lights up, and I feel that I also have the light brought by the stars and the moon in my heart.
When we encounter a night with a moon, our hearts are completely settled, and we have no fear of the night at all. Especially on hot summer nights, the moon's light is particularly brilliant, so that the whole village can be clearly presented in front of its eyes. The countryside, which seems a little dilapidated during the day, suddenly becomes incomparably beautiful in the hazy moonlight. The moonlight in the countryside is soft, and that beauty is difficult to describe in words. Especially on a midsummer night, when sitting in the courtyard to cool off with the adults, the dissolved moonlight is really like pure water, through the faint clouds, through the leaves, slowly penetrating into the ground. Wherever the moonlight went, a silvery white floated up, and there was a feeling of mercury paving the floor. Especially when the moonlight shines on the body, there is a slight cool feeling. This is why the men in the countryside always like to show their chests and backs on summer nights, make a big cup of tea, come to an empty field in groups of three or five, shake the fan, sit together, and chat about the things in the north and south, and the moonlight shines on their bronze bodies, like a half-squatted bronze sculpture. They forgot the tiredness of the day's work and talked until late at night, until the women of their own family came to call home to go to bed, and then they dispersed in the middle of the conversation.
When we went to middle school, we were just in time to resume the college entrance examination, so we had the pressure of academics, and we could no longer accompany the adults as in the past, free to enjoy the beauty of the country night. But every night at the moment when I came home from the evening self-study, in the middle of the fifteen-minute walk, my friends in the same village and I were talking and laughing, releasing the tense learning pressure during the day, and unconsciously returned to our respective homes. Our hometown is located on the edge of a lake with a large area of reeds, and we go home on a short road, and we need to go through the reeds by the lake, and there is a hidden path in the reeds, just passing through a person, so whoever is bold is bold, who leads the way in front. Walking on the path, the clusters of reed leaves will scratch on the face from time to time, and there is a feeling of raw pain. Usually, although there is no feeling of fear in many people, when encountering the dark and windy night of the moon, the wind blows the reeds and makes a huge noise, and there is still a little fear in the heart. So we learned the wounded in the Peking Opera "Shajiabang" who were recuperating in the depths of Ludang to sing "To learn a green pine on the top of Natai Mountain" to strengthen ourselves. As soon as we sang, we seemed to have a heroic spirit in our hearts, and the fear in our hearts disappeared without a trace, and after a while we walked out of the reeds and into our own villages. Sometimes our songs will disturb the dogs of the dog owners in the village, and the sound of dogs barking, one after another, it will take a long time for the whole village to return to peace.
When I was a child, I listened to the adults say: "A few stars in the sky, a few Dings on the ground", and when we were young, we didn't think too much about this, but according to the explanations of the adults, we knew that every star in the sky would correspond to everyone on the earth. When you see a meteor crossing the sky at night, there will be a person on the ground who will die. When we were young, the sky was exceptionally blue, and there were often shooting stars running across the sky at night, although it was a fleeting effort, but it left endless sorrow in our young hearts. When someone in the village really passed away, he would really think of whether the meteor he had seen last night was the person who had passed away. For many years, I could no longer see the scene of meteors frequently crossing the sky, and I no longer had that innocent sadness in my heart. But thinking about it, in this life, in the vast historical starry sky, people are destined to play the role of a life passerby, like a meteor crossing the sky, no one can break this spell. In this life, people can only know how to cherish and live well.
Decades have passed, more than forty years away from my hometown, but the night of my hometown has brought me a beautiful experience that will never be forgotten. Sometimes I wake up at night dreaming of my hometown, and I still murmur the past events of my childhood, and I wake up my wife who is sleeping next to me, and my wife turns on the lamp, looks at the sleepy me, asks me what is wrong, I tell her the scene in the dream, my wife will smile, and also tell me that she has been dreaming of childhood recently, and also said to me, "People are old, they have become as innocent as a child, and there are really some truths, is this not fulfilled in both of us?" Listening to my wife's words, I agreed.
In our generation, the childhood experience, although simple, is very simple. It was those simple and beautiful years that preserved the beautiful memories of my childhood, and let my thoughts often return to my hometown to relive the bitter but innocent and romantic memories. Outside the window, a round of bright moon hung high in the sky, dissolving the moonlight sprinkled on the bed, it seemed that tonight I was going to dream back to my hometown, so I quickly fell asleep, hoping to quickly enter the hometown of my dreams.
(Image from the Internet)
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